12 ms·

Ride-Sharing Congests City Traffic

99 points by old-gregg 9y ago

twblalock 9y ago
This reveals that people who were previously reliant on public transit are making use of newer, better options. If cities don't like that, they should improve public transit.
- mikepurvis 9y ago
  Cities should always improve mass/public transit. The challenges with finding the political will and thus budget to make those improvements are well documented. And ride sharing gets most of the same hidden subsidies as private vehicles: roads are maintained for "free", congestion and pollution are externalized costs, and cars get implicit priority when there is not dedicated (or adequate) infrastructure for pedestrians, bikes, and mass transit vehicles (as well as more subtle stuff such as refusing to ban RTOR, despite how dangerous it is to people on foot). Because there's no good way of accounting for those costs or compensating for them, transit authorities are under constant scrutiny for their spending, and starved for money to put into system maintenance and capital improvements. But billion dollar highway expansions sail through approvals because it's "needed", as if the mass transit options which might have made the expansion unnecessary are somehow an extravagant amenity.
- mikepurvis 9y ago
  Note as well— transit authorities are often balancing conflicting requirements from their political overlords. In particular, maximizing profit vs. access. Politicians (especially non users of transit) often want to see as many of their constituents as possible "covered" by the transit system, which leads to meandering, infrequently serviced routes of limited usefulness. But then when this is done, there are complaints that the transit authority hasn't done enough to "build ridership" and justify its own existence. In a world where ride sharing is out-competing buses, perhaps there can be more attention given to straightening out bus routes and increasing service frequency accordingly. More on coverage vs. ridership: http://humantransit.org/2015/07/mega-explainer-the-ridership-recipe.html http://humantransit.org/2015/07/mega-explainer-the-ridership...
  - twblalock 9y ago
    Pretty much every other rich country manages to deliver good public transit, and I'm sure they face the same combination of incentives.
- ebragg09 9y ago
  Well, also, you've got the factor that if you can use uber to get to the places transit doesn't go, then you're more likely to go car-free. I live in ATL, and take transit to work, but if I had a car, I'd likely end up driving everywhere just because of the "well, I'm paying for a car, may as well save 5 minutes instead of paying for transit". Sure, some of the trips probably are instead of transit, but having uber as an option certainly dramatically increased how often I took transit.
headsoup 9y ago
Well at least parking should become more available for those that still do drive themselves around I suppose... As a public transport user I would appreciate less people being on the trains at least. I think the other point to consider is that a lot of those driving are probably from out of town, where catching a ride-sharing service in peak hours is going to be prohibitively expensive and therefore not viable. Perhaps ride sharing services could be banned during peak hours, which puts us back to yesterday.
- mikepurvis 9y ago
  A lot of cities have wised up to the insanity that is on-street parking, and converted it where possible into protected bike lanes, seating/parkettes, wider sidewalks, etc. There's something to be said for lessening the demand for parking in enabling that process.
  - jopsen 9y ago
    Indeed, you'll see this a lot of Europe. What's amazing is that American cities are new, have wide streets, and thus lots of room if they wanted to do something.
- sudouser 9y ago
  yes, in SF a lot of drivers are from out of town: fresno, sacramento, monterey. i’ve spoken with them
umanwizard 9y ago
Good! More people are using public infrastructure. Must mean it's worth it to them, right?
wils1245 9y ago
The availability of ridesharing lessens the need for car ownership, which is a huge win for cities because it reduces the need to devote space for the storage of automobiles. The article ignores this benefit entirely, then makes the contradictory points that a) ridesharing apps actually increase traffic, and b) ridesharing apps siphon riders from public traffic. All in all it’s written from the perspective of someone who hasn’t had to drive much in a high density urban area, where parking is nearly as much of a headache to figure out as traffic.
- stochastic_monk 9y ago
  It may reduce parking, but it does cause a net increase of miles driven compared to people driving themselves. It is also true that as more people rideshare, fewer take public transit, which is more efficient in fuel and the number of people-miles driven. These points are not in conflict.
  - freewilly1040 9y ago
    Ridesharing and public transit can play complementary roles, in which ridesharing solves the last mile problem for regional transit. It plays this role for many of my friends in the Bay Area, especially with CalTrain.
    - jopsen 9y ago
      Also, I feel like we've been in a trap where it's been politically impossible to make decent public transit, because there are so many car owners. With fewer car owners it might be possible to invest in public transit. For busses to really work in SF the city would have to close entire streets off from normal traffic and install traffic signals coupled with busses. Public transit would work, if we invested sufficiently. As in completely independent lanes, and no stopping due to traffic.
      - flukus 9y ago
        Car owners should be enthusiastic about public transport and the amount of traffic it removes from roads. What we need to fix is the belief that more roads will ever fix traffic congestion, it only makes it worse.
pdonis 9y ago
