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Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017

214 points by shafyy 9y ago

shafyy 9y ago
This seems like a huge impact. Not sure how they came up with that number (I'm guessing customer surveys, so it's probably not that accurate). How does this change the debate that ride-sharing congests up cities?
- Retric 9y ago
  Any ride sharing trip is going to be Driver Start > Pickup > Drop-off which is by necessity longer than pickup > drop-off. The only possible benefit is if people take public transit more or take fewer trips, which is not something you can see from ride sharing numbers.
  - handbanana 9y ago
    Ride sharing drivers can pick up in the area they drop-off, though
    - revelation 9y ago
      Triangle inequality still holds, sorry to say It only makes sense if they are transporting two or more people that would otherwise have used two or more vehicles. But I think that kind of rideshare system is the absolute minority of Uber and Lyft rides.
      - pishpash 9y ago
        Yes, the reduction is over vehicles (fewer unique vehicles), not vehicle miles.
      - handbanana 9y ago
        Perhaps, but with ride sharing you're less likely to make more stops, preferring to get to your destination in one continuous trip. And if you ditch your car in favour of ride sharing, then you're likely to make less trips overall. You'll think twice before driving somewhere you could otherwise walk, more so than if you owned a car. And you're less likely to make impulse trips that can be avoided (to get a chocolate bar you're craving or something else pointless). At least, I'd imagine that's the case - as there is the additional time of hailing a ride with one of these services and a more measurable cost to it.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > Any ride sharing trip is going to be Driver Start > Pickup > Drop-off which is by necessity longer than pickup > drop-of You forgot "circling for twenty minutes searching for parking." Include the parking footprint of private cars and I think ridesharing comes out ahead.
    - Retric 9y ago
      That's only relevant in places limited to street level parking. The general case is driving to a parking lot/garage which could make the trip shorter or longer depending on where it's located relative to your destination. You might spend more time driving in a garage, but that does not impact street level congestion compared to all those extra Miles drivers add going to pick you up. As to density, cars parked in a garage take up vastly less land than than moving cars on a road as they stack vertically and need less space around each other.
      - shafyy 9y ago
        Do you have any data on street level vs fixed garage parking? Owning fewer vehicles also frees up space on street level...
        Retric 9y ago
        It depends on the city. However, for places like NYC unassigned street level parking is a tiny fraction of overall parking.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - martinald 9y ago
    Though it seems to be doing the opposite. In London where car ownership is low (at least in inner London) it seems to be taking share from public transit. Nearly 100k uber/minicab drivers have been added and bus ridership has collapsed. A) from less usage because of Uber B) because all these extra taxis have caused mass congestion which means buses are unbelievably slow compared to even a few years ago
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - taoistextremist 9y ago
    I think there's an argument to be made that ride sharing apps means people have an easier time relying on public transit, though, given they can use the apps to fill in gaps, making the leap from owning a car easier.
coldcode 9y ago
In SF I can believe it. In a large area like DFW the wait times for a ride are too long to be practical. Also the question of cost is relevant, I drive a car I have paid for in a city with reasonable insurance rates and no issues with parking. Lyft or Uber would be impracticable here.
- gorpomon 9y ago
  I have a family member in DFW who has really embraced Uber, and wait times for the area are minimal, and they are around 20 miles from the Downtown area of Dallas (very mid-cities). I never thought that Uber would catch in DFW, and I'm really surprised to see how it's changed life for a few people I know there. Maybe it's been some time since you've tried Uber there, but I'd recommend trying it again. Also my family members there now swear by it for trips to either the DFW or Love Field airport.
  - dpiers 9y ago
    I have worked at Uber for 4 years, but I spent the first 22 years of my life as a resident of Lewisville. It’s been amazing watching the transformation from when I first started (No cars available) to now (ETA ~5 min) around my parents’ house. The last time we were there, my wife dropped me off at a coffee shop to get some work done while she did some errands, and when I was done I got an Uber back home.
    - amyjess 9y ago
      I live in Far North Dallas and work in Plano. My experience is the same as yours, just with Lyft instead of Uber.
starik36 9y ago
I think the biggest impact is going to be felt with current generations of 18 year olds. My kid (about to be 18) has no interest in getting a driver's license and neither are any of his friends. He's happy to be taking Uber and Lyft anywhere he goes. And between the cost of the vehicle and insurance, it's cheaper for me as well. When I was 16, I couldn't wait to get a car.
- paulcole 9y ago
  This is one of the few cases where I was ahead of my time. I turned 16 about 20 years ago and had 0 interest in a driver's license. I lived in an extremely rural area. My parents (rightly) said that I'd need to get a job to pay for a car. I figured why bother since I'd be paying for a car to drive to the job where I'd make money to pay for the car. Seemed like a complete waste of time and effort. 20 years later, I still have no plans to get a license but have changed my tune on work a bit.
  - draw_down 9y ago
    Mmm, yeah. And it only took two decades.
  - eachro 9y ago
    I similarly have no real intention to drive for my own sake or own a car, but since I do have a license I can be called on to do things for friends and family - moving/dropping or picking someone up at the airport/getting grocerties/etc. I think the added utility is a net good(well certainly for my loved ones if not myself).
  - ryanianian 9y ago
    So you're relying on friends/family to do the driving if you're outside of lyft/public-transit areas e.g. on vacation in a rental car? Not having a car is a great idea if you can get away with it - not having a license basically means you can't help out when necessary.
    - vidarh 9y ago
blakesterz 9y ago
So there's something like 260+ million [1] vehicles registered here in 2015. That 250k number seems like an impossibly high percentage of people that have given up on owning a car because of ride sharing apps. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  0.1% is large, but not impossibly large.
- ggg9990 9y ago
  Why is 1 in 1000 too high? I used to recommend that new San Francisco residents keep a car if they could afford to. I no longer make that recommendation. Even my suburban parents decided against a second car because of Uber.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I don't know if it's true or not but it seems at least plausible. I can easily believe that Uber/Lyft make a difference at the margins of owning a car or a family owning a second car in relatively urban areas, especially those without great taxi service. Take out ridesharing and short-term rentals and there are definitely people who get away without cars today who would probably want/need to get one. ADDED: Their numbers actually suggest something higher because this is just among Lyft's user base. It doesn't count Uber or other ridesharing apps.
- tgarv 9y ago
  Did Lyft claim that the 250k ditched their cars _because_ of ride sharing apps? I didn't see any causality implied in the article, just the number. It's like saying 250k Lyft customers quit smoking last year, it's just a stat based on the user base, I don't think they were claiming to be the main cause of it.
- jonknee 9y ago
  Well that number includes work vehicles, non daily-drivers, collectables, etc. A better place to start would be a survey of how many adults have their own dedicated vehicle.
electricslpnsld 9y ago
How sustainable is Lyft's pricing in comparison to Uber? I've been getting absolutely dirt cheap Uber Pool fares in the Bay Area. From my apartment to work the fare is often less than two dollars (which is around what BART would cost me), and I've even had fares less than dollar. I would be amazed if this is making anyone a profit, but if the price even doubled I would be way less likely to use Uber/Lyft on a whim.
- Ascetik 9y ago
  I honestly don't see how anyone makes money with fares so low.
- indubitable 9y ago
  Uber, and I imagine Lyft, are banking on automation. So what is sustainability? Self driving vehicles, at scale, could profitably provide service for a lower cost per mile than a person who owns their own vehicle. And that industry is going to have incredibly rapid growth likely culminating in a monopoly that could yield the largest company in existence. We drive in the ballpark of ~300billion miles per month [1]. Consider the worldwide market. A profit of even just a few cents a mile starts to look very insane very fast. [1] - https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/tvt.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring...
  - hueving 9y ago
