The effects of e-ridehailing on motorcycle ownership in an emerging-country megacity

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The effects of e-ridehailing on motorcycle ownership in an emerging-country megacity

Wadud, Zia

Highlights • Motorcycle-based ride-hailing apps are becoming increasingly popular in developing and emerging countries. • The impacts of motorcycle ride-hailing services on ownership of motorcycle is investigated. • Study area is Dhaka, Bangladesh – a megacity in an emerging country. • Segmented regression method is applied on timeseries data of motorcycle ownership. • Motorcycle ownership has grown by 7.45% due to the introduction of the motorcycle hailing apps.

Abstract The impact of app-based e-hailing or ridesourcing services on various transport metrics is an area of active research, and research so far have focused on the car-based (or four-wheeled vehicle based) services only. In many cities in the developing and emerging countries, motorcycle-based passenger e-hailing services have become very popular in the last few years, but the implications of these have not been studied before. This study investigates the effects of motorcycle-hailing apps in Dhaka – a megacity in Bangladesh – on the size of its motorcycle fleet. We employ segmented multiple regression on timeseries data to show that there was a statistically significant increase in motorcycle ownership in Dhaka as a result of the motorcycle-hailing services. The findings were also supported by a visual intervention analysis. By the end of 2018, there were 7.45% more motorcycles in Dhaka than there would have been if these app-based e-hailing services were not available. We conclude with potential implications of these increases in motorcycle numbers and future research directions.