DOES E-HAILING CONTRIBUTE TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE URBAN MOBILITY? EVIDENCE FOR LISBON

With the normalisation of e-hailing in transportation systems, it becomes important to understand whether these recent services are contributing to making urban mobility more sustainable by reducing the levels of car use and car ownership. While the idea of transitioning from private car ownership to shared car usage is central to the concept of shared mobility, a current concern in many cities is the potential for e-hailing services to increase, rather than decrease, the number of cars and car-based trips. This work analyses the impacts of the e-hailing sector on the transport system using individual level data from a survey carried out in Lisbon, particularly it investigates the extent to which e-hailing is substituting or complementing other travel modes (i.e. taxi, public transport, private car or active travel). The work also gives a more aggregate overview of the evolution of the e-hailing sector in comparison to the evolution of the taxi sector and public transport. The findings suggest that there is strong a substitution effect between e-hailing and both taxi services and public transport. Considering the trips made by frequent users of e-hailing, these would have otherwise been done by taxi (39%), public transport (35%), private car (13%) or active travel (9%). The main conclusion is that there is a strong scope for substituting taxi services and public transport, and a much smaller scope for substituting private car trips and active travel. Furthermore, only 2% of the trips would not have been done at all, that is, the scope for induced travel appears to be minimal. By providing policymakers with valuable insights on the effect of e-hailing on the use of other travel modes in Lisbon, this work contributes to addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and 13 (Climate Action) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.