Your Uber Has Arrived: Ridesharing and Emissions Impacts

This project evaluates how accessible different areas are when Uber arrives in a city. Areas requiring more driving to access them, imply a higher level of emissions. More specifically, this project tests for growth in city level emissions and explores policy interventions that affect the flow of trips, such as:

• Vehicle-miles-tax, which increases the cost of accessing far flung locations
• Location-specific tolls, changing the relative access costs of different areas
• Vehicle quotas, which limit the total number of trips taken

These policy experiments also provide predictions of emissions output based on the aggregate number of trips in each city under each policy.

Grant Result

Ridesharing takes us to more places, more often. With better access, city outskirts open up and bring new commerce… and more emissions.

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Caitlin Gorback

Doctoral Student

Caitlin Gorback is a Ph.D. student in real estate in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

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