There are a lot of ways to slice the impact of uber and lyft on urban mobility. As the study shows, VMT have likely increased. But what does this really mean? H

There are a lot of ways to slice the impact of uber and lyft on urban mobility. As the study shows, VMT have likely increased. But what does this really mean? Here are some of my postulations: 1) People who did not have physical/temporal access to transit (ex: works at restaurant but transit doesn't run after closing), and thus did not make many trips have increased mobility through uber and lyft. This is important in urban areas because housing that is transit adjacent has become too expensive for many to afford. This increased physical mobility is unambiguously good for society and social mobility. 2) People who do have physical/temporal access to transit are using uber/lyft because, as transit as it is currently implemented in many cities is a terrible experience. There are untimed transfers, possibly anti-social behavior, and the busses are stuck in the same traffic as cars. The best way to improve this would be to add more bus-only lanes and congestion pricing to every city concerned about congestion. Also, higher density transit with timed transfers and more consumer oriented policies will help. IMO, transit should be faster than cars. 3) Much of the US is too low density for effective transit use. Expanding transit coverage in both routes and frequency to match peoples needs would be prohibitively expensive and inefficient in many areas. IMO, there are many places where uber and lyft are a better solution than busses for many folks, and there are a few low density rural cities that have replaced bus services with subsidized ride share service successfully. 4) VMT is a good measure of what we're trying to optimize in cities WRT mobility, but it doesn't account for the cost of parking to society in terms of high value land being occupied by abandoned vehicles. Measured purely in VMT terms, driving your own car to a restaurant, parking, and driving home is better than taking an uber, and having the few minutes of dead head space between fares.