The Professional Geographer

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Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation

Equity: A Case Study in New York City

Scarlett T. Jin, Hui Kong & Daniel Z. Sui

To cite this article: Scarlett T. Jin, Hui Kong & Daniel Z. Sui (2019): Uber, Public Transit, and
Urban Transportation Equity: A Case Study in New York City, The Professional Geographer, DOI:
10.1080/00330124.2018.1531038

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2018.1531038

Published online: 24 Jan 2019.

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Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity: A Case
Study in New York City
Scarlett T. Jin
The Ohio State University

Hui Kong
JTL Urban Mobility Lab of Singapore–MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART)

Daniel Z. Sui
The Ohio State University

With the explosive growth of Uber and other mobility service providers, their influences on urban mobility have attracted
attention from both researchers and policy circles alike, yet few quantitative studies have been conducted on the topic.
Using Uber pickup data in New York City in 2014, this article investigates the spatiotemporal relationship between Uber
and public transit using buffer analysis and spatial cross-correlation analysis and assesses Uber’s impact on urban transpor-
tation equity with the Gini coefficient and correlation analysis. Our results confirm previous arguments that Uber both
complements and competes with public transit, but competition is more prevalent in New York City. Specifically, Uber
competes with public transit during most hours of the day and in areas with good public transit coverage, whereas it com-
plements public transit at midnight and in places with insufficient public transit services. The distribution of Uber services
is highly unequal, and Uber’s role in improving transport equity is insignificant. Correlation analysis shows that there tend
to be fewer Uber pickups in low-income areas, which diverges from previous studies suggesting that Uber serves low-
income areas well. In addition, a weak negative correlation is detected between the number of Uber pickups and the per-
centage of minorities. Key Words: New York City, public transit, ridesourcing, Uber, urban transportation equity.

随着Uber和其他移动服务提供者的爆炸性成长, 其对城市能动性的影响已同时吸引研究者和相关政策圈的关注, 但该主题

却仍鲜少有量化研究。本文运用2014年Uber在纽约市的载客数据, 使用环域分析与空间交互相关分析, 探讨Uber和公共运
输之间的时空关係, 并以吉尼指数和相关性分析, 评估Uber对城市运输公平的冲击。我们的研究结果, 确认Uber同时补充
公共运输并与其相互竞争的过往主张, 但在纽约市, 竞争则更为普遍。特别是Uber在一日中的多数时间内以及在公共运输
覆盖率高的地区与公共运输相互竞争, 在夜间公共运输与公共运输服务不足之处则与公共运输相互补充。Uber服务的分佈
是高度不均等的, 且Uber在改善运输平等中所扮演的角色是不显着的。相关分析显示, 在低收入的区域, Uber的载客量显
着较少, 因此与过往主张Uber同时服务低收入地区之研究有所分歧。此外, 本研究发现Uber载客数和少数族群比例之间呈
现弱负相关性。 关键词：纽约市, 公共运输, 共乘, Uber, 城市运输公平。

Con el explosivo aumento de Uber y otros proveedores de servicios m
oviles, sus influencias sobre la movilidad urbana han
atra
ıdo la atenci

on tanto de investigadores como de los c
ırculos pol
ıticos, pero sin que al mismo tiempo se hayan llevado a
cabo estudios cuantitativos al respecto en n
umero suficiente. Con datos de servicios de Uber en la ciudad de Nueva York
en 2014, este art
ıculo investiga la relaci

on espaciotemporal entre Uber y el tr
ansito p
ublico usando an
alisis buffer y an
alisis
de correlaci
on espacial cruzada, y eval
ua el impacto de Uber sobre la equidad del transporte urbano por medio del coefi-
ciente de Gini y el an
alisis de correlaci

on. Nuestros resultados confirman anteriores argumentos en el sentido de que Uber
a la vez que complementa compite con el tr
ansito p
ublico, aunque la competencia es lo prevalente en el caso de la ciudad
de Nueva York. Espec
ıficamente, Uber compite con el tr
ansito p
ublico durante la mayor
ıa de las horas del d
ıa y en
areas
con buena cobertura de tr
ansito p
ublico, en tanto que complementa el tr
ansito p
ublico a la media noche y en lugares en
donde los servicios del tr
ansito p
ublico son insuficientes. La distribuci

on de los servicios de Uber es altamente desigual, y
el papel de Uber para mejorar la equidad del transporte es insignificante. El an
alisis de correlaci
on muestra que tienden a
registrarse menos recogidas de pasajeros en
areas de bajos ingresos, lo cual se aparta de estudios anteriores que suger
ıan
que Uber tambi
en serv
ıa a
areas de ingresos bajos. Adem
as, se detecta una correlaci
on negativa d
ebil entre el n
umero de
recogidas de Uber y el porcentaje de minor
ıas. Palabras clave:: Ciudad de Nueva York, igualdad en el transporte
urbano, solicitud del servicio de taxi, tr
ansito p
ublico, Uber.

T he explosive growth of Uber and other mobility

service providers, also known as transportation
network companies (TNCs), has put ridesourcing
vehicles with passengers” (Shaheen, Cohen, and
Zohdy 2016, 5). The term ridesourcing is commonly
used by academic transportation researchers, whereas
into the spotlight. Ridesourcing provides popular media often describe it as ride hailing or ride
“prearranged and on-demand transportation services sharing. Because ridesourcing is considered to be an
for compensation, which connect drivers of personal immediate substitute for taxis, there has been

