The Effects of transportation network companies on traffic congestion

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between the entry of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) and traffic congestion within urban areas of the United States. For this analysis, I use the Texas A&M Transportation Institute Urban Mobility Report (UMR) and data on TNCs (namely, Lyft and Uber) collected from the local news of target cities to identify the entry of TNCs in each of the 101 urban areas. Specifically, this paper analyzes the effect of the entry of TNCs on traffic congestion using the fixed effects approach and instrumental variable strategy to account for possible endogeneity problems. The findings indicate that the entry of TNCs has a negative impact on mitigating traffic congestion. These findings are inconsistent with previous studies.