    Sustainability is having a business that doesn't depend on a rapid rollout of a technology that doesn't work in weather that most people won't trust for years and that isn't even legal yet.
    - indubitable 9y ago
      - By the time the technology is at the 99.999% level, the game will already be over. - Things are legal by default. If self driving vehicles are not explicitly made illegal by a state, they are legal. - Peoples' trust changes rapidly. I think as a culture we've become much more scared of technology and change, but the change from horses to internal combustion engines and brakes was many magnitudes 'scarier' than having AI manage navigation.
brndnmtthws 9y ago
Automobile ownership is dumb, but ridesharing isn't the answer either. Cities need to invest in public infrastructure, especially fast efficient public transit. People should also rediscover the joy of human power (walk, bike, run).
- bpicolo 9y ago
  I'm sure people in the US would love to walk to work, but the layout of US cities doesn't lend itself to that. People tend to live pretty dang far from where they work in the US.
  - brndnmtthws 9y ago
    Move to a different city.
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      I don't believe 200 million people in NYC would lessen the impact of the sprawl effect.
    - y2bd 9y ago
      What are some cities with decent enough public transportation and urban planning for pedestrians that also don’t suffer from lack of housing/exhorbitant housing prices? The top cities I can think of that satisfy the former unfortunately also have the latter.
      - WaxProlix 9y ago
        Some of us have both! It'd be nice if it were as simple a tradeoff as that.
      - theseatoms 9y ago
        Chicago
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
hamstercat 9y ago
I have my driver license, but I'm not buying a car anytime soon. I may at some point, but for now public transportation + renting a car when I really need one + Lyft/Uber/Taxi is a lot more cost-effective. On top of that, I'm sure I'd walk less because I'd find myself driving to places I walk to right now. So all in all for my context I'm quite happy without owning a car.
awwstn 9y ago
From Lyft's report: > We surveyed 30,000 passengers  and 37,000 drivers in 52 major cities. I suspect they may have done some generous extrapolation here...(e.g. "0.1% of the 30,000 Lyft passengers we surveyed got rid of their cars for ridesharing, so 0.1% of the U.S. population must have ditched cars for ridesharing")
- clairity 9y ago
  you've thrown suspicion on the study without any reasoning behind it. unless your population size is small, all studies extrapolate results. why do you think it's incorrect? for example, maybe the 52 cities they surveyed aren't representative of the whole population (this can be true if they chose the 52 largest cities rather than a random sampling of cities). give your comment some meat to chew on.
  - hueving 9y ago
    Are you serious? Sampling Lyft riders for an life choice that makes them a Lyft rider absolutely would not extrapolate to the US population. It's like sampling people in an airport to get stats on how often everyone flies.
    - luhn 9y ago
      They aren't extrapolating to the US population, they're extrapolating to the Lyft userbase.
    - clairity 9y ago
      yes. note that the article doesn't extrapolate anything to the US population, that's something that @awwstn added in. lyft, in the article, says 250K people on its platform have dropped car ownership according to its survey. they extrapolate that total number from a survey of a sample of it riders and drivers in 52 cities.
      - hueving 9y ago
        Ok, then the error is much less egregious but there is still a sampling error I can see (at least based on my own usage pattern of Lyft). As a user of Lyft who owns a car the odds of me being sampled by this survey were significantly lower than the people that depend on Lyft daily. It's the same problem with surveying people in an airport to determine how often flyers fly. Heavy users are more likely to be oversampled because they are in the airports more frequently. So for Lyft to overcome this they would have needed to survey people in population adjusted parts from each usage tier. Otherwise the 1% or whatever that ride everyday are going to throw off the whole survey. Especially since the most likely to answer surveys are frequent users.
ajb 9y ago
Correlation != Causation. I moved to a city and sold my car, and shortly after used ride sharing for the first time. But I don't use it much and it certainly didn't cause me to sell it. I wouldn't be surprised of that's just how many of their customers recently moved to a city.
- shafyy 9y ago
  But then you wouldn't answer the question with "Yes" in their survey, would you?
  - ajb 9y ago
    That depends what the question was. If they'd asked outright whether I specifically sold the car for that reason, they no, I wouldn't. But to be honest, I suspect the survey of being designed by their PR dept to generate this result, and I can imagine questions I might have answered 'yes' to that could then be interpreted in this way.
    - shafyy 9y ago
      Definitely. I tried to find the report to see if they have appended the questionnaire, but it returns a 404: https://take.lyft.com/economic-impact/Lyft-Drives-Economy.pdf https://take.lyft.com/economic-impact/Lyft-Drives-Economy.pd...
- bllguo 9y ago
  What a tiresome rebuttal, I'm sure Lyft's army of statisticians and data scientists managed to somehow overlook STAT 101.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    Who says their army had the final say in what counts as belonging to the set of interest?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
clairity 9y ago
i've found the value proposition of lyft/uber less compelling over time. typically i can either (1) take a bus or train or (2) take a lyft line (or uber pool, if it's much cheaper for some reason--i don't mind uber paying part of my trip). but because my trips are often 2-3 miles or less, the time savings of a lyft is taken up by (1) pickup time, (2) driver confusion/mistakes, (3) poor driver routing due to not knowing the local traffic conditions, and (4) other riders added behind us en route. so no time savings, which (to me) is the big advantage of lyft/uber. the buses and trains are on a schedule, but they usually come often enough that the time savings of a lyft would be less than 5 minutes. i can pay $1.75 for the bus or train, or pay $4-5 for a lyft line. lyft line is usually more comfortable, but sometimes the car or other riders smell bad or are rude, so that's not always an obvious win. and if i'm not really rushed, a little walking on either end of the trip is a good thing. consistently paying 2-3x for short trips on lyft don't seem to make sense, and so my usage has gone down over time (occasionally i'm in a big hurry or are going farther, and in those cases lyft does work out better). i don't think this bodes well for lyft or uber solving the last-mile problem.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  A lyft line at 10pm on a sunday cost me 5.30 U$S. I did not have a direct bus from those two locations, and we were two people. Its a lesson on basic microeconomics. If its cheaper, more people will use it. And it is now way cheaper than cabs.
birdman3131 9y ago
I don't get how using lyft/uber as your only form of transportation can be at all cheaper. Let me run some basic math. Uber wants $11.50 to take me home right now. Lyft wants $13.40 $11.50 * 2 = $23/day 23 * 5 = $115/week $115 * 52 weeks = $5980/year (I am ignoring vacation weeks for now.) My yearly cost for car ownership are roughly as follows. (Assuming only work and back.) Insurance(1): $886/year Fuel(2): $292.50 Maintenance(3): $1000 Car purchase price(4): $1000 Total yearly cost: $3178 (1) I only run Liablilty + uninsured/underinsured but I run cheap cars (2) 2340 miles/year (Work is just under 4.5 miles.) Figure 20 mpg (I get better but have not calculated it in a while.) Figuring fuel prices at $2.50 although the last year has been much closer to $2 and less at times (3) This is way more than I would put into a car yearly if I only drove it to work and back but I do many of my own repairs so I am boosting it a bit for those unwilling to do so. Also including stuff like taxes and tags here (4)I buy cheap cars off craigslist, run them into the ground and replace them. My normal cost is $500-600 but by the time you add a new set of tires ($250-300 installed) and fix whatever random issues the car came with $1000 is closer to actual purchase price.
- brianjoseff 9y ago
  I also derive tremendous personal value from getting the opportunity to meet the people driving the cars. Hearing different perspectives, sharing interesting stories, and generally engaging in real human interaction are something I don't get enough of in my regular life, and Lyft has materially changed that. Of course unfortunate that I don't get enough of that outside of a transactional transportation arrangement, but it's real for me.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    I really appreciate you mentioning this. I occasionally drive for Lyft just to meet new people.
- tgarv 9y ago
  So you're using your own time to repair these cars to keep the cost down, which is totally fine, but I think it's unfair to not count some of that time as a "cost" of owning the car in your model. Also, do you not have to pay for parking anywhere? What about time spent finding parking (again, may not be an issue, but it certainly would be time-consuming and expensive where I live and work).
