Main Design Factors for Shared Ride-Hailing Services from a User Perspective

Shared ride-hailing transportation is discreetly emerging in cities all over the world with the purpose of decongesting cities, offering a similar comfort and convenience of the private car, and this way, filling the gap between the cities’ bus services and the regular taxi services. Hence, the aim of this research is to detect the main factors that should be taken into account for the service design of shared ride- hailing transportation, as well as to compare this mean of transport with the bus and taxi services. The research was conducted through, first, an analysis of shared ride-hailing services business model. Then, a quantitative research was conducted to users of a small-scale one-week pilot in Barcelona. The results show that factors related to price and travel times are more important from a user perspective than the ones related to comfort, such as the walking distance to the pickup point or the comfort provided by the vehicle. Furthermore, results indicate the intended use of participants of a potential future shared ride-hailing service in different use cases.