Who rides Uber anyway? A census-tract level analysis and clustering of
ride-shares for the city of Chicago during the era of the pandemic
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented change in
transportation, including shared mobility services. This study attempted
to identify the user group of ride-share services by leveraging daily
ride-sharing trip data for the year of 2020 associated with other
socio-demographic and built-environment attributes of Chicago, Illinois.
The study employed K-means clustering for user group segmentation.
Results show: i) the cluster with the largest share of census tracts
generate lowest average trips which is clearly an impact of the
pandemic; ii) The high-income cluster generates short trip and coupled
with high population, land-use, and employment density; iii) The
low-income cluster generates longer trips coupled with diversity of
land-use mx, employment and population density. Results of this study
provide insights for policymakers and ride- sharing operators to ensure
access to the services among the population irrespective of spatial
diversity.