4 ms·
This seems very silly. You're trying to minimize the amount of cars on the road. The amount of people-miles of passengers is roughly constant. The only thing
by mathattack 10y ago
This seems very silly. You're trying to minimize the amount of cars on the road. The amount of people-miles of passengers is roughly constant. The only thing that reduces car-miles is ride sharing. Uber (and Lyft and possibly Waze) is much more efficient at this than Taxis. And Uber drivers have every incentive to not be idle.
The issue isn't too many cars. It's too many solo drivers or single passengers.
- jdavis703 10y agoWhy is Uber more efficient than taxis? Friendlier, faster to dispatch, no discrimination, no tipping, sure Uber/Lyft wins those hands down. But at the end of the day what stops a cab from having the same load as a TNC vehicle?
- khuey 10y agoThere's no cab equivalent to Uber Pool/Lyft Line.
- iopq 10y agoBecause I usually drive 2 passengers at the same time. I start by picking someone up. Then Uber app finds someone half way to the first person's destination. After I drop off the first person it finds someone else to pick up on the way, etc. So I end up with an average of 2 people in my car. Sometimes I pick up a group of two people while I already have a passenger. That's four people in the same car, I'm not sure if it goes up to five. I've never seen taxis do this.
- acchow 10y agoCab doesn't pick up more passengers during a ride (a la Uber Pool/Lyft line). Also, dropping off a passenger in a uber/lyft is much less disruptive to traffic flow than a traditional cab which has to process a payment.
- joshjje 10y agoNow, if we could only institute/implement a tuck and roll deployment system. Tuck and roll, grandma!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hkmurakami 10y agoI think this assumes actual ride "sharing" happens substantially.
- mathattack 10y agoEven if it doesn't, the technology and processes behind Uber and Lyft encourage less downtime of drivers. (I have not stake in the game, though I hate lines and have had more bad experiences with taxis than Ubers and Lyfts)
- epa 10y agoAlternatively, people who would have used to take the bus now take uber. People who would have used to stay at home now drive uber.
- olalonde 10y agoAs soon as you are a group of two people or more, taking Uber is often cheaper than taking the bus.
- smcameron 10y agoThe issue is too many people. The issue is almost always too many people. Stop making babies.
- Anasufovic 10y agoIt's inefficient design, with the same space we could be doing so much more.
- samcheng 10y agoTwo reasons why the current Uber/Lyft situation causes more traffic than the old taxi situation: 1) The bar for driving a car in the city for pay has been lowered significantly from the old taxi medallion system. This makes for a much larger fleet of cars in the road. A great thing if you have memories of walking down the street at 1AM, looking over your shoulder for the taxi that never came, but a bad thing for 5 PM traffic downtown. 2) The city has a decent amount of taxi-specific traffic infrastructure, such as taxi parking / cab stands, which may not be used by Uber or Lyft drivers. Instead of parking in designated spots, we see them doing things like stopping in bike lanes or circling the block.
- mathattack 10y agoI'm not sure 1 is true in aggregate. If people are ride sharing, won't the fleet size shrink? (Less taxis or less personal cars) It isn't like there are massive fleets of idle Ubers. If there isn't anyone to pick up, the drivers do something else.