COVID-19 Impact on Ride-hailing: The Chicago Case Study

Abstract

A dramatic traffic volume reduction has been observed worldwide and across the United States since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. This event provides us with a unique opportunity to investigate the changes in ride-hailing travel prior and during the pandemic and the resulting significant drop in economic activities associated with the pandemic. In this paper, we collected and analyzed trip-bytrip ride-hailing data from the City of Chicago over 6 months (January to June) in 2019 and 2020. The results from Chicago show a significantly greater decrease in the number of ride-hailing trips compared to those using personal vehicles during the pandemic. In most cases, the average travel distances lengthened while the average travel times shortened. Pooled trips decreased significantly (71%) in early March and disappeared completely on March 17 when Uber and Lyft suspended trip pooling. Short trips that used to occur within the same census tracts decreased remarkably. To our knowledge this is the first effort to analyze ride-hailing data as related to COVID-19. We hope that this effort serves as a first step towards conducting other studies in other cities.