kayoone 9y ago
Meanwhile in Berlin, i just paid 14 EUR on uberCab to get to work last week because i had an important meeting and was late. For a 5km trip that took 10 minutes. Since uber is not allowed here and the normal stuff is so expensive, this whole market does not even exist here.
sidlls 9y ago
I stopped using a personal auto last year in favor of biking everywhere. When I'm injured or expecting to have to coordinate using the family car after work I'll catch a Lyft, but the availability of ride sharing had zero impact on my decision to give up a personal auto. I wonder if their metrics are counting folks like me in that quarter million (inadvertently or not).
robrenaud 9y ago
> Lyft wants to make a point: Its services help lessen traffic How can this be true? They'd need a very significant fraction of riders using lyft line (the multi-passenger service) to make up for the the overhead in the driver having to travel extra distance to pick someone up.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Or people opting for public transport part of the distance. One thing these services make convenient is to use them to get to/from train stations and the like without worrying about parking etc., or being stuck without a ride on the other end.
- rootusrootus 9y ago
  Indeed, hasn't this already been studied? Lyft & Uber have increased traffic, not reduced it, because the cars are driven a significant amount of the time without any passenger.
- goialoq 9y ago
  Reducing demand for (street0 parking increases road space for moving cars.
panda888888 9y ago
It's part of the reason I haven't bought a car. I'm in my mid 20s and didn't get my license in high school because insurance would have been too expensive (my parents wanted me to pay for it). I think driving is a good life skill so I got my license in my early 20s, but I still have zero desire to own a car. That said, I live in Seattle, where there is good public transportation. Here are my numbers: Parking (I work downtown): $250/month * 12 months = $3000 Parking spot at my apartment complex, 5 miles from city center: $130/month * 12 months = $1560 Gas: $100/month * 12 months = $1200 Car registration fees in Seattle: ~$400/year Insurance for a 25 year old in Seattle: ~$1500 (It might actually be higher?) Maintenance: we'll say $1000 So the total cost for me would be ~$8660+ per year. And that's excluding the cost of the car! With a 5 mile commute, public transit 3 days a week plus Uber/Lyft 4 days a week is cheaper, hands down. Uber/Lyft 7 days a week cuts it closer but is still cheaper. So yeah, it depends on where you live.
- d4mi3n 9y ago
  I'm in a similar situation, but from what I gather lifestyle factors heavily into the "do I need/want a car" equation. Kids, for example, usually mandate a car. Outdoor activities or any hobby that requires you haul around a lot of gear can also make having your own transportation a lot more appealing.
  - cozzyd 9y ago
    I see people taking strollers on the bus all the time...
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Same here. Also bicycles with extra seats, if you happen to live in a city with some minimal infrastructure for it.
    - jethro_tell 9y ago
      we take our kids on the bus its fine, but not practical for daily commute, we drop all 4 of us off at a different spot on the way into the city. Just no good way to do that on the bus. once they are both in school, (and the school that is being remodeled so one of them is going across town, we should be able to take transit daily and the kids can walk too from school. There's more to it than if they can walk on and off the bus.
ataturk 9y ago
The hollowing out of the US middle class.
bungie4 9y ago
Living in a small northern Ontario town, I wish we had Lyft or Uber here. Instead, just taxi's (or family) and public transport. Our public transport is based on a center hub topology with the hub being downtown. So if my kid wants to take the bus to work, about kilometer away, it takes 45 minutes half of which is in the wrong direction and involves at least one transfer. Oddly, it takes even longer to get home. Our public transport is a joke.
- fyfy18 9y ago
  If it’s only a kilometre why not walk? That’s 15 minutes for the average person.
  - bob_theslob646 9y ago
    Would you want to walk in below freezing weather?
    - ghaff 9y ago
      So long as there's a sidewalk? Yes? They make some very nice winter coats in Canada.
    - cozzyd 9y ago
      Assuming you have proper gear, it's much nicer than walking in 100+ degree weather
    - GhostVII 9y ago
      I walked like 2 kilometres to work everyday in Toronto in winter, it was fine. Just get a coat.
    - s0rce 9y ago
      Sure, I walked 30min everyday to grad school in Chicago weather. Unless it was pouring rain (ie. not freezing) then I would occasionally take the bus part of the way.
    - fyfy18 9y ago
lr4444lr 9y ago
Wait until these kids start families of their own and can't afford the space they need in a city with great public transit.
- steego 9y ago
  > Wait until these kids start families of their own Maybe they won't. I've talked about this with my wife, and I think we both concluded that cost of living played a subconscious role in my wife deciding not to have kids. There were other reasons, but that certainly soured the prospect. If I was to poll my coworkers (many of us older with no kids), I'm guessing they'd cite that as a contributing factor.
horsecaptin 9y ago
What about all the times a car owner takes a Lyft instead of taking a taxi? Does that mean they ditched their car or does it mean that they were in a place where they needed a taxi?
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
Not sure why so many people here are almost virtue signaling the act of not owning a drivers license. I agree—It's perfectly okay to not own a car if it doesn't make sense to your life situation. That being said, the ability to drive is nevertheless a useful skill and asset and at least in the United States, does not have a very high barrier to entry (for better or worse). There is so much in the United States that a car gives you access to (most National Parks or wilderness in general are not accessible by public transport). And I don't see human-driven cars disappearing from our world for the next 20–30 years at least.
- ghaff 9y ago
  It sort of blows my mind. I get that people have different interests and hobbies but the idea that people would live in San Francisco or Seattle and be "I'm fine with mostly just hanging around the city and looking at the mountains from here" is a bit hard for me to digest. And, as I said in another comment, renting a car has frequently been the obvious approach to get to places I need to get to on business trips.
  - phil21 9y ago
    > I'm fine with mostly just hanging around the city and looking at the mountains from here That statement is very strange to me. If you really enjoy nature, I think the last possible thing you'd do is buy a car solely to go see said nature. Seems entirely wrong to me. Best thing you can do for those mountains if you love them is not purchase a vehicle.
    - s0rce 9y ago
      Best thing you can do to reduce your environmental impact is probably to kill yourself, or if you are not morally against it, probably kill as many people as you can. Baring this, you could just sit around and do nothing all the time. This isn't very fulfilling. Some people, myself included, want to enjoy the mountains and driving to them, while maybe not ideal, is the only way at the moment and for some can be worth the environmental cost. I'd wager the best thing you can do for the mountains is to rally for their future protection and educate the public on the importance of saving our public lands.
stephendedalus 9y ago
In 2017 I returned to America from living overseas. My mom passed away early in the year and I wanted nothing to do with shopping for a car, much less driving a car. So I just took Lyft to my new job until I had my feet under me and felt up to driving again. In the end I never felt up to driving full time. I now share my wife's car (we did get her a car eventually), but we only purchased the 1 car. We either ride in together, take mass transit, or one of us takes a Lyft. Sometimes we use Lyft to bridge to mass transit. Either way, "ride sharing" has definitely taken one more full time car off the road. I know it's not that simple and I know it's an economically dubious arrangement in the first place, but I think there's something to this idea if we could figure out the economics of it (how much drivers should be paid, etc.).
- smileysteve 9y ago
  > Either way, "ride sharing" has definitely taken one more full time car off the road one more full time car out of the parking lot.
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    It's true that the same miles are still being accrued, just by a Lyft car rather than a personal car. However, when multiple people use a lyft car throughout the day, it is more efficient than having each person own their own car. Maintenance, insurance, and the construction of the car itself are all shared. Perhaps it's half a full time car off the road.
jellicle 9y ago
Lyft and Uber actively encourage and assist drivers to purchase, rent or lease vehicles in order to drive for them. How many cars have they put on the road? Ride-hailing services have massively increased car traffic in major cities: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congestion-pricing-nyc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congest...
pxlpshr 9y ago