The problem described in the article is a short term problem. The reason for the increase in congestion is that the new services, Uber and Lyft, have added vehicles, not displaced them. The taxis and buses that were there before are still there, plus now there are ride sharing vehicles. But that situation won't last. If usage of taxis and buses decreases, fewer of them will be needed, so the number of them on the city streets will gradually decrease. That hasn't happened yet because those services are propped up by fees and taxes, so the fact that they are being out-competed can be hidden--for a while. Sooner or later that will cease to be feasible. The real question is whether, after all this has shaken out, congestion on city streets will be better than it was before ride sharing services came along. It seems like it ought to be, since ride sharing seems like a more efficient way to allocate vehicle space. But we won't know for sure until the experiment is done.
- rocky1138 9y ago
  > If usage of taxis and buses decreases Buses are way cheaper than Uber. Until it's cheaper for me to use Uber, there's still a good place for a city bus.
  - pdonis 9y ago
    > Buses are way cheaper than Uber. Only because they're subsidized, so that the price you pay per ride is well under the operating cost.
    - stevenwoo 9y ago
      Uber and Lyft current pricing is currently subsidized by VC's.
      - pdonis 9y ago
        Even if this is true (which it might well not be--VC investment money for a startup usually goes to build infrastructure, not to enable under-cost pricing; the former increases your runway while the latter decreases it), it's only for the short term; if Uber and Lyft don't start operating at a profit at some point in the near future, the VC investment will be gone and they will have a hard time getting more. Public transportation, by contrast, has been subsidized for decades, because it doesn't have to answer to market forces, only political ones.
spikels 9y ago
Not a very good article. The underlying studies are pretty weak so I would say the jury is still out on ride-sharing's impact on congestion. I advise anyone really interested to read the actual research as this has become highly politicized.
BurningFrog 9y ago
At least in San Francisco, the old Taxi system was a deliberately undersupplied crony capitalist disaster. It served to enrich a few Taxi medallion owners and left most people without any reliable way to get a ride from A to B most of the time. Now that we have functioning ride sharing systems, people actually can reliably get a ride from A to B. So of course we do that more than before, and there is more traffic. This is a symptom of a better functioning society with a better life for its residents.
- w-ll 9y ago
  It should still be said that if the availability of taxis matched uber/lyft, the fact that NO cash is involved. Meaning when you reach the drop off the riders can just exit the car, most likely saves an unbelievable amount of time and lane blockage compared to taxis.
  - ufo 9y ago
    I would suspect that the negative impact from increasing the number of cars on the road is by far going to outweigh any savings from less lane blockage.
    - w-ll 9y ago
      Dynamic pricing helps alleviate that. But also I notice more ride share drivers park and wait for rides in a parking lot, where as taxis seam to just slowly drive around blocks.
    - BurningFrog 9y ago
      During rush hour, that's very likely true, but I want to point out that during times of low traffic, when the roads are underutilized, increased traffic is actually a net positive.
  - vegashacker 9y ago
    And you don't have to explain the driver where you want to go. Other than being an extremely nice feature, I could see that decreasing lane blockage time as well.
tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
> While outfits like Uber are typically more efficient than traditional taxis, they both spend a significant amount of time milling about on the street as they wait for a fare. Instead of just finding a place to park or wait? That doesn't sound right.
- kelnos 9y ago
  Parking is still a reasonably scarce resource; I'd expect there wouldn't be enough parking available at any given time to accommodate all the drivers not currently giving someone a ride. In many cities there aren't really places you can just "stop". And often the parking that is available is metered, which might cut into a driver's income more than burning gas circling around would.
  - tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
    That's why I said "or wait". It should have been obvious I meant sit in a spot until you get a ride and not actually pay for a spot or leave the vehicle... You don't need an official parking spot to wait for 15 minutes, as long as you aren't blocking the bus.
    - kelnos 9y ago
      I addressed that: there really aren't that many places you can just "stop" in many cities, certainly not enough to cover all the ride-share drivers roaming around.
kelnos 9y ago
I think this is a shame, but for SF at least, it's kinda "well, duh". I would love to take transit more often, but when I have to go somewhere, and map it, I see things like: Car: 12 mins Transit: 40 mins Walking: 55 mins If I have the time, I'll walk. If I don't have the time, I'll take a Lyft (pre-Uber/Lyft I would usually drive myself, and then have to deal with the pain of parking). Why would I ever take the bus? I would love it if SF had a transit system like Tokyo's, or hell, even NYC's. But we don't, and there's little political will and money available to dig more subways. The new central subway is a start, but we really need to be building 5 of those, simultaneously, at all times. So... what's the solution here?
- KerrickStaley 9y ago
  You should consider bicycling. Bicycling is usually faster than transit and nearly as fast as car travel (at least for getting around SOMA and the surrounding areas that aren't well served by elevated freeway). You don't even need a bike! A Ford GoBike membership is $150/year, and rides under 30 minutes are free after that. I personally use Ford GoBike almost daily for getting around SF.
  - jopsen 9y ago
    Sorry, but biking in SF is a blood sport.
    - NegativeLatency 9y ago
      Got hit twice in two years. Can confirm.
      - jim-greer 9y ago
        Got hit zero times in twenty. But yeah it’s intimidating. My wife pretty much won’t ride with me. You do develop a kind of situational awareness over time.
  - kelnos 9y ago
