1) The document analyzes GPS and trip data from Yellow Cabs and Uber in New York City to understand territorial monopolies, tipping trends, traffic patterns, and competition between ridesharing services.
2) It finds that while no single company has a true monopoly, Verifone Taxi Systems seems to have a slight edge over Creative Mobile Technologies in Brooklyn. It also finds that most New Yorkers tip $4-5 on average.
3) The analysis reveals trends about passenger distances, preferred payment methods, factors affecting tip amounts, and Uber's performance in different boroughs in January 2015.
2. Collecting GPS Data
• CMT
Creative mobile technologies, a company dedicated to make systems
that help in making taxi rides more profitable for owner and
consumer.
• VTS
Verifone Taxi systems, a competitor to VTS that creates softwares for
taxi rides.
4. Data Dictionary –Yellow Cab
• Medallion- Unique Indicator of cab
• Hack_license- Identifier of the person driving the cab
• Pickup/dropoff datetime- Timestamp of pickup/dropoff
• Pickup/dropoff lat/long- Map co-ordinates of pickup/dropoff
• Trip time in secs, trip distance- Metrics relating to the trip summary
• Fare payment type- Card/Cash/Discount rate etc.
• Tip Amount- Dollar amount given as tips.
• Zip code/Borough- Reverse geocoded information.
5. Territorial monopoly?
CMT VTS
While, overall there seems to be no monopoly, VTS seems to have slight edge over CMT in Brooklyn
This however doesn’t translate into competition between yellow cabs.
6. Which Borough tips more?
As an overall trend, we can see that New York mostly tips
its drivers a modest $4-5
But some of the red circles near Brooklyn and other parts
bordering on greater new York and the JFK airport have a
much higher tip.
Do New Yorkers tip based on how far they travel?
7. How do people prefer to pay?
Majority of people pay by card , while still
many people pay using cash.
How is the tip recorded in case of a cash
payment.?
Do New Yorkers ask the drivers to simply
“keep the change” in case of cash payments?
8. Is the tip recorded properly?
Cash Card
Almost all trips which have been paid
using cash show a zero tip amount.
This is almost impossible, as people
would tip using cash
This could be an indicator that tips
are not recorded when the fare is
paid using cash.
9. How far do New Yorkers go?
Early morning Office Hours Afternoon and early evening Evening and night
More long distances, could be
joggers taking a cab to central
park
Shorter distances, could be
people taking a cab to office if
they missed a subway.
Shorter distances, could be
colleagues going together for
lunch
The longer distances return,
people taking cabs back
home?
10. Traffic in New York
• The average speed at different parts of the day is calculated using the
pickup date&time, dropoff date&time.
• Then the speeds are plotted for each latitude and longitude
• The red dots indicate low average speed, which could translate into
more traffic, the blue dots indicate a greater average speed.
• As expected, Manhattan and the financial district have high traffic and it
reduces as we step away from Manhattan.
14. Data dictionary-Uber
• Dispatch number- Base company code of the New York Taxi and
Limousine commission that dispatched the Uber
• Pickup datetime- Timestamp of pickup
• Affiliated_base_num- Base number of the company associated with
the pickup
• Location Id- Pickup location ID for Uber
• Borough- Respective Borough of New York in which the pick up took
place
15. Market for Uber
• Similar to the yellow cab,
Manhattan serves as the
biggest market for Uber,
closely followed by Brooklyn
and lastly Queens.
Uber
Yellow cabs
16. Jan 2015 Uber performance in New York
Uber has almost no Business in the Bronx
borough
Brooklyn has better business compared to
Bronx, even though it is also pretty less
Manhattan proves to provide more
business even though there are dry days in
between.
Similar to Bronx, Queens has slightly a flat
business trend across January
Editor's Notes
Snapshot of data – here, NYC taxi data – top few rows, including field names
Data definitions
Calculate tip averages (and any other tip related stats) only for those trips paid for by credit card, because it looks like cash paid tips are not being captured
Include distance (x-axis) graph with tips (y-axis)
Break it down by peak and off-peak times (like slide 7 – but scatter plots)
***Consider only credit card paid trips
Snapshot of data – here, NYC taxi data – top few rows, including field names