The Professional Geographer, 0(0) 2019, pages 1–16 # 2019 American Association of Geographers.
Initial submission, February 2018; revised submissions, April and June 2018; final acceptance, August 2018.
Published by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
2 Volume 0, Number 0, Month 2019
abundant research and media coverage on the com-
parison between ridesourcing and taxis and how the
emergence of ridesourcing changes urban mobility
through transforming the taxi industry (Anderson
2014; Bialik et al. 2015; Gl€ oss, McGregor, and
Brown 2016). Furthermore, ridesourcing pulls people
not only from taxis but also from public transit.
Through passenger surveys, existing research suggests
that ridesourcing both complements and competes
with public transit (Jin et al. 2018). It is not clear,
however, to what extent ridesourcing complements or
competes with public transit and how such a relation-
ship evolves over time and space. In addition, there is
a lack of studies on how ridesourcing affects urban
transportation equity in view of the fact that it indu-
ces modal shifts (change in transportation mode)
from both taxis and public transit. Against this back-
drop, the objectives of this article are to (1) quantify
the spatiotemporal relationship between Uber and
public transit and (2) assess how Uber affects urban
transportation equity.
The rest of this article is organized as follows.
The next section reviews current research on ride-
sourcing and its impacts on urban mobility, followed
by a section that explains the data and methodology
used in this study. The empirical findings are pre-
sented in the fourth section. Finally, we highlight the
crucial findings of this article, contrast these results
with previous studies, and point out the limitations of
this study and directions for future research.
Ridesourcing and Urban Mobility:
Research Background
Along with the growing popularity of ridesourcing
services, there have been an increasing number of
studies and debates looking into the impacts of ride-
sourcing on urban efficiency, equity, and sustainabil-
ity (Cramer and Krueger 2016; Schor 2016;
Shaheen and Chan 2016; Frenken and Schor 2017;
Nie 2017). Among these studies and debates, two
issues concerning urban mobility stand out: urban
transportation efficiency and equity. The former
concerns how ridesourcing affects the urban trans-
portation network: Does it supplement the transpor-
tation network or worsen urban congestion? The
latter addresses the role played by ridesourcing in
urban transportation equity. Discussions on these
two issues are convoluted because ridesourcing not
only generates modal shift from taxis but also from
public transit (Rayle et al. 2016). The relationship
between ridesourcing and public transit, which is
the primary focus of this article, has not been rigor-
ously studied.
Limited literature that touches on the relation-
ship between ridesourcing and public transit seems
to suggest that ridesourcing both complements and
competes with public transit, although insufficient
quantitative evidence has been provided to substan-
tiate this observation. The arguments on comple-
mentarity generally come from two perspectives.
From the temporal perspective, Feigon and
Murphy’s (2016) surveys find that ridesourcing is
frequently used during the evening (8 p.m.–10 p.m.)
and late-night and early-morning hours (11 p.m.–4
a.m.) and is also more commonly used on weekends
than weekdays. Spatially, ridesourcing is claimed to
serve as a feeder of public transit to solve the first-
mile/last-mile problem. Evidence supporting this
claim is mainly provided by the TNCs instead of
independent research, though. For example, one
recent study conducted by Uber’s policy research
team finds that people use Uber to connect railway
stations to their final destinations, based on the sta-
tistics that Uber pickups near the new railway sta-
tions of the Expo Line extension in Los Angeles
surged one month after the line was put into service
(Williams 2017). We cannot tell from the data,
though, whether the increased Uber trips connect
people from the new railway stations or from the
subsequent commercial and housing developments
near the new stations. Indeed, to figure out whether
Uber serves as a feeder of public transit is an intract-
able task, which is discussed in detail in the method-
ology section of this article.
The arguments for competition, on the other
hand, are established based on surveys asking riders
questions like, “If ridesourcing is not available, what
other transportation modes would you use?” (Feigon
and Murphy 2016; Rayle et al. 2016; Henao 2017;
Gehrke, Felix, and Reardon 2018). The results
reveal that 14 to 42 percent of riders would have
chosen public transit if ridesourcing was not avail-
able. Also using rider surveys, Clewlow and Mishra
(2017) differentiate various types of public transit
and find that TNCs pull people away from the pub-
lic bus and light rail but enhance the ridership of
heavy rail.
In terms of the equity issue, limited studies have
been done to investigate how ridesourcing affects
urban transportation equity. There are two general
types of equity in the transportation equity and pol-
icy literature: horizontal and vertical equity.
Horizontal equity concerns whether the costs and
benefits of transportation are allocated equally
between individuals and groups that are comparable
in wealth and ability, whereas vertical equity centers
on the distribution of costs and benefits between
income and social class and between people with dif-
ferent mobility needs and abilities (Litman 2002;
Blumenberg 2017). Vertical equity focuses solely on
different groups’ levels of access to a city’s transpor-
tation system. Inaccessibility to transportation serv-
ices leads to social exclusion, because certain groups
of residents are disconnected from activities and
opportunities in their cities (Church, Frost, and
Sullivan 2000; Lucas 2012). Following this line of
 Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity
enquiry on transport and social exclusion, existing
studies of ridesourcing equity investigate access to
ridesourcing services among those of different
income and social classes. The first group of studies
compares ridesourcing with taxis and asserts that
Uber does a better job than taxis in terms of
improving the transportation accessibility of low-
income neighborhoods (Bialik et al. 2015; Smart
et al. 2015). Nevertheless, though ridesourcing
might serve low-income areas better than taxis, it
might still be insufficient to draw the conclusion
that ridesourcing can improve transportation equity,
especially when it starts to merge with public transit.
Many public transportation agencies in the United
States partner with TNCs, using subsidized or free
ridesourcing rides to supplement or even substitute
for public transit routes (Shaheen and Chan 2016).
People question whether such practices are fair to
all stakeholders (Brustein 2016), because public tran-
sit services are meant to be available to all commu-
nity members, whereas ridesourcing users are more
likely to be young, well-educated, and affluent indi-
viduals (McGrath 2015; Rayle et al. 2016; A. Smith
2016; Clewlow and Mishra 2017; Gehrke, Felix, and
Reardon 2018).
The second type of research on the equity of
ridesourcing focuses on ridesourcing itself.
Specifically, it examines the availability of ridesourc-
ing services to different income, race, gender, and
ethnic groups. Using trip data, Hughes and
MacKenzie (2016) find that the waiting time for
UberX in areas with lower average income is shorter
than that in areas with higher average income, and
the average association between the percentage of
minorities and the length of waiting time is close to
zero. By analyzing the accessibility measured by
waiting time, Wang and Mu (2018) conclude that
wealth and race do not have significant associations
with Uber accessibility, whereas higher road net-
work density, population density, and less commut-
ing time to work do correlate with greater Uber
accessibility. Examining the racial and gender dis-
crimination issue of Uber and Lyft, Ge et al.’s
(2016) rider experiment identifies discrimination
against African American riders and excessive fares
targeted at female riders.
Data and Methodology
Reflecting on the unsolved questions of existing lit-
erature, we adopt Uber pickup data in New York
City to analyze the spatiotemporal relationship
between Uber and public transit through buffer area
analysis and spatial cross-correlation analysis. Buffer
analysis identifies the relationship between the
coverage of public transit stops and the location of
Uber pickups, whereas spatial cross-correlation
measures the spatial relationship between the
3
number of Uber pickups and scheduled public tran-
sit pickups. To measure the degree of inequality in
transportation supply among populations, we adopt
the Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve. We also
calculate the Pearson correlation coefficient to
explore the relationship between the number of
Uber pickups with population, income, and the per-
centage of minorities.
Data
We collected five categories of data from various
sources, as explained in the following:
1. Uber pickups. Data on Uber pickups in
New York City were obtained by
FiveThirtyEight from the New York City
Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC)
through a Freedom of Information Law
request in 2015, which were then shared
on the GitHub.1 We extracted and ana-
lyzed the data for one weekday (17
September 2014) and one weekend day
(20 September 2014) based on the goals of
our research. The data contain informa-
tion on the time, longitude, latitude, and
base name of 35,531 Uber pickup records
on 17 September and 38,863 records on
20 September.
2. Public transit stops and service schedules. Data
on public transit stops and service sched-
ules were obtained from the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority (MTA) Data
Feeds.2 Using a Python script, we proc-
essed the data to extract information on
public transit stop locations and the
vehicle arrival time at each stop.
3. Taxi data. Taxi data were obtained from
the New York City TLC.3 The data
include yellow and green taxi trip records
that capture pickup and dropoff dates,
times, locations, and other information.
4. Geographic information system layers.
Geographic information systems (GIS)
layers used in this study include shapefiles
collected from the U.S. Census Bureau4
and bus, subway, and rail routes (as of
January 2017) obtained from the William
and Anita Newman Library of
Baruch College.5
5. Nonspatial data. We acquired New York
City’s socioeconomic data from the
2010–2014 American Community Survey
five-year estimates,6 including total popu-
lation, median household income, and
race at the census block group (CBG)
level. The data for the year 2014 were
used to be consistent with Uber
pickup data.
4 Volume 0, Number 0, Month 2019