scythe 9y ago
>Nearly 60 percent said they would have used public transportation, walked, biked or skipped the trip entirely Skipping the trip entirely is not a desirable economic outcome. The whole point of all this technology is to enable people to go places. If it doesn't do that, it's broken.
- chhs 9y ago
  I think you make a good point. The study[0] broke down the numbers further. > When asked how they would have made their current trip if ride-hailing hadn’t been an option, 12% said they would have walked or biked, and over two-fifths (42%) of respondents said they would have otherwise taken transit. Some of this "transit substitution" takes place during rush hours. Indeed, we estimate that 12% of all ride-hailing trips are substituting for a transit trip during the morning or afternoon commute periods; an additional 3% of riders during these times would have otherwise walked or biked. Overall, 15% of ride-hailing trips are adding cars to the region's roadways during the morning or afternoon rush hours. [0] Fare Choices - A Survey of Ride-Hailing Passengers in Metro Boston Report #1 http://www.mapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Fare-Choices-MAPC.pdf http://www.mapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Fare-Choices-...
thebradbain 9y ago
This is probably anecdotal evidence at best, but: As a current college student who was just beginning highschool in Dallas when Uber first starting becoming a real thing rather than a curiosity, I used Uber all the time to get around even before I had a license (sometimes even taking it to school in the morning), and continued to use the service once I did. Almost all of my peers did, too. I go to college in Los Angeles now and haven't had my car for a few years, so I mostly rely on a mix of the Metro in addition to Uber for the last mile problem. I figured if I can make LA work without a car, I can make it work anywhere. I have no plans to buy a car after college, instead choosing to rely on public transit + Uber. Discussions with my friends from home and college reveal this is not an uncommon plan upon graduation. Perhaps these studies are looking at the "long-term" effects of Uber too early? Could it be plausible that there's an "uber-generation" which will contribute to a sharp decline in car sales?
- JshWright 9y ago
  > I figured if I can make LA work without a car, I can make it work anywhere. I assume by "anywhere" you mean "any reasonably urban area".
  - dannyw 9y ago
    I live in a very suburban, if not 'literally next door to large national rainforest' area in Australia. Uber is not 100% reliable, but it works well 95% of the time and the rest can be solved via taking the bus.
    - JshWright 9y ago
      Fair enough, my comment doesn't apply to countries with functional public transit system (the US is not one of those countries...)
Pelam 9y ago
Captain obvious here again! There could be a danger of false dichotomy here. It needs to be kept in mind that generally there are more options than A) lots of people using ride sharing services or B) lots of people mainly using personal cars. Of course many cities in the US of A and the world in general are designed to support A to B single passenger rides. This means lots of are covered by parking spaces and assorted infrastructure. If however cities are already designed or can be transformed in a way that most people are assumed to not own a car and even ride sharing systems can be accounted for, then most likely the congestion situation is affected as well.
- cimmanom 9y ago
  That isn't even happening in NYC, where most people in fact don't own a car, and virtually nobody (who lives in the 5 boroughs) commutes in one. We're still prioritizing on street parking above transit, cycling, and even pedestrianism - and the streets are clogged with Ubers and with the vehicles of suburban commuters, to the point that buses might as well be pedal powered for how fast they move, and cycling is suicidal.
  - vonmoltke 9y ago
    > We're still prioritizing on street parking above transit, cycling, and even pedestrianism - and the streets are clogged with Ubers and with the vehicles of suburban commuters I'm not sure what part of the city you are referring to, but this is not what I see in the lower half of Midtown. I see few personal vehicles, and none are parked on the street. In fact, most street parking is explicitly commercial-only during the day on weekdays. I agree that a large amount of the congestion is caused by hired cars of one sort or another, but contractors, delivery trucks, and sidewalk vendors are #2 and the primary drivers of street parking availability (in Midtown).
cdoxsey 9y ago
At least in NYC the congestion has many causes: - the continued growth of the population - active measures taken to eliminate lanes and slow traffic (the avg speed is down to 6mph) - the continued decline of the transit systems (the subway system is dirty, full of homeless people and unreliable... on time arrival has declined significantly) - also its not just the subway, nj transit and lirr both have major reliability and cost problems. I take a train from nj every day and I consider myself lucky if my train isn't cancelled once every other week, leading to 3 hour commutes. I dread the next major tunnel failure leading to a week or more of no transit options - the inability to add more capacity to aging infrastructure. It took over 50 years to add the 2nd ave subway and it still isn't finished. almost everything is packed at rush hour leading to a deeply unpleasant commute - taxi service was artificially limited which led to the proliferation of ride sharing services. They're all subsidized by the companies though, so its hard to know if they're actually viable businesses - recently enforcement has been more strict in midtown. You will see traffic police at most intersections, and drivers are ticketed for blocking lanes. The blatant disregard for laws is a major issue. Cars and cyclists regularly run red lights and people walk into traffic ignoring crossing signals, which leads to cars slamming on their breaks, and then because traffic stops, all the other people on the sidewalk decide to cross, and the whole thing grinds to a halt.

