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Motivation
Since the invention of ridesourcing around 2009, the count of users and drivers has increased immense all over the world. With this growing popularity of the service, it has become a very important part of the human mobility. Consequently, studying this phenomena can give on the one hand interesting insights in human mobility behavior and on the other hand useful outcomes for policy-makers or planning in transit systems. As the phenomena is rather new, there are not yet many insights of the behaviours and possible development. For example it is not all clear yet, if the use of Uber is rather used as a complement or a substitude for public transport. Get more information on the state of research. To understand humann mobility more, we suggest a visual analysis of the use of Uber on different days. We assume that the pattern of uber drivers changes clearly depending on if it is a weekday or holiday.
Data
Uber has published some datasets of uber pickups in the city of new york. The dataset of 2014 from April to September contains 4.5 Millions pickups. According to this time-limited analysis we only picked for days with the following pproperties:
- 3.07.2014. Thursday, day before holiday
- 4.07.2014. Friday, public holiday
- 17.07.2014. Thursday, weekday
- 18.07.2014. Friday, weekday
To show different behavior on these days, we suggest two methods on this webpage. In the first method, a choropleth map has been used, whereby the two thursdays and the two fridays are compared to each other. You can find interesting results and more details here. The second method contains an animated points analysis over two days. Thereby, the uber-pickups of the first week and the ones of the second week are shown manually. Please go to animated map for more information.
Data sources
Uber Pickups: www.kaggle.com
Units: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/dataset/nynta/93vf-i5bz
Census: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/data-maps/nyc-population/census2010/t_pl_p5_nta.pdf
About Uber
History Uber was launched in 2012 and represents since then a high competition to the traditional taxi system. As a uber driver you do not need to have a special license but a personal vehicle to offer a ride. Additionally, the system is based on a dispatcher system managed through an app. The customer can order the driver to his actual position and the fee will be directly charged on the credit card.
The prices of the rides are thereby much cheaper compared to traditional taxy services and also the respond is much faster. Many customers comment that uber cars are more confortable and appriciate the rating system. Additionally, uber provides different categories of services. With that, the preferences of the customers can be covered.
The uber system has been already established in over 400 cities all over the world. Lately there has been controveral debates about this system. Some countries as for instance italy, have even taken inventions and banned uber. The main reason doin this is that the traditional taxi system suffers under the new prices. Also a very controversial issue presents the fact that the drivers are self-employed which resultsin very low cost for the company but bad support for the drivers. more
Sources
https://www.lifewire.com/why-uber-is-so-controversial-3862772
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2067929/uber-taxi-drivers-european-court-italy-ban/
https://blogadmin.uberinternal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/371/2017/04/UberX_ScreenShot-2.png
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/monthly.html?year=2014&month=7&country=1