My wife and I share my Jeep but I tried really hard to be carless in Austin, TX. I even experimented with a variety of Segways (at the expense of many jokes) and alternatives to a bike for the longer-hauls so that I'm not drenched in sweat when I get to the office. [1] I was totally fine when we lived downtown as it's becoming very walkable, but it's pretty impractical when you live even a short distance from the core. There are people that do it, we have decent running and bike trails, but it's just not suitable for us. My wife and I are on different time schedules which makes commuting together hard, and Austin lacks great public transportation combined with terrible traffic which drives up the Uber/Lyft cost per ride. We decided to buy a 2nd car again but this time a used EV (BMW i3) so that our total cost of ownership is really low. Based on my napkin math and the deal we got on the car, I suspect we'll break-even or better compared with using a ride sharing service. [1] Texas weather is also a thing...
- hycaria 9y ago
  Stay downtown then. If being carless was so important, that was the way to pursue it.
  - pxlpshr 9y ago
    You speak with so much conviction about living in a shoe box with 3 dogs!
    - hycaria 9y ago
      Huh ? I'm not sure I understand. I live in a small place, I don't have pets. I enjoy life very much though.
ilaksh 9y ago
I have managed to get by for around three years now without a car in San Diego. I sold my car awhile back in order to keep working on a now defunct startup. Since then I have worked for other startups and still had a small income so it wasn't easy for me to get a car. I just take Uber everywhere (cheaper than Lyft). I can't afford to live downtown. Honestly if I were to "get a life" things are so spread out in socal and most everyone has a car.. I would almost have to buy a car if I were to somehow miraculously acquire a social life. But since I have no life and work from home, things have been significantly less stressful on a daily basis not having to drive. So it's kind of like I don't want to have reasons to start driving all over the place again because of the stress and risk. Since I only go out once or twice a week now the car trips seem like the primary risk in my life and I'm not eager to start braving traffic on a daily basis.
ttul 9y ago
Counter example: I did NOT own a car until after April of this year, which is when Car2Go discontinued service in my area. We don’t have Uber or Lyft, so those were never an option. Now, out of sheer necessity, I do own a car. And it costs me $550 a month for insurance, financing, and fuel. $550 would have bought a hell of a lot of Uber rides. More than enough for my needs.
- Texasian 9y ago
  Whoa, what kinda market had Car2Go but no Uber or Lyft? Is Zipcar not an option?
  - ttul 9y ago
    Welcome to Vancouver.
    - afterburner 9y ago
      Ouch. How are the taxis?
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  You could've gotten a cheaper car, maybe even one you could pay for entirely upfront.
  - ttul 9y ago
    But it would suck compared to the old option. So not comparable.
    - jimmaswell 9y ago
      Mine is from 1998 and it's perfectly comfortable. I definitely prefer it to transit.
sien 9y ago
Beyond what Lyft says, it's plausible if you look at total vehicle says in the US. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA Mind you, it's also very plausible it's not really true.
frandroid 9y ago
> It served 23 million different passengers, itself a 92 percent YoY increase Wow.
rootusrootus 9y ago
I've done the math, for sure. It would cost me $1000 per month to use Lyft or Uber for my commute. That's almost exactly twice what my running costs are for owning my commuter car.
qudat 9y ago
I live in Ann Arbor, which is a small college town that has a pretty good bus system considering we are in the midwest and so close to Detroit. I recently sold my car which was huge boost to my quality of life. Having said that, I had to pay relatively a lot for my house to have the luxury of being within 2 miles of downtown where I work. Even in this small town, automobile transportation can be extremely difficult. The UoM hospital parking is an absolute nightmare. Even getting the premium parking pass (~$250/mo) does not guarantee an employee a spot in any lot, let alone the one closest to their destination. Patients end up circling the lots for upwards of 90 minutes looking for a spot -- a common reason for showing up to an appointment late. There really is no other solution besides better public transportation here. Hopefully that will be the driving factor to increase bike lanes, bus lines, and incentivize people to only commute via automobile when absolutely necessary.
vr2018 9y ago
It won't be long until the majority of people will never need to leave their apartments. Amazon will deliver their meal subscription by drone each day (subscribe and save!), we will be able to work from home, and vacation using VR. Cars will be a thing of the past very, very soon. This will be better for the environment, and reduce congestion for any of the unlucky workers who are still required to be on the streets, i.e. garbage collectors, pizza delivery drivers, etc. I plan to support any politician in the future who is brave enough to enforce this arrangement via legislation. We have been consuming too much for too long, and we as a species are finally close to having the technology and will to limit our impact but not negatively impact our overall living standard.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  > and vacation using VR And I can visit China by visiting Chinatown.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
The main downside to not owning a car is that it's really hard to get anywhere outside the city or urban areas. If you enjoy the outdoors, it's a huge disadvantage. I don't currently own a car as I recently moved countries, and I'm basically confined to urban areas. Sure, I could hire a car, but that does start to get expensive quickly, especially if you have to pay the obscene premiums they charge for being under 25 years old. It's at least $150 to rent a car for the weekend, and then there's the hassle of trying to pick it up and drop it off. A reasonably good condition, reliable car, would cost me $2000, plus maybe $1000 per year for registration, insurance (third party only), and repairs.
pricetag 9y ago
Hah, sorry to self plug[0] but I feel it’s relevant. I just wrote about this the other day, except I was using Uber instead. It turns out that for my personal situation it’s not worth it to go with a ridesharing service. Right now I’m spending $4,560 a year on Uber. Does anyone have bicycle recommendations for under $400? [0] https://pricetaganalysis.com/2018/01/15/how-much-money-i-spent-commuting-with-uber/ https://pricetaganalysis.com/2018/01/15/how-much-money-i-spe...
- fiftyacorn 9y ago
  Id probably get secondhand How far are you cycling? It might be worth upping the price too and going electric
  - pricetag 9y ago
    Yeah used is probably my best bet. It’s only 7 miles a day roundtrip.
    - fiftyacorn 9y ago
      7 is a perfect distance - what sort of roads? Id tend towards a commuting road bike with panniers, and mudguards/fenders.
      - pricetag 9y ago
        It’s a well paved road. Think suburban mainstreet. Thanks for your help!
lsc 9y ago
Yup. I ditched my car because of uber/lyft. the problem, from a business perspective, is that I live in silicon valley, and still have the expensive parts of owning a car; there's still the parking that came with my residence, and my employer is still paying for parking at work. (I dunno about you, but my desk is rather smaller than a car parking spot.) If Uber/Lyft were to raise their prices to profit-making levels, all I would have to do is buy the car, which is, as far as I can tell, not the most expensive part of the infrastructure required to support owning a car, at least not in my area. If uber/lyft want to make this sticky enough that they can raise their rates, they need to hurry to lobby the cities to build housing without parking, or otherwise allow me to opt-out of buying car infrastructure, otherwise... well, yeah, I'm going to get driven when it's subsidized (I take uber and lyft, whatever is cheapest) but once that subsidy goes away? if it becomes as expensive as I think it will, I'm just going to buy a car again.
krinchan 9y ago
It'd be interesting to see the number of households that dropped from two cars to one because they didn't really need the second car often enough. It's just more cost effective for us to use Lyft as a second car when needed, since it's maybe for 6 trips a month. However, before Uber/Lyft, having two cars was worth it because public transit where we live is trash if it isn't rail station to rail station. The buses run on 45 to 60 minute intervals and are always late.
ekianjo 9y ago
Does that result in less accidents/fatalities at this scale?
bbd 9y ago
in emergency situations like hurricane or earthquake, the current ridesharing system might provide very limited mobility when you need the most. Keep your options open at any time might be priceless sometimes.
- twobyfour 9y ago
  Or you get in a car and sit in traffic until you run out of gas and then you're stranded on a highway in the middle of nowhere during a hurricane, as happened to so many people in Houston this past fall. Few of our cities are actually evacuable in an emergency.
LeicaLatte 9y ago
Lyft for me. Amazon Prime for everything else including groceries and milk. For everything else I just walk. Serves me fine even in a state like Texas where local transit is absolute shit.
twobyfour 9y ago
And how many of its drivers bought a car just to drive for Uber/Lyft?

