Spatial regulation of taxicab services: Measuring empty travel in New York City
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.2018.1063Keywords:
taxicabs, regulation, deadhead trips, excess travelAbstract
Taxicabs are ubiquitous in cities throughout the world, and the industry is going through regulatory change with the growth of app-based services. In the United States, where taxicabs are typically regulated locally, licenses determine where taxis can pick up passengers. This means that for trips that end outside of licensed boundaries taxicabs are prohibited from picking up passengers and are forced to make “deadhead” return trips. This research estimates empty taxi travel associated with spatial restrictions on passenger trip origins in New York City. In 2012, New York introduced a special taxi category intended to improve taxi access in areas of the city considered underserved by taxicabs. The new green taxicabs, as they are called, can drop off passengers anywhere in the city but are restricted from picking up passengers in the central business districts and at any of the region’s airports. Using detailed trip data for each taxi ride, we estimate that up to 500,000 kilometers per week of deadhead travel are associated with restrictions on pick up locations, and more than 20 percent of all green taxicab trips end in an area where the driver is prohibited from picking up a new passenger.References
Abrams, R., Harris, S., Marton, D., Mauldin, C., Millard-Ball, A., Rothman, E., ... & Weinberger, R. (2007). Taxi 07: Roads forward. Design Trust for Public Space and the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC). New York City, NY: Design Trust for Public Space, 98-161.
Ambinder, L. P. (1995). Dispelling the myth of rationality: Racial discrimination in taxicab service and the efficacy of litigation under 42 USC 1981. George Washington Law Review, 64, 342.
Cooper, J., Mundy, R., & Nelson, J. (2010). Taxi! Urban economies and the social and transport impacts of the taxicab. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Cramer, J., & Krueger, A. B. (2016). Disruptive change in the taxi business: The case of Uber. The American Economic Review, 106(5), 177–182.
Dempsey, P. S. (1996). Taxi industry regulation, deregulation, and reregulation: The paradox of market failure. Transportation Law Journal, 24, 73–120.
Feiock, R. C. (2009). Metropolitan governance and institutional collective action. Urban Affairs Review, 44(3), 356–377.
Flores-Guri, D. (2005). Local exclusive cruising regulation and efficiency in taxicab markets. Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 39(2), 155–166.
Ge, Y., Knittel, C. R., MacKenzie, D., & Zoepf, S. (2016). Racial and gender discrimination in transportation network companies (No. w22776). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Google. (2017). Google Maps APIs developer’s guide. Accessed from https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/directions/intro
King, D. A., Peters, J. R., & Daus, M. W. (2012). Taxicabs for improved urban mobility: Are we missing an opportunity? In Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting (No. 12-2097). Accessed from https://trid.trb.org/view/1129618
King, D. A., & Saldarriaga, J. F. (2017). Access to taxicabs for unbanked households: An exploratory analysis in New York City. Journal of Public Transportation, 20(1), 1.
Komanoff, C. (2017). Balanced transportation analyzer. New York: The Nurture New York Foundation.
Li, B., Zhang, D., Sun, L., Chen, C., Li, S., Qi, G., & Yang, Q. (2011, March). Hunting or waiting? Discovering passenger-finding strategies from a large-scale real-world taxi dataset. In Pervasive computing and communications workshops (PERCOM workshops), 2011 IEEE International Conference (pp. 63–68). doi: 10.1109/PERCOMW.2011.5766967
Loury, G. C. (1998). Discrimination in the post-civil rights era: Beyond market interactions. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(2), 117–126.
Mapzen. (2017). Mapzen turn-by-turn routing service API reference. Accessed from https://mapzen.com/documentation/mobility/turn-by-turn/api-reference/
Moore, A. T., & Balaker, T. (2006). Do economists reach a conclusion? Econ Journal Watch, 3(1), 109–132.
New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. (2017). Trip record data. Accessed from http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/about/trip_record_data.shtml
New York City Department of City Planning. (2017). Open data portal. Accessed from http://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-maps/open-data/dwn-lion.page
Qing, C., Parfenov, S., & Kim, L. J. (2015). Identifying travel patterns during extreme weather using taxi GPS data. In Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting (No. 15-5556). Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board.
Rajgopal, S., & White, R. (2015). Cheating when in the hole: The case of New York City taxis. Working Paper.
Rayle, L., Dai, D., Chan, N., Cervero, R., & Shaheen, S. (2016). Just a better taxi? A survey-based comparison of taxis, transit, and ride sourcing services in San Francisco. Transport Policy, 45, 168–178.
Roper, E. (2012). A bumper-to-bumper crop of cabs. Minneapolis StarTribune. Accessed from http://www.startribune.com/a-bumper-to-bumper-crop-of-cabs/150704145/
Schaller, B., Considine, W., New York City Council, & New York Taxi and Limousine Commission. (1989). Improving taxi and car services outside the central business district of Manhattan: A report to the City Council, June 1989. New York: Taxi and Limousine Commission.
Siegelman, P. (1998). Racial discrimination in “everyday” commercial transactions: What do we know, what do we need to know, and how can we find out. A national report card on discrimination in America: The role of testing. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/66646/308024-National-Report-Card-on-Discrimination-in-America.PDF, pp. 69-98
Strong, K. C. (2015). When apps pollute: Regulating transportation network companies to maximize environmental benefits. University of Colorado Law Review, 86, 1049.
Wohl, M. (1975). The taxi’s role in urban America: Today and tomorrow. Transportation, 4(2), 143–158.
Yue, Y., Wang, H. D., Hu, B., Li, Q. Q., Li, Y. G., & Yeh, A. G. (2012). Exploratory calibration of a spatial interaction model using taxi GPS trajectories. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 36(2), 140
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with JTLU agree to the following terms: 1) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License 4.0 that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. 2) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. 3) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.