Figure 1 Sample buffer areas. (Color figure available online.)

Table 1 The relationship between Uber and public transit

Uber pickup location
A. Within 100-m buffer area
B. 100- to 400-m or 800-m
buffer area
C. Outside buffer area
Scenario Trip origin
I Uber pickup location
is the origin
II Uber pickup location is the
transfer location
III Uber pickup location is
the transfer location
Relationship
between Uber and
Trip destination public transit
Competition
Final destination Competition
is inside buffer (Uber as a feeder and a
area (A and B) competitor)
Final destination is Complement
outside buffer area (C) (Uber solves the
last-mile problem)
Competition
Complement
(Uber improves
transportation accessibility)

Methods A distance of 400 m is commonly assumed to be a

Buffer Analysis. Transit coverage is a measure of
the spatial spread and accessibility of transit services,
and people are considered “covered” by public tran-
sit if they can access a transit stop within an accept-
able distance (Hawas, Hassan, and Abulibdeh 2016).
comfortable walking distance for most people under
normal conditions, so it is used as the threshold dis-
tance to evaluate public transit coverage in many
studies (Demetsky and Lin 1982; Murray et al.
1998; Wu and Murray 2005; Hawas, Hassan, and
 Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity
Abulibdeh 2016). Alternatively, P. N. Smith and
Taylor (1994) use 800 m as the threshold distance to
evaluate the coverage of suburban railway, which is
reasonable because people might be willing to walk
a longer distance to take the railway.
In this study, both 400 m (for subway and buses)
and 800 m (for railway) are used as the threshold
distances to measure the coverage of public transit.
Additionally, we introduce another threshold of
100 m to assist our analysis of the relationship
between Uber and public transit. We choose 100 m
to make our analysis comparable to Williams’s
(2017) study so that meaningful discussions can be
generated. As such, we define three areas (Figure 1):
(A) within the 100-m buffer area, (B) 100-m to
400-m or 800-m buffer area, and (C) outside buffer
area. The relationship between Uber and public
transit is determined by the location of Uber pick-
ups in reference to the three buffer areas (Table 1).
First, when Uber pickups are located in the
100-m to 400-m or 800-m buffer area (Area B), it is
less likely that riders use Uber to connect public
transit stations with their final destinations. Hence,
we estimate that Uber competes with public transit
under this condition. Second, when Uber pickups
take place outside the coverage of public transit buf-
fers (Area C), Uber is considered to complement
public transit and improve the transportation acces-
sibility of areas with relatively insufficient public
transit services. Third, when Uber pickups are
within the 100-m buffer area (Area A), we cannot
ascertain whether Uber complements or competes
with public transit without additional information
on riders’ origins and final destinations. There are
three possible scenarios in this case.
In Scenario I, the Uber pickup location is a
rider’s trip origin, meaning that the rider takes
Uber instead of public transit when a public tran-
sit station is available within 100 m. In this scen-
ario, Uber obviously competes with public transit.
This scenario is highly possible because many housing,
business, retail, and entertainment facilities are built
within close range of public transit stops.
In scenarios II and III, the pickup location is a
transfer location, where a rider uses Uber to travel
from the public transit station to his or her final des-
tination, making Uber a public transit feeder.
Table 2 Spatial cross-correlation index (SCI) interpretation
Sign of SCI Interpretation
Positive (+) Census block groups with
more public transit pickups are
surrounded by more Uber pickups and vice versa
Negative (−) Census block groups
with more public transit pickups
are surrounded by fewer Uber pickups and vice versa
Note: SCI ¼ spatial cross-correlation index.
5
Whether Uber, as a feeder, complements or com-
petes with public transit is further contingent,
though, on the rider’s final destination, which causes
the difference between Scenarios II and III.
In Scenario II, the rider’s final destination is cov-
ered by public transit buffers (Areas A and B) and is
thus accessible via public transit. Under this scen-
ario, Uber is both a feeder and a competitor of pub-
lic transit, because the rider chooses Uber to travel
to an area that can be reached by public transit to
avoid multiple transfers. In Scenario III, the rider’s
final destination is not well covered by the public
transit network (Area C), in which case Uber indeed
complements public transit and solves the last-
mile problem.
Spatial Cross-Correlation. As a supplement to buf-
fer analysis, which identifies the relationship
between public transit and Uber based on service
coverage, spatial cross-correlation measures the spa-
tial relationship based on service frequency. Instead
of simply using Pearson correlation coefficients to
characterize the relationship, which ignores the
effects of spatial distances, this article adopts spatial
cross-correlation to measure the spatial relationship
between the number of Uber pickups and scheduled
public transit pickups at the scale of CBG in view of
distance decay. The spatial cross-correlation index
(SCI) is defined by two size measurements (number
of Uber pickups and schedule public transit pickups)
and a distance weights matrix (Chen 2015). Detailed
formulas to calculate SCI are illustrated in Appendix
A. Scheduled public transit pickups are calculated by
the following formula:
X
n
Pi ¼ Dk ; (1)
k¼1
where Pi is the scheduled public transit pickups in
CBG i, Dk is the total number of public transit
vehicles that arrive at stop k during a certain time
period, and n is the number of stops in CBG i.
The SCI could be interpreted as the correlation
between the scheduled public transit pickups in each
CBG and the number of Uber pickups in the nearby
CBGs, or vice versa (Table 2). A positive SCI means
that a CBG with more public transit pickups tends to
Relationship
between Uber and
public transit
Competition
Complement
6 Volume 0, Number 0, Month 2019

