Ride-hailing apps have changed the way cities work and now Chicago is allowing the public to take a closer look at those effects. The published datasets include information about Uber, Lyft and Via trips—even listing how much drivers were tipped.
The mayor along with the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection and the Department of Innovation and Technology released three datasets on “Transportation Network Providers” which is how the city refers to ride-hailing services. Officials hope it will hold the ride-hailing apps more accountable and inform future mobility decisions.
Here’s the online data that’s available in Chicago and will be updated quarterly.
- Registered ride-hailing app vehicles: The make, model and year; month of last inspection, and total trips completed
- Registered drivers: City of residence, driver’s start month, and total trips completed
- Trips logged: A generalized pick-up and destination location, a rounded-up start and end time of trip, and a rounded-up trip fare and tip
The city ensured that the data is anonymous: Driver names are not included, trip times are rounded to the nearest 15 minutes, trip costs are rounded to the nearest $2.50, and locations are aggregated by census tract. There are more layers of protection such as removing a specific trip’s census tract or widening the location to a community area. It’s the same aggregation method the city used when it released taxi trip datasets in 2016.
“With this information, we will better understand our transportation landscape and be prepared to solve future mobility problems,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a statement.
Earlier in March, the mayor released a detailed report from a new transportation task force which outlined actions for Chicago. One of the recommendations was to share more data between public agencies and private companies. More datasets like this will help city agencies and transportation providers adapt to residents’ behaviors and tailor transportation solutions to their specific needs.
Chicago is the first city to make the data ride-hailing apps share with the city accessible in an online database, but not the first city to try. Last spring, Seattle’s City Council pushed for ride-hailing apps to release information about hours logged by drivers, information about trips, and annual compensation for drivers but faced a lot of resistance from Uber and Lyft. The argument went as far as the state Supreme Court where the ruling required the companies to release more information.