99 points by old-gregg 9y ago

This reveals that people who were previously reliant on public transit are making use of newer, better options. If cities don't like that, they should improve public transit.

mikepurvis 9y ago
Cities should always improve mass/public transit. The challenges with finding the political will and thus budget to make those improvements are well documented. And ride sharing gets most of the same hidden subsidies as private vehicles: roads are maintained for "free", congestion and pollution are externalized costs, and cars get implicit priority when there is not dedicated (or adequate) infrastructure for pedestrians, bikes, and mass transit vehicles (as well as more subtle stuff such as refusing to ban RTOR, despite how dangerous it is to people on foot). Because there's no good way of accounting for those costs or compensating for them, transit authorities are under constant scrutiny for their spending, and starved for money to put into system maintenance and capital improvements. But billion dollar highway expansions sail through approvals because it's "needed", as if the mass transit options which might have made the expansion unnecessary are somehow an extravagant amenity.
mikepurvis 9y ago
Note as well— transit authorities are often balancing conflicting requirements from their political overlords. In particular, maximizing profit vs. access. Politicians (especially non users of transit) often want to see as many of their constituents as possible "covered" by the transit system, which leads to meandering, infrequently serviced routes of limited usefulness. But then when this is done, there are complaints that the transit authority hasn't done enough to "build ridership" and justify its own existence. In a world where ride sharing is out-competing buses, perhaps there can be more attention given to straightening out bus routes and increasing service frequency accordingly. More on coverage vs. ridership: http://humantransit.org/2015/07/mega-explainer-the-ridership-recipe.html http://humantransit.org/2015/07/mega-explainer-the-ridership...
- twblalock 9y ago
  Pretty much every other rich country manages to deliver good public transit, and I'm sure they face the same combination of incentives.
ebragg09 9y ago
Well, also, you've got the factor that if you can use uber to get to the places transit doesn't go, then you're more likely to go car-free. I live in ATL, and take transit to work, but if I had a car, I'd likely end up driving everywhere just because of the "well, I'm paying for a car, may as well save 5 minutes instead of paying for transit". Sure, some of the trips probably are instead of transit, but having uber as an option certainly dramatically increased how often I took transit.