Figure 2 Uber pickups and public transit scheduled trips per hour, 15–21 September 2014.

Table 3 Public transit coverage (as percentage of area) by time slot and borough in New York City
Time slots Bronx (%) Brooklyn (%) Manhattan (%) Queens (%) Staten Island (%) Whole city (%)
1. Weekday morning (7 a.m.–8 a.m.) 85.2 88.4 96.5 62.8 74.7 76.7
2. Weekend morning (7 a.m.–8 a.m.) 83.2 87.8 96.1 59.8 66.8 73.6
3. Weekday noon (11 a.m.–12 p.m.) 84.6 87.9 96.2 61.1 73.7 75.6
4. Weekend noon (11 a.m.–12 p.m.) 84.5 87.9 96.2 60.1 66.8 73.9
5. Weekday afternoon (6 p.m.–7 p.m.) 84.5 88.3 96.6 62.2 74.0 76.3
6. Weekend afternoon (6 p.m.–7 p.m.) 84.5 87.9 96.2 60.2 66.8 74.0
7. Weekday evening (9 p.m.–10 p.m.) 84.6 88.3 96.2 60.5 70.6 74.9
8. Weekend evening (9 p.m.–10 p.m.) 84.5 87.8 96.2 60.1 66.5 73.8
9. Weekday midnight (12 a.m.–1 a.m.) 57.5 52.6 78.0 33.8 46.9 47.3
10. Weekend midnight (12 a.m.–1 a.m.) 54.0 55.6 78.4 34.4 42.2 46.9

have more Uber pickups nearby, which implies a com- the population, the median household income, and
petitive relationship between Uber and public transit. the percentage of minorities at the CBG level.
A negative SCI indicates a complementary relation-
ship, because Uber pickups concentrate in places with
insufficient public transit pickups, whereas places with Results
ample public transit supplies have fewer Uber pickups.

Transportation Equity Assessment. The Gini
coefficient has traditionally been used to calculate
the distribution of income among populations. It is
used in this study to express the overall degree of
inequality of transportation provision by calculating
the distribution of transportation supply among
populations. Following Delbosc and Currie (2011)
and Kaplan et al. (2014), the Gini coefficient is
approximated as:
X
n
G¼1 ðXk Xk1 ÞðYk þ Yk1 Þ;
k
where k is the ranked order of each CBG’s transpor-
tation supply, and k ¼ 1, … , n; Xk is the cumulative
proportion of population, with X0 ¼ 0 and Xn ¼ 1;
Yk is the cumulative proportion of transportation
supply, with Yo ¼ 0 and Yn ¼ 1. The Gini coefficient
ranges from zero to one, with zero representing per-
fect equality and one representing perfect inequality.
The Lorenz curve is used to graphically represent
the distribution of transportation supply across the
population. In addition, the Pearson correlation coef-
ficient is calculated to investigate the relationship
between the supply of Uber and public transit serv-
ices and various socioeconomic indicators, including
Relationship between Uber and Public Transit
Buffer Analysis. First we look at the diurnal and
weekly variation in public transit and Uber services.
Figure 2 shows the hourly supply of public transit
(including bus, subway, and railway) and Uber serv-
ices during a week (15–21 September 2014) in New
York City. Several observations can be detected
from Figure 2 to assist buffer analysis. First, New
York City has an exceptionally large supply of public
transit services. Second, from Monday to Thursday,
both public transit trips and Uber pickups decline
(2)
steeply during late-night and early-morning hours
(around 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.). Third, although the
number of public transit trips declines significantly
during weekends, the number of Uber trips is rather
consistent throughout the week and notably high on
Friday and Saturday nights. These results imply that
Uber might complement public transit during late-
night and early-morning hours on Friday
and Saturday.
Regarding public transit coverage and Uber pick-
ups, in view of the fluctuating supply of public tran-
sit and Uber services over time, ten time slots are
extracted to conduct buffer analysis. As a first step,
we calculate the public transit coverage of New
York City boroughs during the ten time slots (Table
 Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity 7

Figure 3 Public transit coverage in New York City (time slots 1 and 10). (Color figure available online.)

Figure 4 Uber pickups in New York City (time slots 1 and 10). (Color figure available online.)

