The complementary effect of ride-sharing on public transit: evidence from a natural experiment.

Purpose: Identifying the complementary effects of ride-sharing on public transit is critical to understanding the potential value of growing partnerships between public transit agencies and ride-sharing platforms. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and how ride-sharing services complement public transit. Design/methodology/approach: Taking advantage of a natural experiment whereby subway Line 2 opened after the entry of ride-sharing services in Xiamen, this study uses a difference-in-differences approach to identify the complementary effects of ride-sharing on public transit based on a proprietary fine-grained trip-level data set from a large ride-sharing platform. Findings: This study obtained the encouraging finding that ride-sharing has a significant complementary effect on the subway, as the number of ride-sharing pickups and drop-offs at subway stations increased by 130% and 117.9%, respectively, after the subway opening. Moreover, mechanism analysis shows that the complementary effect of ride-sharing services is stronger when connection distance is short (i.e. under 6 km) and when the transportation availability is limited (i.e. at night or in the areas with low transit supply and low population density). Practical implications: The findings provide guidelines for promoting cooperation between public transit agencies and ride-sharing platforms to build an efficient and sustainable urban transport system. Originality/value: This study is the first to examine the complementary effect of ride-sharing services on public transit via unique fine-grained ride-sharing trips data, and further reveal the underlying mechanism behind this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]