214 points by shafyy 9y ago

This seems like a huge impact. Not sure how they came up with that number (I'm guessing customer surveys, so it's probably not that accurate). How does this change the debate that ride-sharing congests up cities?

Retric 9y ago
Any ride sharing trip is going to be Driver Start > Pickup > Drop-off which is by necessity longer than pickup > drop-off. The only possible benefit is if people take public transit more or take fewer trips, which is not something you can see from ride sharing numbers.
- handbanana 9y ago
  Ride sharing drivers can pick up in the area they drop-off, though
  - revelation 9y ago
    Triangle inequality still holds, sorry to say It only makes sense if they are transporting two or more people that would otherwise have used two or more vehicles. But I think that kind of rideshare system is the absolute minority of Uber and Lyft rides.
    - pishpash 9y ago
      Yes, the reduction is over vehicles (fewer unique vehicles), not vehicle miles.
    - handbanana 9y ago
      Perhaps, but with ride sharing you're less likely to make more stops, preferring to get to your destination in one continuous trip. And if you ditch your car in favour of ride sharing, then you're likely to make less trips overall. You'll think twice before driving somewhere you could otherwise walk, more so than if you owned a car. And you're less likely to make impulse trips that can be avoided (to get a chocolate bar you're craving or something else pointless). At least, I'd imagine that's the case - as there is the additional time of hailing a ride with one of these services and a more measurable cost to it.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Any ride sharing trip is going to be Driver Start > Pickup > Drop-off which is by necessity longer than pickup > drop-of You forgot "circling for twenty minutes searching for parking." Include the parking footprint of private cars and I think ridesharing comes out ahead.
  - Retric 9y ago
    That's only relevant in places limited to street level parking. The general case is driving to a parking lot/garage which could make the trip shorter or longer depending on where it's located relative to your destination. You might spend more time driving in a garage, but that does not impact street level congestion compared to all those extra Miles drivers add going to pick you up. As to density, cars parked in a garage take up vastly less land than than moving cars on a road as they stack vertically and need less space around each other.
    - shafyy 9y ago
      Do you have any data on street level vs fixed garage parking? Owning fewer vehicles also frees up space on street level...
      - Retric 9y ago
        It depends on the city. However, for places like NYC unassigned street level parking is a tiny fraction of overall parking.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- martinald 9y ago
  Though it seems to be doing the opposite. In London where car ownership is low (at least in inner London) it seems to be taking share from public transit. Nearly 100k uber/minicab drivers have been added and bus ridership has collapsed. A) from less usage because of Uber B) because all these extra taxis have caused mass congestion which means buses are unbelievably slow compared to even a few years ago
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- taoistextremist 9y ago
  I think there's an argument to be made that ride sharing apps means people have an easier time relying on public transit, though, given they can use the apps to fill in gaps, making the leap from owning a car easier.

coldcode 9y ago

In SF I can believe it. In a large area like DFW the wait times for a ride are too long to be practical. Also the question of cost is relevant, I drive a car I have paid for in a city with reasonable insurance rates and no issues with parking. Lyft or Uber would be impracticable here.

gorpomon 9y ago
I have a family member in DFW who has really embraced Uber, and wait times for the area are minimal, and they are around 20 miles from the Downtown area of Dallas (very mid-cities). I never thought that Uber would catch in DFW, and I'm really surprised to see how it's changed life for a few people I know there. Maybe it's been some time since you've tried Uber there, but I'd recommend trying it again. Also my family members there now swear by it for trips to either the DFW or Love Field airport.
- dpiers 9y ago
  I have worked at Uber for 4 years, but I spent the first 22 years of my life as a resident of Lewisville. It’s been amazing watching the transformation from when I first started (No cars available) to now (ETA ~5 min) around my parents’ house. The last time we were there, my wife dropped me off at a coffee shop to get some work done while she did some errands, and when I was done I got an Uber back home.
  - amyjess 9y ago
    I live in Far North Dallas and work in Plano. My experience is the same as yours, just with Lyft instead of Uber.

starik36 9y ago

I think the biggest impact is going to be felt with current generations of 18 year olds. My kid (about to be 18) has no interest in getting a driver's license and neither are any of his friends. He's happy to be taking Uber and Lyft anywhere he goes. And between the cost of the vehicle and insurance, it's cheaper for me as well. When I was 16, I couldn't wait to get a car.

paulcole 9y ago
This is one of the few cases where I was ahead of my time. I turned 16 about 20 years ago and had 0 interest in a driver's license. I lived in an extremely rural area. My parents (rightly) said that I'd need to get a job to pay for a car. I figured why bother since I'd be paying for a car to drive to the job where I'd make money to pay for the car. Seemed like a complete waste of time and effort. 20 years later, I still have no plans to get a license but have changed my tune on work a bit.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Mmm, yeah. And it only took two decades.
- eachro 9y ago
  I similarly have no real intention to drive for my own sake or own a car, but since I do have a license I can be called on to do things for friends and family - moving/dropping or picking someone up at the airport/getting grocerties/etc. I think the added utility is a net good(well certainly for my loved ones if not myself).
- ryanianian 9y ago
  So you're relying on friends/family to do the driving if you're outside of lyft/public-transit areas e.g. on vacation in a rental car? Not having a car is a great idea if you can get away with it - not having a license basically means you can't help out when necessary.
  - vidarh 9y ago

blakesterz 9y ago

So there's something like 260+ million [1] vehicles registered here in 2015. That 250k number seems like an impossibly high percentage of people that have given up on owning a car because of ride sharing apps. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicle...

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
0.1% is large, but not impossibly large.
ggg9990 9y ago
Why is 1 in 1000 too high? I used to recommend that new San Francisco residents keep a car if they could afford to. I no longer make that recommendation. Even my suburban parents decided against a second car because of Uber.
ghaff 9y ago
I don't know if it's true or not but it seems at least plausible. I can easily believe that Uber/Lyft make a difference at the margins of owning a car or a family owning a second car in relatively urban areas, especially those without great taxi service. Take out ridesharing and short-term rentals and there are definitely people who get away without cars today who would probably want/need to get one. ADDED: Their numbers actually suggest something higher because this is just among Lyft's user base. It doesn't count Uber or other ridesharing apps.
tgarv 9y ago
Did Lyft claim that the 250k ditched their cars _because_ of ride sharing apps? I didn't see any causality implied in the article, just the number. It's like saying 250k Lyft customers quit smoking last year, it's just a stat based on the user base, I don't think they were claiming to be the main cause of it.
jonknee 9y ago
Well that number includes work vehicles, non daily-drivers, collectables, etc. A better place to start would be a survey of how many adults have their own dedicated vehicle.

electricslpnsld 9y ago

How sustainable is Lyft's pricing in comparison to Uber? I've been getting absolutely dirt cheap Uber Pool fares in the Bay Area. From my apartment to work the fare is often less than two dollars (which is around what BART would cost me), and I've even had fares less than dollar. I would be amazed if this is making anyone a profit, but if the price even doubled I would be way less likely to use Uber/Lyft on a whim.