headsoup 9y ago

Well at least parking should become more available for those that still do drive themselves around I suppose... As a public transport user I would appreciate less people being on the trains at least. I think the other point to consider is that a lot of those driving are probably from out of town, where catching a ride-sharing service in peak hours is going to be prohibitively expensive and therefore not viable. Perhaps ride sharing services could be banned during peak hours, which puts us back to yesterday.

mikepurvis 9y ago
A lot of cities have wised up to the insanity that is on-street parking, and converted it where possible into protected bike lanes, seating/parkettes, wider sidewalks, etc. There's something to be said for lessening the demand for parking in enabling that process.
- jopsen 9y ago
  Indeed, you'll see this a lot of Europe. What's amazing is that American cities are new, have wide streets, and thus lots of room if they wanted to do something.
sudouser 9y ago
yes, in SF a lot of drivers are from out of town: fresno, sacramento, monterey. i’ve spoken with them

umanwizard 9y ago

Good! More people are using public infrastructure. Must mean it's worth it to them, right?

wils1245 9y ago

The availability of ridesharing lessens the need for car ownership, which is a huge win for cities because it reduces the need to devote space for the storage of automobiles. The article ignores this benefit entirely, then makes the contradictory points that a) ridesharing apps actually increase traffic, and b) ridesharing apps siphon riders from public traffic. All in all it’s written from the perspective of someone who hasn’t had to drive much in a high density urban area, where parking is nearly as much of a headache to figure out as traffic.

stochastic_monk 9y ago
It may reduce parking, but it does cause a net increase of miles driven compared to people driving themselves. It is also true that as more people rideshare, fewer take public transit, which is more efficient in fuel and the number of people-miles driven. These points are not in conflict.
- freewilly1040 9y ago
  Ridesharing and public transit can play complementary roles, in which ridesharing solves the last mile problem for regional transit. It plays this role for many of my friends in the Bay Area, especially with CalTrain.
  - jopsen 9y ago
    Also, I feel like we've been in a trap where it's been politically impossible to make decent public transit, because there are so many car owners. With fewer car owners it might be possible to invest in public transit. For busses to really work in SF the city would have to close entire streets off from normal traffic and install traffic signals coupled with busses. Public transit would work, if we invested sufficiently. As in completely independent lanes, and no stopping due to traffic.
    - flukus 9y ago
      Car owners should be enthusiastic about public transport and the amount of traffic it removes from roads. What we need to fix is the belief that more roads will ever fix traffic congestion, it only makes it worse.

pdonis 9y ago

The problem described in the article is a short term problem. The reason for the increase in congestion is that the new services, Uber and Lyft, have added vehicles, not displaced them. The taxis and buses that were there before are still there, plus now there are ride sharing vehicles. But that situation won't last. If usage of taxis and buses decreases, fewer of them will be needed, so the number of them on the city streets will gradually decrease. That hasn't happened yet because those services are propped up by fees and taxes, so the fact that they are being out-competed can be hidden--for a while. Sooner or later that will cease to be feasible. The real question is whether, after all this has shaken out, congestion on city streets will be better than it was before ride sharing services came along. It seems like it ought to be, since ride sharing seems like a more efficient way to allocate vehicle space. But we won't know for sure until the experiment is done.

rocky1138 9y ago
> If usage of taxis and buses decreases Buses are way cheaper than Uber. Until it's cheaper for me to use Uber, there's still a good place for a city bus.
- pdonis 9y ago
  > Buses are way cheaper than Uber. Only because they're subsidized, so that the price you pay per ride is well under the operating cost.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    Uber and Lyft current pricing is currently subsidized by VC's.
    - pdonis 9y ago
      Even if this is true (which it might well not be--VC investment money for a startup usually goes to build infrastructure, not to enable under-cost pricing; the former increases your runway while the latter decreases it), it's only for the short term; if Uber and Lyft don't start operating at a profit at some point in the near future, the VC investment will be gone and they will have a hard time getting more. Public transportation, by contrast, has been subsidized for decades, because it doesn't have to answer to market forces, only political ones.

spikels 9y ago

Not a very good article. The underlying studies are pretty weak so I would say the jury is still out on ride-sharing's impact on congestion. I advise anyone really interested to read the actual research as this has become highly politicized.

