As Greece recovers from a long economic crisis and COVID-19 pandemic impacts, Athens is experiencing a surge in traffic congestion, surpassing pre-crisis levels. At the same time the city’s public transport system is challenged in meeting this high demand for commuting, and the taxi market remains strongly regulated. In this challenging context, innovative mobility services could act as an efficient, more flexible, and cost-effective travel option, possibly combined with improving performance of the public transportation system.
The emergence of novel mobility services, driven by the rapid advancements in information and communication technologies and the expanding sharing economy market, has created an unprecedented reality in the field of urban transportation. Globally, a wide range of mobility services are available to consumers, including ridesharing services.
Ridesharing encompasses various models, such as ride-hailing services, which offer pre-arranged or on-demand rides through a platform in private vehicles operated by professional or non-professional drivers, with dynamic pricing. Additionally, e-hail taxi services provide similar on-demand rides in regulated taxis with fixed pricing set by authorities. Another model is ride-pooling, which involves sharing a ride with others in a privately-owned vehicle arranged via a platform. Transport on-demand and sophisticated trip planning tools offer flexible, convenient, and affordable transportation alternatives, fostering a shift towards on-demand shared mobility and a multimodal system less reliant on personal car ownership.
Within this framework, the Department of Transportation Planning and Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens has recently carried out a market and socioeconomic analysis for the full deployment of dynamic real-time, fee-based ridesharing services in Athens. Ridesharing services provided by car-rental companies and travel agencies with professional drivers, after abolishing the minimum duration and prior reservation requirement for car-rental-with-a-driver services and aligning with European regulations, were investigated. Within this context, possible generated opportunities of the city’s economic and social development, deriving from ridesharing services, are explored, and discussed.
For that purpose, a stated preference survey was carried out to capture Athenian traveler preferences with respect to the introduction of ridesharing services in the city. The survey outcomes reveal that Athenian travelers state that they would use ridesharing services, if available in Athens. Also, results show that Athenian travelers will mostly shift from private cars (4.3%-5.3%) and to a much lesser extent by public transport (2.2%-2.7%) and taxis (0.7%-0.8%). Interestingly, taxis do not seem to be significantly affected, a fact attributed to the already high demand for taxi usage over the previous years, reaching its limits.
The socioeconomic analysis, conducting up to 2030, evaluated the investment and operational costs for ridesharing drivers under each scenario, alongside monetized socio-economic benefits in terms of travel time, vehicle operating costs, road crashes and environmental pollution. The socioeconomic analysis demonstrated that the introduction of both ridesharing scenarios in Athens has a significant positive impact to social welfare with an Internal Rate of Return value up to 21% and a Net Present Value up to 238 million €.
Specifically, based on market and socioeconomic analyses by the year 2030, the adoption of ridesharing services in Athens metropolitan area is expected to:
- attract from 647K to 772K daily travelers
- yield an additional net 17.4K to 36K equivalent full and part-time jobs
- 92-116 million less hours travelling with private cars
- reduce CO2 emissions by 71 to 90 thousand tonnes
- save 29 to 37 million liters of fuel
- improve road safety reducing light injuries and fatalities up to 130 and 20 accordingly
- save public spaces from 4.2% to 5.3%
Article in Kathimerini newspaper in July 2024
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