Influence of Application-assisted Taxi Service on Passenger’s Mode Choice Behavior: The Case of Addis Ababa City
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Date
2021-08
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Introduction of Application-assisted taxi service on urban transport in recent years is making a fundamental change on the service level of the transport system and is impacting its sustainability in different aspect. The purpose of this paper is to investigate modal shift impact of application-assisted taxi service on the different alternative transport modes by examining the factors which are accountable to this shift along with characterizing its users.
Revealed preference questionnaire developed for this purpose is disseminated to passengers selected from different locations in Addis Ababa and 384 valid questionnaires have been used for the analysis. Different factors that could explain the choice to shift from the different modes to application-assisted taxi have been selected based on a state of art literature review in addition to a preliminary interview to passengers of this service and were included in the questionnaire. Multinomial logit model have been used to quantify the effects of these different factors using Pyton Biogeme software package.
It is found that minibus taxi users account for the highest proportion to the modal shift followed by Traditional (lada) taxies, Private Vehicle, Large Bus and higer bus each with percentage value of 53.65, 23.7, 12.24, 5.99 & 4.43 respectively.
Further analysis intended to indicate the factors affecting the shift revealed that Socio-Economic factors (Income and Education level), factors related to adoption reasons (Lack of public transport, Travel time Saving, Seeking Comfort, Presence of Covid, Traffic congestion & difficulty to find Parking space) and Travel purpose reasons (trips to Work, Home, School & Recreational trip) do significantly explain the shift from the different modes to application-assisted taxies.
It is concluded that Utilization of application assisted taxies in the transport system has an effect on the passenger’s mode choice behavior and different factors do account for the modal shift from the different modes of transport having different significance levels. Hence it is a requirement to improve the service levels of more sustainable public transport modes in terms of their quantity and quality in order to curb the potential substitutive effects that application-assisted taxies pose on them which could result in several negative externalities to the transport system. In addition to this: strict regulations to increase the vehicle occupancy rates of application-assisted taxi service on peak traffic hour should be devised and put in place.
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Keywords
Mode shift, Multinomial logit, Application-assisted taxi, Revealed preference