The Fall and Rise of the Taxi Industry in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study

Based on a case study of Shenzhen, China, this paper traces the fall and rise of the taxi industry through the infamous COVID-19 pandemic. A four-week taxi trajectory data set is collected in the first quarter of 2020, which covers the entire cycle of COVID-19 in the city, from onset to end. We conduct a spatiotemporal analysis of taxi demand using the data, and then select taxis that continued to operate through the analysis period to examine whether and how they adjusted operational strategies. We find, among other things: (1) the taxi demand in Shenzhen shrank more than 85% in the lockdown phase and barely recovered from that bottom even after the city began to reopen; (2) the recovery of taxi travel fell far behind that of the overall vehicle travel in the city; (3) most taxis significantly cut back work hours during and even after the pandemic, and a large portion of them adjusted work schedule to focus on serving peak-time demand; (4) taxi drivers demonstrate distinct behavioral adaptations to the pandemic that can be identified by a clustering analysis; and (5) the city government's well-meaning policy designed to boost supply after the pandemic might have over-corrected the imbalance, resulting a level of service higher than the efficient level achieved by a competitive market.