3). Public transit coverage refers to the percentage
of areas covered by public transit buffers. In general,
New York City has a very high level of public transit
coverage. Comparing across boroughs, Manhattan
has the highest level of coverage and Queens has the
lowest coverage. Comparing over time, time slots 1
through 8 demonstrate a higher level of public
transit coverage (around 74–77 percent for the
whole city), whereas time slots 9 and 10 present a
lower coverage level (about 47 percent). This result
indicates that public transit coverage declines
remarkably at midnight (12 a.m.–1 a.m.). The week-
day–weekend difference in public transit coverage is
not obvious, probably because buffer analysis only
8 Volume 0, Number 0, Month 2019

Table 4 Buffer analysis result by time slot in New York City

B. 100- to 400-m or C. Outside
A. Within 100-m buffer area 800-m buffer area buffer area

Time slots Uber pickups % Uber pickups % Uber pickups %

1. Weekday morning (7 a.m.–8 a.m.) 1,303 67.9 593 30.9 24 1.3
2. Weekend morning (7 a.m.–8 a.m.) 436 59.6 278 38.0 18 2.5
3. Weekday noon (11 a.m.–12 p.m.) 804 67.4 371 31.1 18 1.5
4. Weekend noon (11 a.m.–12 p.m.) 936 66.5 444 31.5 28 2.0
5. Weekday afternoon (6 p.m.–7 p.m.) 1,896 68.3 822 29.6 59 2.1
6. Weekend afternoon (6 p.m.–7 p.m.) 1,758 66.7 793 30.1 84 3.2
7. Weekday evening (9 p.m.–10 p.m.) 1,407 66.6 680 32.2 26 1.2
8. Weekend evening (9 p.m.–10 p.m.) 1,691 69.1 725 29.6 32 1.3
9. Weekday midnight (12 a.m.–1 a.m.) 104 29.3 207 58.3 44 12.4
10. Weekend midnight (12 a.m.–1 a.m.) 464 28.2 973 59.2 207 12.6
Relationship Competition or complement Competition Complement

Table 5 Buffer analysis result by borough, weekday morning (7 a.m.–8 a.m., 17 September)
Buffer area Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Whole city
A. Within 100-m buffer area Uber pickups 6 139 1,127 30 1 1,303
% 54.5 54.9 73.0 26.8 100 67.9
Uber pickups/km2 0.18 2.01 33.72 0.66 0.03 6.14
B. 100- to 400-m or 800-m buffer area Uber pickups 5 113 416 59 0 593
% 45.5 44.7 27.0 52.7 0 30.9
Uber pickups/km2 0.08 1.25 17.64 0.45 0 1.53
C. Outside buffer area Uber pickups 0 1 0 23 0 24
% 0 0.4 0 20.5 0 1.3
Uber pickups/km2 0 0.05 0 0.22 0 0.13

Table 6 Buffer analysis result by borough, weekend midnight (12 a.m.–1 a.m., 20 September)
Buffer area Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Whole city
A. Within 100-m buffer area Uber pickups 1 102 356 5 0 464
% 14.3 29.7 28.8 8.8 28.2
Uber pickups/km2 0.10 5.16 32.24 0.33 0 6.98
B. 100- to 400-m or 800-m buffer area Uber pickups 6 205 739 23 0 973
% 85.7 59.6 59.8 40.4 59.2
Uber pickups/km2 0.12 2.55 20.93 0.28 0 3.24
C. Outside buffer area Uber pickups 0 37 141 29 0 207
% 0 10.8 11.4 50.9 12.6
Uber pickups/km2 0 0.46 11.05 0.16 0 0.50

considers service availability, not frequency. This Table 7 Global spatial cross-correlation index
implies that the majority of public transit stations in
Borough Weekday Weekend
New York City are still operative during weekends
Bronx 0.0027 0.0026
but with lower service frequencies. Compared to Brooklyn 0.0010 0.0031
the extensive coverage of public transit stations Manhattan 0.0129 0.0097
(Figure 3), Uber services are more concentrated in Queens 0.0038 0.0083
Staten Island 0.0051 0.0012
Manhattan and the northern part of Brooklyn Whole city 0.0208 0.0186
(Figure 4). Staten Island, on the other hand, has so
few Uber pickups that few significant results can be Note: Uber data are for 17 September (weekday) and 20
September (weekend). Public transit includes bus, subway,
generated for it. and rail.
The total number of Uber pickups in each of the
three buffer areas during the ten time slots are improves the transportation accessibility of areas
counted and present in Table 4. Comparing across with poor public transportation coverage in New
time slots, the distribution patterns of Uber pickups York City. The competing effect is evident, on the
in time slots 1 through 8 are similar, even though other hand, because one third of Uber pickups take
the absolute number of pickups fluctuates. The place in Area B. For Uber pickups located in Area
small proportion of Uber pickups in Area C indi- A, as explained later, the relationship is uncertain
cates that, in time slots 1 through 8, Uber hardly because we have no idea whether the pickup location
 Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity
Figure 5 Hourly SCI of New York City boroughs on (A) weekdays and (B) weekends. SCI ¼ spatial cross-correl-
ation index.
is the rider’s origin or transfer location or where the
rider’s final destination is. That said, we can still
make some conjecture by looking into the borough
level, which is discussed later in this section.
The distribution patterns of Uber pickups in
time slots 9 and 10 are significantly different from
the other time slots, with a higher percentage of
pickups located in Areas B and C and a lower per-
centage in Area A. The absolute number of Uber
pickups in time slots 9 and 10 diverges, though their
patterns are similar. There are considerably more
Uber pickups on weekends than on weekdays.
Given that the distribution pattern of Uber pick-
ups at midnight diverges significantly from the other
time periods, we choose time slots 1 (as representa-
tive of time slots 1–8) and time slot 10 (representing
time slots 9 and 10) to conduct further analysis on
the borough level (Tables 5 and 6), which generates
two interesting observations.
First, Manhattan stands out from the five bor-
oughs, because Uber pickups are highly concen-
trated in Manhattan. More important, given that
Manhattan has extremely high public transit cover-
age (over 96 percent during the daytime and over 78
percent at midnight), we can speculate on the rela-
tionship between Uber and public transit when
Uber pickups are located in Area A. Recalling the
scenarios in Table 1, with such a high rate of public
transit coverage in Manhattan, Sscenario III is
9
unlikely to happen because if a rider uses Uber to
connect a public transit stop to his or her final des-
tination, the final destination is most likely to be
located inside buffer areas (Areas A and B).
Therefore, we argue that in Manhattan, Uber com-
petes with public transit most of the time, except for
midnight. At midnight, as public transit coverage
mildly declines, Uber slightly improves transporta-
tion accessibility in those poorly covered areas.
Second, in Queens, patterns of Uber pickups are
different from those of other boroughs. Most not-
able, the percentage of Uber pickups taking place in
Area C is much higher in Queens (20.5 percent on
weekday mornings and 50.9 percent on weekends at
midnight). This result implies that Uber has a much
higher complementary effect on the public transpor-
tation network in Queens, where public transit
coverage is relatively low.
Spatial Cross-Correlation. To supplement buffer
analysis, which only accounts for public transit
coverage, not service frequency, the SCI is calcu-
lated to analyze the relationship between the num-
ber of scheduled public transit pickups and Uber
pickups (Table 7). As explained later, a positive SCI
indicates a competitive relationship, whereas a nega-
tive SCI indicates a complementary relationship. In
Manhattan, where the public transit coverage is the
highest and Uber pickups are highly concentrated,
10 Volume 0, Number 0, Month 2019

