The emerging on-demand ride-sourcing programs provided by transportation network companies (TNCs) has been reshaping the transportation industry. Research efforts in this area have covered topics such as supply-demand equilibrium, pricing, matching, dispatching, but have not fully spread to the potential impacts of ride-sourcing to public transit in multi-modal transportation systems. On the one hand, ride-sourcing services act as convenient feeders to solve first-mile (or last-mile) problems for public transit riders. On the other hand, direct origin-to-destination ride-sourcing services may also absorb passengers from public transit. In this paper, we propose a deterministic user equilibrium based mathematical model to analyze ride-sourcing’s complement and substitution to public transit. Through both analytical and numerical discussions, we find that in a monopoly market free of regulations, the TNC will decide to either completely compete or completely cooperate with public transit to maximize its profit. In the former case, the government needs to make regulation on public transit ridership; a sufficient level of regulation can encourage the TNC to fully promote first-mile ride-sourcing services, leading to a win-win condition.

CICTP