How does the ride-hailing systems demand affect individual transport regulation?

Abstract

This paper analyses, on the light of the Brazilian legislation, the individual transport legal issues derived by the entrance of the ride-hailing companies into the market. The legal problem of ridesourcing services revolves around determining its nature as public or private. Regarding this, changes in the current legislation have being proposed to characterize the service as illegal or legal and to force the delimitations of its operation before the transport network of each municipality. In addition, this paper analyses socio demographic and travel characteristics of the Brazilian ridesourcing demand. Based on this demand point of view, a logistic regression model was generated to predict the probability of riderspliting system use. The results show that the majority of ridesourcing trips is replacing taxi and public transport trips. According to the logistic regression model, safety is the main reason that influences the decision of sharing trips via ridespliting. The other relevant factors are directly or indirectly related to service cost. The use of larger vehicles for sharing trips can become a competitive mode for public transport and generate a greater clash between public transport and ridesourcing companies than the one between the taxi industry and technology companies.