Table 8 Gini coefficient of public transit, Uber, and taxi

Weekday Weekend

Borough Public transit Uber Taxi Public transit Uber Taxi

Bronx 0.5803 0.9014 0.7384 0.6079 0.8823 0.8359
Brooklyn 0.5738 0.8024 0.8662 0.5852 0.7971 0.8859
Manhattan 0.6324 0.7200 0.7187 0.6625 0.6499 0.6964
Queens 0.7425 0.9391 0.9518 0.7359 0.8642 0.9257
Staten Island 0.4336 0.9912 0.9761 0.4951 0.9728 0.9477
Whole city 0.6653 0.9028 0.9223 0.6429 0.8634 0.9045

Figure 6 Lorenz curves of Uber and public transit.

there is a competitive relationship between the two
transportation modes. In the Bronx and Staten
Island, Uber also competes with public transit, but
the competitive relationship is not as significant as
in Manhattan, represented by smaller SCIs. In
Queens, on the other hand, the negative SCI indi-
cates that Uber complements public transit.
To explore the diurnal variations in the relation-
ship, hourly SCIs are calculated (Figure 5). In
Manhattan, the SCI is positive most of the time
except between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. to 7
a.m. on weekdays and 12 a.m. to 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.
to 7 a.m. on the weekends. In contrast, the SCI of
Queens is negative throughout both the weekdays
and weekends, indicating a constant complementary
relationship.
Transportation Equity
Gini Coefficients and Lorenz Curves. The second
objective of this article is to understand the role that
Uber plays in urban transportation equity. The first
step is to calculate the Gini coefficient of three
transportation modes: public transit, Uber, and taxis
(Table 8). Results show that the Gini coefficient of
public transit is significantly lower than that of the
other two. This indicates that public transit services
are more equally distributed among residents in
 Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity 11
Table 9 Gini coefficient without and with Uber
Weekday Weekend

Borough Public transit Public transit þ Uber Public transit Public transit þ Uber
Bronx 0.5803 0.5802 0.6079 0.6073
Brooklyn 0.5738 0.5725 0.5852 0.5783
Manhattan 0.6324 0.6276 0.6625 0.6352
Queens 0.7425 0.7424 0.7359 0.7332
Staten Island 0.4336 0.4335 0.4951 0.4949
Whole city 0.6653 0.6321 0.6429 0.6349

Note: Uber data are for 17 September (weekday) and 20 September (weekend). Public transit includes
bus, subway, and rail.

Table 10 Pearson correlation coefficients

Weekday Weekend

Correlation Public transit Uber Public transit Uber

Transportation and population 0.0851 0.0406 0.0738 0.0958
Transportation and income 0.0614 0.3136 0.0502 0.3734
Transportation and minority 0.0090 0.1771 0.0139 0.2250

Note: Uber data are for 17 September (weekday) and 20 September (weekend). Public transit
includes bus, subway, and rail.
Statistically significant at the 0.001 level.