Ascetik 9y ago
I honestly don't see how anyone makes money with fares so low.
indubitable 9y ago
Uber, and I imagine Lyft, are banking on automation. So what is sustainability? Self driving vehicles, at scale, could profitably provide service for a lower cost per mile than a person who owns their own vehicle. And that industry is going to have incredibly rapid growth likely culminating in a monopoly that could yield the largest company in existence. We drive in the ballpark of ~300billion miles per month [1]. Consider the worldwide market. A profit of even just a few cents a mile starts to look very insane very fast. [1] - https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/tvt.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring...
- hueving 9y ago
  Sustainability is having a business that doesn't depend on a rapid rollout of a technology that doesn't work in weather that most people won't trust for years and that isn't even legal yet.
  - indubitable 9y ago
    - By the time the technology is at the 99.999% level, the game will already be over. - Things are legal by default. If self driving vehicles are not explicitly made illegal by a state, they are legal. - Peoples' trust changes rapidly. I think as a culture we've become much more scared of technology and change, but the change from horses to internal combustion engines and brakes was many magnitudes 'scarier' than having AI manage navigation.

brndnmtthws 9y ago

Automobile ownership is dumb, but ridesharing isn't the answer either. Cities need to invest in public infrastructure, especially fast efficient public transit. People should also rediscover the joy of human power (walk, bike, run).

bpicolo 9y ago
I'm sure people in the US would love to walk to work, but the layout of US cities doesn't lend itself to that. People tend to live pretty dang far from where they work in the US.
- brndnmtthws 9y ago
  Move to a different city.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    I don't believe 200 million people in NYC would lessen the impact of the sprawl effect.
  - y2bd 9y ago
    What are some cities with decent enough public transportation and urban planning for pedestrians that also don’t suffer from lack of housing/exhorbitant housing prices? The top cities I can think of that satisfy the former unfortunately also have the latter.
    - WaxProlix 9y ago
      Some of us have both! It'd be nice if it were as simple a tradeoff as that.
    - theseatoms 9y ago
      Chicago
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

hamstercat 9y ago

I have my driver license, but I'm not buying a car anytime soon. I may at some point, but for now public transportation + renting a car when I really need one + Lyft/Uber/Taxi is a lot more cost-effective. On top of that, I'm sure I'd walk less because I'd find myself driving to places I walk to right now. So all in all for my context I'm quite happy without owning a car.

awwstn 9y ago

From Lyft's report: > We surveyed 30,000 passengers  and 37,000 drivers in 52 major cities. I suspect they may have done some generous extrapolation here...(e.g. "0.1% of the 30,000 Lyft passengers we surveyed got rid of their cars for ridesharing, so 0.1% of the U.S. population must have ditched cars for ridesharing")

clairity 9y ago
you've thrown suspicion on the study without any reasoning behind it. unless your population size is small, all studies extrapolate results. why do you think it's incorrect? for example, maybe the 52 cities they surveyed aren't representative of the whole population (this can be true if they chose the 52 largest cities rather than a random sampling of cities). give your comment some meat to chew on.
- hueving 9y ago
  Are you serious? Sampling Lyft riders for an life choice that makes them a Lyft rider absolutely would not extrapolate to the US population. It's like sampling people in an airport to get stats on how often everyone flies.
  - luhn 9y ago
    They aren't extrapolating to the US population, they're extrapolating to the Lyft userbase.
  - clairity 9y ago
    yes. note that the article doesn't extrapolate anything to the US population, that's something that @awwstn added in. lyft, in the article, says 250K people on its platform have dropped car ownership according to its survey. they extrapolate that total number from a survey of a sample of it riders and drivers in 52 cities.
    - hueving 9y ago
      Ok, then the error is much less egregious but there is still a sampling error I can see (at least based on my own usage pattern of Lyft). As a user of Lyft who owns a car the odds of me being sampled by this survey were significantly lower than the people that depend on Lyft daily. It's the same problem with surveying people in an airport to determine how often flyers fly. Heavy users are more likely to be oversampled because they are in the airports more frequently. So for Lyft to overcome this they would have needed to survey people in population adjusted parts from each usage tier. Otherwise the 1% or whatever that ride everyday are going to throw off the whole survey. Especially since the most likely to answer surveys are frequent users.

ajb 9y ago

Correlation != Causation. I moved to a city and sold my car, and shortly after used ride sharing for the first time. But I don't use it much and it certainly didn't cause me to sell it. I wouldn't be surprised of that's just how many of their customers recently moved to a city.

shafyy 9y ago
But then you wouldn't answer the question with "Yes" in their survey, would you?
- ajb 9y ago
  That depends what the question was. If they'd asked outright whether I specifically sold the car for that reason, they no, I wouldn't. But to be honest, I suspect the survey of being designed by their PR dept to generate this result, and I can imagine questions I might have answered 'yes' to that could then be interpreted in this way.
  - shafyy 9y ago
    Definitely. I tried to find the report to see if they have appended the questionnaire, but it returns a 404: https://take.lyft.com/economic-impact/Lyft-Drives-Economy.pdf https://take.lyft.com/economic-impact/Lyft-Drives-Economy.pd...
bllguo 9y ago
What a tiresome rebuttal, I'm sure Lyft's army of statisticians and data scientists managed to somehow overlook STAT 101.
- sidlls 9y ago
  Who says their army had the final say in what counts as belonging to the set of interest?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

clairity 9y ago

i've found the value proposition of lyft/uber less compelling over time. typically i can either (1) take a bus or train or (2) take a lyft line (or uber pool, if it's much cheaper for some reason--i don't mind uber paying part of my trip). but because my trips are often 2-3 miles or less, the time savings of a lyft is taken up by (1) pickup time, (2) driver confusion/mistakes, (3) poor driver routing due to not knowing the local traffic conditions, and (4) other riders added behind us en route. so no time savings, which (to me) is the big advantage of lyft/uber. the buses and trains are on a schedule, but they usually come often enough that the time savings of a lyft would be less than 5 minutes. i can pay $1.75 for the bus or train, or pay $4-5 for a lyft line. lyft line is usually more comfortable, but sometimes the car or other riders smell bad or are rude, so that's not always an obvious win. and if i'm not really rushed, a little walking on either end of the trip is a good thing. consistently paying 2-3x for short trips on lyft don't seem to make sense, and so my usage has gone down over time (occasionally i'm in a big hurry or are going farther, and in those cases lyft does work out better). i don't think this bodes well for lyft or uber solving the last-mile problem.

conanbatt 9y ago
A lyft line at 10pm on a sunday cost me 5.30 U$S. I did not have a direct bus from those two locations, and we were two people. Its a lesson on basic microeconomics. If its cheaper, more people will use it. And it is now way cheaper than cabs.

birdman3131 9y ago

I don't get how using lyft/uber as your only form of transportation can be at all cheaper. Let me run some basic math. Uber wants $11.50 to take me home right now. Lyft wants $13.40 $11.50 * 2 = $23/day 23 * 5 = $115/week $115 * 52 weeks = $5980/year (I am ignoring vacation weeks for now.) My yearly cost for car ownership are roughly as follows. (Assuming only work and back.) Insurance(1): $886/year Fuel(2): $292.50 Maintenance(3): $1000 Car purchase price(4): $1000 Total yearly cost: $3178 (1) I only run Liablilty + uninsured/underinsured but I run cheap cars (2) 2340 miles/year (Work is just under 4.5 miles.) Figure 20 mpg (I get better but have not calculated it in a while.) Figuring fuel prices at $2.50 although the last year has been much closer to $2 and less at times (3) This is way more than I would put into a car yearly if I only drove it to work and back but I do many of my own repairs so I am boosting it a bit for those unwilling to do so. Also including stuff like taxes and tags here (4)I buy cheap cars off craigslist, run them into the ground and replace them. My normal cost is $500-600 but by the time you add a new set of tires ($250-300 installed) and fix whatever random issues the car came with $1000 is closer to actual purchase price.

brianjoseff 9y ago
I also derive tremendous personal value from getting the opportunity to meet the people driving the cars. Hearing different perspectives, sharing interesting stories, and generally engaging in real human interaction are something I don't get enough of in my regular life, and Lyft has materially changed that. Of course unfortunate that I don't get enough of that outside of a transactional transportation arrangement, but it's real for me.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  I really appreciate you mentioning this. I occasionally drive for Lyft just to meet new people.
tgarv 9y ago
So you're using your own time to repair these cars to keep the cost down, which is totally fine, but I think it's unfair to not count some of that time as a "cost" of owning the car in your model. Also, do you not have to pay for parking anywhere? What about time spent finding parking (again, may not be an issue, but it certainly would be time-consuming and expensive where I live and work).

