Posted in January 2022

On-demand mobility services are promising to revolutionise urban travel, but preliminary studies are showing that they may actually increase the total vehicle miles travelled, thereby worsening road congestion in cities. In this study, we assess the demand for on-demand mobility services in urban areas,using a stated preference survey, to understand the potential impact of introducing on-demand services on the current modal split. The survey was carried out in the Netherlands and offered respondents a choice between bike, car, public transport and on-demand services. 1,063 valid responses are analysed with a multinomial logit and a latent class choice model. By means of the latter, we uncover four distinctive groups of travellers based on the observed choice behaviour. The majority of the sample (55%) are avid cyclists and do not see on-demand mobility as an alternative for making urban trips. Two classes (27% and 9% of the sample) would potentially use on-demand services: the former is fairly timesensitive and would thus use on-demand service if they were sufficiently fast. The latter class however is highly cost-sensitive, and would therefore use on-demand mobility primarily if it is cheap. The fourth class (9%) shows very limited potential for using on-demand services.

Read the paper by Nejc Geržinič HERE