New York City, whereas the distribution of Uber
and taxi services is highly unequal. The distribution
of Uber is only slightly more equitable than that of
taxis. Comparing across boroughs, several interest-
ing findings could be identified. First, public transit
services are less equally distributed in Queens than
in other boroughs. This could be explained by the
relatively insufficient public transit supply in
Queens. Second, the distribution of Uber and taxi
services is more equitable in Manhattan, where there
are more Uber and taxi pickups. Third, the supply
of Uber and taxi services is highly unequal in Staten
Island, probably because there is an extremely small
number of pickups.
The Lorenz curves visualize the distribution of
Uber and public transit services among the residen-
tial population (Figure 6). The black dashed line
represents perfectly equitable distribution. The fur-
ther a curve is away from the perfect equity line, the
more inequality it represents. Our results show that
the Lorenz curve of Uber is further away from the
perfect equity line, indicating that the distribution
of Uber is less equitable than that of public transit.
For Uber, 20 percent of residents enjoy 95 percent
of Uber services, whereas the remaining 80 percent
of the population in New York City share only
about 5 percent of Uber services. In comparison, 80
percent of New York City’s population share around
34 percent of public transit.
As a second step, we assess whether Uber
improves the overall transportation equity in New
York City through comparing the Gini coefficients of
the transportation system that contains only public
transit with the system that contains both public
transit and Uber (Table 9). The results show that
when Uber is added to the transportation system, the
Gini coefficient is only slightly smaller. Therefore,
Uber’s role in improving transport equity is
insignificant.
Correlation. Pearson correlation coefficients are
calculated to investigate the relationship between
the supply of transportation services and some
socioeconomic indicators at the CBG level,
including population, income, and ethnicity
(Table 10).
The coefficients between transportation supplies
and population are extremely small, indicating no
significant correlation between the two. This can be
attributed to the composition of population in New
York City. As a popular tourist city, New York City
attracted 56.5 million tourists in 2014,7 and its total
residential population was only 8.35 million in the
same year.8 Tourists constitute a large proportion of
transportation users, but they are not counted
toward the “total population” of the CBGs.
Commuters who work in New York City but live in
surrounding counties are another group of passen-
gers not recorded by the population statistics.
Therefore, it is reasonable that the population cen-
sus data, which only reflect where people live, do
not have a significant correlation with transporta-
tion supplies.
The correlation coefficients between scheduled
public transit pickups and median household income
are 0.06 on the weekday and 0.05 on the weekend.
Such small numbers indicate that the supply of pub-
lic transit services in New York City is irrelevant to
12 Volume 0, Number 0, Month 2019
neighborhood income level. In contrast, the correl-
ation coefficients between Uber pickups and income
are 0.31 on weekdays and 0.37 on the weekend.
These numbers demonstrate a weak positive rela-
tionship between the supply of Uber services and
the income level of CBGs, indicating that more
Uber pickups tend to locate in areas with
higher income.
Regarding the relationship between transporta-
tion supplies and the percentage of minorities,
results are quite divergent for the two transporta-
tion modes. The coefficients between scheduled
public transit pickups and percentage of minor-
ities are very small (0.009 on weekdays and 0.014
on weekends), indicating that the supply of public
transit services is irrelevant to the distribution of
minority groups in the city. In contrast, there is a
weak negative correlation (0.18 on weekdays and
0.23 on weekends) between Uber pickups and
minorities, indicating that fewer Uber pickups are
located in the CBGs with a higher minor-
ity population.
Considering the potential impacts of spatial auto-
correlation on the correlation analysis results, the
Moran’s I is calculated for the number of public
transit pickups, the number of Uber pickups, popu-
lation, income, and percentage of minorities, which
shows weak spatial autocorrelation (Appendix B),
not strong enough to impede our main conclusions.
By calculating the SCI and partial correlation coeffi-
cient Rp, we identify both a significant total correl-
ation and a strong cross-correlation free of spatial
decay effects (Appendix C).
Summary and Conclusion
The first objective of this article is to examine the
spatiotemporal relationship between Uber and pub-
lic transit. In general, our analysis confirms previous
arguments that Uber both complements and com-
petes with public transit, beyond which we identify
how the relationship varies over time and space.
Uber competes with public transit during most
hours of the day and in areas with good public tran-
sit coverage, whereas it complements public transit
at midnight and in places where public transit serv-
ices are inadequate. Temporally, the relationship
between Uber and public transit exhibits diurnal and
weekly rhythms. Whereas the relationship is more
competitive during most hours of the day, it tilts
toward complementary at midnight, with evidence
of more Uber pickups located in areas not covered
by public transit buffers and negative SCIs in most
boroughs. Spatially, the relationship varies across
boroughs in New York City. In Manhattan, where
public transit coverage is extremely high, Uber
mostly competes with public transit (except for mid-
night). Even when Uber does serve as a feeder for
public transit, the relationship is still competitive.
On the contrary, in Queens, where public transit
coverage is lower, Uber has a much higher comple-
mentary effect on public transit. Our results are con-
sistent with Feigon and Murphy’s (2016)
observations that ridesourcing is frequently used
when public transit is sporadic. We do not sup-
port Feigon and Murphy’s (2016) general conclu-
sion that ridesourcing complements public transit,
however, because our findings show that Uber
also competes with public transit in other time
periods of the day. In light of the limitation of
Williams’s (2017) attempt to validate Uber as a
feeder of public transit, this research investigates
the situation in which Uber pickups take place at
a close distance to public transit stations and
argues that there are three different scenarios
depending on the riders’ origins and destinations.
Even when Uber does serves as a public transit
feeder, it does not necessarily complement pub-
lic transit.
The second objective of this article is to explore
how Uber affects urban transportation equity.
Results of Gini coefficients and Lorenz curves dem-
onstrate that the distribution of Uber services is
highly unequal and a very small proportion of the
population in New York City enjoys most of the
Uber services. Also, Uber’s role in improving trans-
port equity is insignificant. The supply of Uber and
public transit services has no significant correlation
with the number of people living in the CBGs. The
supply of public transit services is irrelevant to the
median household income of the CBGs. In contrast,
we observe a weak positive relationship between the
number of Uber pickups and the income level. This
result enriches our understanding of how Uber
serves low-income neighborhoods. The rider experi-
ment by Smart et al. (2015) shows that UberX offers
cheaper and faster services than taxis in low-income
neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The study by
Hughes and MacKenzie (2016) concludes that wait-
ing time for UberX is shorter in low-income areas.
Yet our study finds that there tend to be fewer Uber
pickups in areas with lower income. With regard to
ethnicity, a weak negative correlation is identified
between the number of Uber pickups and the per-
centage of minorities in CBGs. This result resonates
with Ge et al.’s (2016) rider experiment that
observes discrimination of Uber and Lyft against
minority riders.
This article is among the few efforts to provide
empirical evidence on the impact of the sharing
economy on transportation systems and urban
equity using big data analytics. Our results have
interesting implications for policymaking. Because
the assumption that TNCs only serve as feeders of
public transit and thus merely complement public
transit has been proved erroneous by our study,
public agencies should take precautions prior to
 Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity 13
partnering with TNCs. On the other hand, the transportation infrastructures and different urban
contrasting results between Manhattan and forms. 䊏
Queens imply that how ridesourcing works with
public transit is determined by the public trans-
portation infrastructure. Ridesourcing might Acknowledgments
have a stronger complementary effect in cities
and areas with a relatively poor public transit The first two authors contributed equally to this
network. The challenging question for policy- article. They are joint first authors. Should you
makers is, then, should we rely on TNCs to have any question, please address to the
improve urban mobility or should we continue to corresponding author Hui Kong via
invest in and improve public transit networks? kong.hui@smart.mit.edu.
How should public agencies effectively partner
with TNCs to improve urban mobility while tak-
ing account of the equity issue? One possible
Notes
1
solution would be to limit ridesourcing on major GitHub is a software development platform. The data
urban corridors with adequate public transit we used are available at https://github.com/
coverage and encourage it in areas with insuffi- fivethirtyeight/uber-tlc-foil-response.
2
cient public transportation infrastructure. MTA Data Feeds: http://web.mta.info/developers/
Despite the significance of our results, this study developer-data-terms.html#data. The data we used were
updated on 23 August 2017.
has two limitations that necessitate further research. 3
NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC): https://
The first limitation is data restriction. Because the
docs.google.com/document/d/1iomkE6nF9kwsJSv3BQ0
data are from September 2014, they are a bit out- p65SNe1TDpR0k8mOTVV7FAvY/edit#
dated, considering the accelerated pace of mobility 4
U.S. Census Bureau, TIGER/Line Shapefiles: https://
service growth during the past four years. The data www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-line.html.
used in this study do not capture the effect of 5
Baruch College, The William and Anita Newman
UberPOOL (a ridesplitting service that allows pas- Library: www.baruch.cuny.edu/confluence/display/
sengers with similar routes to share a ride and split geopotal/NYWþMassþTransitþSpatialþLayers.
6
the fare), because UberPOOL was launched in New U.S. Census Bureau: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/
York City in December 2014. Furthermore, dropoff nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml.
7
records are not available in our data set. Without NYC & Company: http://www.nycandcompany.org/
dropoff information, we cannot figure out the exact research/nyc-statistics-page.
8
U.S. Census Bureau: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/
relationship between Uber and public transit when
nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml.
Uber pickups are located in the 100-m buffer area.
Either a comprehensive data set with both pickup
and dropoff records or rider surveys is necessary to
ORCID
further advance our understanding of ridesourcing’s
impact on urban mobility. More crucially, given the Scarlett T. Jin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-
increasing importance of ridesourcing in the urban 2714-6873
transportation system, city governments should Hui Kong http://orcid.org/0000-0001-
require TNCs to provide detailed origin–destination 6048-9440
data for the government and researchers to accur-
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 Uber, Public Transit, and Urban Transportation Equity 15
SCARLETT T. JIN is a PhD Candidate in the where wij could be defined as
Department of Geography at The Ohio State
dij1
University, Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail: wij ¼ Pn Pn ; (A.4)
1
jin.760@osu.edu. Her research interests include j¼1 i¼1 dij
urban development in China, shrinking cities, the
where dij is the Euclidean distance between block i
sharing economy, and shared mobility.
and j, and we define dij ¼ 0 when i ¼ j.
HUI KONG is a Postdoctoral Associate at JTL
Urban Mobility Lab of Singapore–MIT Alliance for SCI denotes the global spatial cross-correlation
Research and Technology (SMART), Singapore index. The SCI is the correlation coefficient
138602. E-mail: kong.hui@smart.mit.edu. She between x and y through the spatial distances and
obtained her PhD from the Department of geographical elements. It represents a correlation
Geography at the Ohio State University. Her with distance effect. It falls between 1 and 1. By
research interests include shared mobility, smart analogy with the improved formula of Moran’s I for
transportation, GIScience, and urban design. spatial autocorrelation (Chen 2013), the measure-
ment of SCI is
DANIEL Z. SUI is an Arts & Sciences
SCI ¼ xT Wy ¼ yT Wx: (A.5)
Distinguished Professor in the Department of
Geography at The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail: sui.10@osu.edu. His
research interests include GIScience, location-based
social media, convergence research, and the emerg-
ing platform economy. Appendix B: Spatial Autocorrelation
Index
Appendix A: Spatial Cross-
Correlation Index Moran’s I is calculated to measure the spatial auto-
correlation. The formula is as follows (Chen 2013):