kayoone 9y ago

Meanwhile in Berlin, i just paid 14 EUR on uberCab to get to work last week because i had an important meeting and was late. For a 5km trip that took 10 minutes. Since uber is not allowed here and the normal stuff is so expensive, this whole market does not even exist here.

sidlls 9y ago

I stopped using a personal auto last year in favor of biking everywhere. When I'm injured or expecting to have to coordinate using the family car after work I'll catch a Lyft, but the availability of ride sharing had zero impact on my decision to give up a personal auto. I wonder if their metrics are counting folks like me in that quarter million (inadvertently or not).

robrenaud 9y ago

> Lyft wants to make a point: Its services help lessen traffic How can this be true? They'd need a very significant fraction of riders using lyft line (the multi-passenger service) to make up for the the overhead in the driver having to travel extra distance to pick someone up.

vidarh 9y ago
Or people opting for public transport part of the distance. One thing these services make convenient is to use them to get to/from train stations and the like without worrying about parking etc., or being stuck without a ride on the other end.
rootusrootus 9y ago
Indeed, hasn't this already been studied? Lyft & Uber have increased traffic, not reduced it, because the cars are driven a significant amount of the time without any passenger.
goialoq 9y ago
Reducing demand for (street0 parking increases road space for moving cars.

panda888888 9y ago

It's part of the reason I haven't bought a car. I'm in my mid 20s and didn't get my license in high school because insurance would have been too expensive (my parents wanted me to pay for it). I think driving is a good life skill so I got my license in my early 20s, but I still have zero desire to own a car. That said, I live in Seattle, where there is good public transportation. Here are my numbers: Parking (I work downtown): $250/month * 12 months = $3000 Parking spot at my apartment complex, 5 miles from city center: $130/month * 12 months = $1560 Gas: $100/month * 12 months = $1200 Car registration fees in Seattle: ~$400/year Insurance for a 25 year old in Seattle: ~$1500 (It might actually be higher?) Maintenance: we'll say $1000 So the total cost for me would be ~$8660+ per year. And that's excluding the cost of the car! With a 5 mile commute, public transit 3 days a week plus Uber/Lyft 4 days a week is cheaper, hands down. Uber/Lyft 7 days a week cuts it closer but is still cheaper. So yeah, it depends on where you live.

d4mi3n 9y ago
I'm in a similar situation, but from what I gather lifestyle factors heavily into the "do I need/want a car" equation. Kids, for example, usually mandate a car. Outdoor activities or any hobby that requires you haul around a lot of gear can also make having your own transportation a lot more appealing.
- cozzyd 9y ago
  I see people taking strollers on the bus all the time...
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Same here. Also bicycles with extra seats, if you happen to live in a city with some minimal infrastructure for it.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    we take our kids on the bus its fine, but not practical for daily commute, we drop all 4 of us off at a different spot on the way into the city. Just no good way to do that on the bus. once they are both in school, (and the school that is being remodeled so one of them is going across town, we should be able to take transit daily and the kids can walk too from school. There's more to it than if they can walk on and off the bus.

ataturk 9y ago

The hollowing out of the US middle class.

bungie4 9y ago

Living in a small northern Ontario town, I wish we had Lyft or Uber here. Instead, just taxi's (or family) and public transport. Our public transport is based on a center hub topology with the hub being downtown. So if my kid wants to take the bus to work, about kilometer away, it takes 45 minutes half of which is in the wrong direction and involves at least one transfer. Oddly, it takes even longer to get home. Our public transport is a joke.

fyfy18 9y ago
If it’s only a kilometre why not walk? That’s 15 minutes for the average person.
- bob_theslob646 9y ago
  Would you want to walk in below freezing weather?
  - ghaff 9y ago
    So long as there's a sidewalk? Yes? They make some very nice winter coats in Canada.
  - cozzyd 9y ago
    Assuming you have proper gear, it's much nicer than walking in 100+ degree weather
  - GhostVII 9y ago
    I walked like 2 kilometres to work everyday in Toronto in winter, it was fine. Just get a coat.
  - s0rce 9y ago
    Sure, I walked 30min everyday to grad school in Chicago weather. Unless it was pouring rain (ie. not freezing) then I would occasionally take the bus part of the way.
  - fyfy18 9y ago

lr4444lr 9y ago

Wait until these kids start families of their own and can't afford the space they need in a city with great public transit.

steego 9y ago
> Wait until these kids start families of their own Maybe they won't. I've talked about this with my wife, and I think we both concluded that cost of living played a subconscious role in my wife deciding not to have kids. There were other reasons, but that certainly soured the prospect. If I was to poll my coworkers (many of us older with no kids), I'm guessing they'd cite that as a contributing factor.

horsecaptin 9y ago

What about all the times a car owner takes a Lyft instead of taking a taxi? Does that mean they ditched their car or does it mean that they were in a place where they needed a taxi?

kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago

Not sure why so many people here are almost virtue signaling the act of not owning a drivers license. I agree—It's perfectly okay to not own a car if it doesn't make sense to your life situation. That being said, the ability to drive is nevertheless a useful skill and asset and at least in the United States, does not have a very high barrier to entry (for better or worse). There is so much in the United States that a car gives you access to (most National Parks or wilderness in general are not accessible by public transport). And I don't see human-driven cars disappearing from our world for the next 20–30 years at least.

ghaff 9y ago
It sort of blows my mind. I get that people have different interests and hobbies but the idea that people would live in San Francisco or Seattle and be "I'm fine with mostly just hanging around the city and looking at the mountains from here" is a bit hard for me to digest. And, as I said in another comment, renting a car has frequently been the obvious approach to get to places I need to get to on business trips.
- phil21 9y ago
  > I'm fine with mostly just hanging around the city and looking at the mountains from here That statement is very strange to me. If you really enjoy nature, I think the last possible thing you'd do is buy a car solely to go see said nature. Seems entirely wrong to me. Best thing you can do for those mountains if you love them is not purchase a vehicle.
  - s0rce 9y ago
    Best thing you can do to reduce your environmental impact is probably to kill yourself, or if you are not morally against it, probably kill as many people as you can. Baring this, you could just sit around and do nothing all the time. This isn't very fulfilling. Some people, myself included, want to enjoy the mountains and driving to them, while maybe not ideal, is the only way at the moment and for some can be worth the environmental cost. I'd wager the best thing you can do for the mountains is to rally for their future protection and educate the public on the importance of saving our public lands.

stephendedalus 9y ago

In 2017 I returned to America from living overseas. My mom passed away early in the year and I wanted nothing to do with shopping for a car, much less driving a car. So I just took Lyft to my new job until I had my feet under me and felt up to driving again. In the end I never felt up to driving full time. I now share my wife's car (we did get her a car eventually), but we only purchased the 1 car. We either ride in together, take mass transit, or one of us takes a Lyft. Sometimes we use Lyft to bridge to mass transit. Either way, "ride sharing" has definitely taken one more full time car off the road. I know it's not that simple and I know it's an economically dubious arrangement in the first place, but I think there's something to this idea if we could figure out the economics of it (how much drivers should be paid, etc.).

smileysteve 9y ago
> Either way, "ride sharing" has definitely taken one more full time car off the road one more full time car out of the parking lot.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  It's true that the same miles are still being accrued, just by a Lyft car rather than a personal car. However, when multiple people use a lyft car throughout the day, it is more efficient than having each person own their own car. Maintenance, insurance, and the construction of the car itself are all shared. Perhaps it's half a full time car off the road.

jellicle 9y ago

Lyft and Uber actively encourage and assist drivers to purchase, rent or lease vehicles in order to drive for them. How many cars have they put on the road? Ride-hailing services have massively increased car traffic in major cities: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congestion-pricing-nyc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congest...