BurningFrog 9y ago

At least in San Francisco, the old Taxi system was a deliberately undersupplied crony capitalist disaster. It served to enrich a few Taxi medallion owners and left most people without any reliable way to get a ride from A to B most of the time. Now that we have functioning ride sharing systems, people actually can reliably get a ride from A to B. So of course we do that more than before, and there is more traffic. This is a symptom of a better functioning society with a better life for its residents.

w-ll 9y ago
It should still be said that if the availability of taxis matched uber/lyft, the fact that NO cash is involved. Meaning when you reach the drop off the riders can just exit the car, most likely saves an unbelievable amount of time and lane blockage compared to taxis.
- ufo 9y ago
  I would suspect that the negative impact from increasing the number of cars on the road is by far going to outweigh any savings from less lane blockage.
  - w-ll 9y ago
    Dynamic pricing helps alleviate that. But also I notice more ride share drivers park and wait for rides in a parking lot, where as taxis seam to just slowly drive around blocks.
  - BurningFrog 9y ago
    During rush hour, that's very likely true, but I want to point out that during times of low traffic, when the roads are underutilized, increased traffic is actually a net positive.
- vegashacker 9y ago
  And you don't have to explain the driver where you want to go. Other than being an extremely nice feature, I could see that decreasing lane blockage time as well.

tytytytytytytyt 9y ago

> While outfits like Uber are typically more efficient than traditional taxis, they both spend a significant amount of time milling about on the street as they wait for a fare. Instead of just finding a place to park or wait? That doesn't sound right.

kelnos 9y ago
Parking is still a reasonably scarce resource; I'd expect there wouldn't be enough parking available at any given time to accommodate all the drivers not currently giving someone a ride. In many cities there aren't really places you can just "stop". And often the parking that is available is metered, which might cut into a driver's income more than burning gas circling around would.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
  That's why I said "or wait". It should have been obvious I meant sit in a spot until you get a ride and not actually pay for a spot or leave the vehicle... You don't need an official parking spot to wait for 15 minutes, as long as you aren't blocking the bus.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    I addressed that: there really aren't that many places you can just "stop" in many cities, certainly not enough to cover all the ride-share drivers roaming around.

kelnos 9y ago

I think this is a shame, but for SF at least, it's kinda "well, duh". I would love to take transit more often, but when I have to go somewhere, and map it, I see things like: Car: 12 mins Transit: 40 mins Walking: 55 mins If I have the time, I'll walk. If I don't have the time, I'll take a Lyft (pre-Uber/Lyft I would usually drive myself, and then have to deal with the pain of parking). Why would I ever take the bus? I would love it if SF had a transit system like Tokyo's, or hell, even NYC's. But we don't, and there's little political will and money available to dig more subways. The new central subway is a start, but we really need to be building 5 of those, simultaneously, at all times. So... what's the solution here?

KerrickStaley 9y ago
You should consider bicycling. Bicycling is usually faster than transit and nearly as fast as car travel (at least for getting around SOMA and the surrounding areas that aren't well served by elevated freeway). You don't even need a bike! A Ford GoBike membership is $150/year, and rides under 30 minutes are free after that. I personally use Ford GoBike almost daily for getting around SF.
- jopsen 9y ago
  Sorry, but biking in SF is a blood sport.
  - NegativeLatency 9y ago
    Got hit twice in two years. Can confirm.
    - jim-greer 9y ago
      Got hit zero times in twenty. But yeah it’s intimidating. My wife pretty much won’t ride with me. You do develop a kind of situational awareness over time.
- kelnos 9y ago

scythe 9y ago

>Nearly 60 percent said they would have used public transportation, walked, biked or skipped the trip entirely Skipping the trip entirely is not a desirable economic outcome. The whole point of all this technology is to enable people to go places. If it doesn't do that, it's broken.

chhs 9y ago
I think you make a good point. The study[0] broke down the numbers further. > When asked how they would have made their current trip if ride-hailing hadn’t been an option, 12% said they would have walked or biked, and over two-fifths (42%) of respondents said they would have otherwise taken transit. Some of this "transit substitution" takes place during rush hours. Indeed, we estimate that 12% of all ride-hailing trips are substituting for a transit trip during the morning or afternoon commute periods; an additional 3% of riders during these times would have otherwise walked or biked. Overall, 15% of ride-hailing trips are adding cars to the region's roadways during the morning or afternoon rush hours. [0] Fare Choices - A Survey of Ride-Hailing Passengers in Metro Boston Report #1 http://www.mapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Fare-Choices-MAPC.pdf http://www.mapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Fare-Choices-...