The spatial cross-correlation index (SCI) is calcu- I ¼ xT Wx (B.1)

lated through the following steps. First, the standar-
dized values of the two measurements are obtained. The Moran’s I of all of the indicators used earlier is
Suppose there are n elements (e.g., CBG) in the
calculated (Table B.1). The threshold value of
study area (New York City) and there are two
Moran’s I has been regarded as either zero (Chen
measurements whose correlation we need to quan-
2013) or 1/(n  1) (Odland 1988). Therefore, all
tify: the number of Uber pickups and scheduled
of the indicators have weak spatial autocorrelations.
public transit pickups. A pair of vectors of the two
measurements can be defined as
Because Uber pickups, income, and minority
X ¼ ½x1 ; x2 ; . . . xn T ; Y ¼ ½y1 ; y2 ; . . . yn T ; (A.1) have relatively stronger autocorrelations (but are
still too weak to influence our conclusions), we cal-
where xi and yi are the measurements of the ith
element (i ¼ 1, 2, … , n), and T denotes the trans- culate two additional indexes to distinguish the spa-
pose. The pair of standardized scores of X and Y is tial and nonspatial effects in the correlations.

Xlx Y ly
x¼ ;y ¼ ; (A.2)
rx ry
Table B.1 Spatial autocorrelation index
where lx and ly represent the means of X and Y,
Weekday Weekend
and rx and ry denote the population standard devia-
Public transit 0.0212 0.014
tions of X and Y. Uber 0.0767 0.1261
Population 0.0134 0.0134
Income 0.1311 0.1311
The indexes of spatial cross-correlation also Minority 0.1613 0.1613
depend on a distance matrix based on the spatial
distance between each pair of elements. The n-by-n Note: Uber and taxi data are for 17 September (weekday) and
20 September (weekend). Public transit includes bus, subway,
spatial weights matrix could be defined as and rail.
W ¼ ½wij nn ; (A.3)
16 Volume 0, Number 0, Month 2019

Table C.1 The direct and indirect correlations

Weekday Weekend

Correlation Direct correlation Indirect correlation Direct correlation Indirect correlation

Uber and income 0.2435 0.0701 0.2841 0.0893
Uber and minority 0.1173 0.0598 0.1457 0.0793

Note: Uber data are for 17 September (weekday) and 20 September (weekend).
Statistically significant at the 0.001 level.

Appendix C: Distinguishing Direct and geographical elements. It is the direct correlation

Indirect Correlation in Pearson’s
Correlation Index
The Pearson correlation coefficient (R0 ) includes
two parts: a correlation based on the distance decay
effect and a correlation without distance effects.
The global spatial cross-correlation index, SCI,
denotes the correlation between two variables
through the spatial distances and geographical ele-
ments. It represents an indirect correlation with dis-
tance effects. The partial correlation coefficient Rp
represents the correlation between the two varia-
bles, which is free of the spatial distance and other
without distance effects. Rp can simply be calculated
using R0 and SCI:
Rp ¼ R0  SCI (C.1)
Due to the weak spatial autocorrelation in the num-
ber of Uber pickups, income, and the percentage of
minority populataion, we calculate the SCI and Rp
between Uber and income and Uber and minority to
distinguish the direct (without spatial decay) and
indirect (with spatial decay) correlation between them
(Table C.1). Results indicate a weak spatial cross-cor-
relation between either Uber and income or Uber
and minority, whereas the direct correlations with
spatial effects are relatively strong and significant.