Objective: To understand the short- and potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the use of ride-hailing services in the Greater Toronto Area
Project period: 2020-2021

I was responsible for the development of a two-ave survey, the design of stated preference experiments, the analysis of survey responses, and the development of technical reports, presentations, and journal articles.

The goals of the project were to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the use of ride-hailing services, explore how ride-hailing use could evolve during the pandemic recovery period, and investigate the potential long-term impacts of the pandemic on ride-hailing use.

Interestingly, although a large percentage of respondents indicated that they used ride-hailing services less often during the pandemic than they did before the pandemic, a small percentage of respondents indicated that they were using these services more often. This subset of respondents identified a reluctance to use public transit as one of the driving factors behind their decision to use ride-hailing more often. Additionally, there was a subset of respondents who indicated that they would never use ride-hailing services again - even after COVID-19 was no longer a public health threat. Furthermore, a subset of respondents indicated that they did not anticipate using shared ride-hailing services during the post-pandemic period, which could have implications for efforts to address the environmental impacts of ride-hailing services.

The results of this project provide insights into the potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on ride-hailing use, which has important implications for transportation planning in the post-pandemic era.