thebradbain 9y ago

This is probably anecdotal evidence at best, but: As a current college student who was just beginning highschool in Dallas when Uber first starting becoming a real thing rather than a curiosity, I used Uber all the time to get around even before I had a license (sometimes even taking it to school in the morning), and continued to use the service once I did. Almost all of my peers did, too. I go to college in Los Angeles now and haven't had my car for a few years, so I mostly rely on a mix of the Metro in addition to Uber for the last mile problem. I figured if I can make LA work without a car, I can make it work anywhere. I have no plans to buy a car after college, instead choosing to rely on public transit + Uber. Discussions with my friends from home and college reveal this is not an uncommon plan upon graduation. Perhaps these studies are looking at the "long-term" effects of Uber too early? Could it be plausible that there's an "uber-generation" which will contribute to a sharp decline in car sales?

JshWright 9y ago
> I figured if I can make LA work without a car, I can make it work anywhere. I assume by "anywhere" you mean "any reasonably urban area".
- dannyw 9y ago
  I live in a very suburban, if not 'literally next door to large national rainforest' area in Australia. Uber is not 100% reliable, but it works well 95% of the time and the rest can be solved via taking the bus.
  - JshWright 9y ago
    Fair enough, my comment doesn't apply to countries with functional public transit system (the US is not one of those countries...)

Pelam 9y ago

Captain obvious here again! There could be a danger of false dichotomy here. It needs to be kept in mind that generally there are more options than A) lots of people using ride sharing services or B) lots of people mainly using personal cars. Of course many cities in the US of A and the world in general are designed to support A to B single passenger rides. This means lots of are covered by parking spaces and assorted infrastructure. If however cities are already designed or can be transformed in a way that most people are assumed to not own a car and even ride sharing systems can be accounted for, then most likely the congestion situation is affected as well.

cimmanom 9y ago
That isn't even happening in NYC, where most people in fact don't own a car, and virtually nobody (who lives in the 5 boroughs) commutes in one. We're still prioritizing on street parking above transit, cycling, and even pedestrianism - and the streets are clogged with Ubers and with the vehicles of suburban commuters, to the point that buses might as well be pedal powered for how fast they move, and cycling is suicidal.
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  > We're still prioritizing on street parking above transit, cycling, and even pedestrianism - and the streets are clogged with Ubers and with the vehicles of suburban commuters I'm not sure what part of the city you are referring to, but this is not what I see in the lower half of Midtown. I see few personal vehicles, and none are parked on the street. In fact, most street parking is explicitly commercial-only during the day on weekdays. I agree that a large amount of the congestion is caused by hired cars of one sort or another, but contractors, delivery trucks, and sidewalk vendors are #2 and the primary drivers of street parking availability (in Midtown).

cdoxsey 9y ago

At least in NYC the congestion has many causes: - the continued growth of the population - active measures taken to eliminate lanes and slow traffic (the avg speed is down to 6mph) - the continued decline of the transit systems (the subway system is dirty, full of homeless people and unreliable... on time arrival has declined significantly) - also its not just the subway, nj transit and lirr both have major reliability and cost problems. I take a train from nj every day and I consider myself lucky if my train isn't cancelled once every other week, leading to 3 hour commutes. I dread the next major tunnel failure leading to a week or more of no transit options - the inability to add more capacity to aging infrastructure. It took over 50 years to add the 2nd ave subway and it still isn't finished. almost everything is packed at rush hour leading to a deeply unpleasant commute - taxi service was artificially limited which led to the proliferation of ride sharing services. They're all subsidized by the companies though, so its hard to know if they're actually viable businesses - recently enforcement has been more strict in midtown. You will see traffic police at most intersections, and drivers are ticketed for blocking lanes. The blatant disregard for laws is a major issue. Cars and cyclists regularly run red lights and people walk into traffic ignoring crossing signals, which leads to cars slamming on their breaks, and then because traffic stops, all the other people on the sidewalk decide to cross, and the whole thing grinds to a halt.