pxlpshr 9y ago

My wife and I share my Jeep but I tried really hard to be carless in Austin, TX. I even experimented with a variety of Segways (at the expense of many jokes) and alternatives to a bike for the longer-hauls so that I'm not drenched in sweat when I get to the office. [1] I was totally fine when we lived downtown as it's becoming very walkable, but it's pretty impractical when you live even a short distance from the core. There are people that do it, we have decent running and bike trails, but it's just not suitable for us. My wife and I are on different time schedules which makes commuting together hard, and Austin lacks great public transportation combined with terrible traffic which drives up the Uber/Lyft cost per ride. We decided to buy a 2nd car again but this time a used EV (BMW i3) so that our total cost of ownership is really low. Based on my napkin math and the deal we got on the car, I suspect we'll break-even or better compared with using a ride sharing service. [1] Texas weather is also a thing...

hycaria 9y ago
Stay downtown then. If being carless was so important, that was the way to pursue it.
- pxlpshr 9y ago
  You speak with so much conviction about living in a shoe box with 3 dogs!
  - hycaria 9y ago
    Huh ? I'm not sure I understand. I live in a small place, I don't have pets. I enjoy life very much though.

ilaksh 9y ago

I have managed to get by for around three years now without a car in San Diego. I sold my car awhile back in order to keep working on a now defunct startup. Since then I have worked for other startups and still had a small income so it wasn't easy for me to get a car. I just take Uber everywhere (cheaper than Lyft). I can't afford to live downtown. Honestly if I were to "get a life" things are so spread out in socal and most everyone has a car.. I would almost have to buy a car if I were to somehow miraculously acquire a social life. But since I have no life and work from home, things have been significantly less stressful on a daily basis not having to drive. So it's kind of like I don't want to have reasons to start driving all over the place again because of the stress and risk. Since I only go out once or twice a week now the car trips seem like the primary risk in my life and I'm not eager to start braving traffic on a daily basis.

ttul 9y ago

Counter example: I did NOT own a car until after April of this year, which is when Car2Go discontinued service in my area. We don’t have Uber or Lyft, so those were never an option. Now, out of sheer necessity, I do own a car. And it costs me $550 a month for insurance, financing, and fuel. $550 would have bought a hell of a lot of Uber rides. More than enough for my needs.

Texasian 9y ago
Whoa, what kinda market had Car2Go but no Uber or Lyft? Is Zipcar not an option?
- ttul 9y ago
  Welcome to Vancouver.
  - afterburner 9y ago
    Ouch. How are the taxis?
jimmaswell 9y ago
You could've gotten a cheaper car, maybe even one you could pay for entirely upfront.
- ttul 9y ago
  But it would suck compared to the old option. So not comparable.
  - jimmaswell 9y ago
    Mine is from 1998 and it's perfectly comfortable. I definitely prefer it to transit.

sien 9y ago

Beyond what Lyft says, it's plausible if you look at total vehicle says in the US. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA Mind you, it's also very plausible it's not really true.

frandroid 9y ago

> It served 23 million different passengers, itself a 92 percent YoY increase Wow.

rootusrootus 9y ago

I've done the math, for sure. It would cost me $1000 per month to use Lyft or Uber for my commute. That's almost exactly twice what my running costs are for owning my commuter car.

qudat 9y ago

I live in Ann Arbor, which is a small college town that has a pretty good bus system considering we are in the midwest and so close to Detroit. I recently sold my car which was huge boost to my quality of life. Having said that, I had to pay relatively a lot for my house to have the luxury of being within 2 miles of downtown where I work. Even in this small town, automobile transportation can be extremely difficult. The UoM hospital parking is an absolute nightmare. Even getting the premium parking pass (~$250/mo) does not guarantee an employee a spot in any lot, let alone the one closest to their destination. Patients end up circling the lots for upwards of 90 minutes looking for a spot -- a common reason for showing up to an appointment late. There really is no other solution besides better public transportation here. Hopefully that will be the driving factor to increase bike lanes, bus lines, and incentivize people to only commute via automobile when absolutely necessary.

vr2018 9y ago

It won't be long until the majority of people will never need to leave their apartments. Amazon will deliver their meal subscription by drone each day (subscribe and save!), we will be able to work from home, and vacation using VR. Cars will be a thing of the past very, very soon. This will be better for the environment, and reduce congestion for any of the unlucky workers who are still required to be on the streets, i.e. garbage collectors, pizza delivery drivers, etc. I plan to support any politician in the future who is brave enough to enforce this arrangement via legislation. We have been consuming too much for too long, and we as a species are finally close to having the technology and will to limit our impact but not negatively impact our overall living standard.

toomanybeersies 9y ago
> and vacation using VR And I can visit China by visiting Chinatown.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

The main downside to not owning a car is that it's really hard to get anywhere outside the city or urban areas. If you enjoy the outdoors, it's a huge disadvantage. I don't currently own a car as I recently moved countries, and I'm basically confined to urban areas. Sure, I could hire a car, but that does start to get expensive quickly, especially if you have to pay the obscene premiums they charge for being under 25 years old. It's at least $150 to rent a car for the weekend, and then there's the hassle of trying to pick it up and drop it off. A reasonably good condition, reliable car, would cost me $2000, plus maybe $1000 per year for registration, insurance (third party only), and repairs.

pricetag 9y ago

Hah, sorry to self plug[0] but I feel it’s relevant. I just wrote about this the other day, except I was using Uber instead. It turns out that for my personal situation it’s not worth it to go with a ridesharing service. Right now I’m spending $4,560 a year on Uber. Does anyone have bicycle recommendations for under $400? [0] https://pricetaganalysis.com/2018/01/15/how-much-money-i-spent-commuting-with-uber/ https://pricetaganalysis.com/2018/01/15/how-much-money-i-spe...

fiftyacorn 9y ago
Id probably get secondhand How far are you cycling? It might be worth upping the price too and going electric
- pricetag 9y ago
  Yeah used is probably my best bet. It’s only 7 miles a day roundtrip.
  - fiftyacorn 9y ago
    7 is a perfect distance - what sort of roads? Id tend towards a commuting road bike with panniers, and mudguards/fenders.
    - pricetag 9y ago
      It’s a well paved road. Think suburban mainstreet. Thanks for your help!

lsc 9y ago

Yup. I ditched my car because of uber/lyft. the problem, from a business perspective, is that I live in silicon valley, and still have the expensive parts of owning a car; there's still the parking that came with my residence, and my employer is still paying for parking at work. (I dunno about you, but my desk is rather smaller than a car parking spot.) If Uber/Lyft were to raise their prices to profit-making levels, all I would have to do is buy the car, which is, as far as I can tell, not the most expensive part of the infrastructure required to support owning a car, at least not in my area. If uber/lyft want to make this sticky enough that they can raise their rates, they need to hurry to lobby the cities to build housing without parking, or otherwise allow me to opt-out of buying car infrastructure, otherwise... well, yeah, I'm going to get driven when it's subsidized (I take uber and lyft, whatever is cheapest) but once that subsidy goes away? if it becomes as expensive as I think it will, I'm just going to buy a car again.

krinchan 9y ago

It'd be interesting to see the number of households that dropped from two cars to one because they didn't really need the second car often enough. It's just more cost effective for us to use Lyft as a second car when needed, since it's maybe for 6 trips a month. However, before Uber/Lyft, having two cars was worth it because public transit where we live is trash if it isn't rail station to rail station. The buses run on 45 to 60 minute intervals and are always late.

ekianjo 9y ago

Does that result in less accidents/fatalities at this scale?

bbd 9y ago

in emergency situations like hurricane or earthquake, the current ridesharing system might provide very limited mobility when you need the most. Keep your options open at any time might be priceless sometimes.

twobyfour 9y ago
Or you get in a car and sit in traffic until you run out of gas and then you're stranded on a highway in the middle of nowhere during a hurricane, as happened to so many people in Houston this past fall. Few of our cities are actually evacuable in an emergency.

LeicaLatte 9y ago

Lyft for me. Amazon Prime for everything else including groceries and milk. For everything else I just walk. Serves me fine even in a state like Texas where local transit is absolute shit.

twobyfour 9y ago

And how many of its drivers bought a car just to drive for Uber/Lyft?