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Unfortch Bloomberg tried congestion pricing and it got strangled in the cot. That would be my preference too. Simple, market-based, fair, etc. . . . With the r

Unfortch Bloomberg tried congestion pricing and it got strangled in the cot. That would be my preference too. Simple, market-based, fair, etc. . . . With the ranks of uber cars in the city growing as much as they have the downtown traffic has become insane and I'm for anything that would relieve that congestion. I've been living along the Prince/Spring corridor for ~10 years now and the change in bumper-to-bumper traffic, particularly on summer Fridays is outrageous. However it's sliced, though there's a problem with the city being full of too many idling/circling cars. ~10 yellow cabs at 330k rides per day vs Uber's 60k cars at ~200k rides per day, as per the article. That means Yellow cabs are actually driving people somewhere most of the time they are on the road whereas Uber drivers are spending a lot of time idling and/or driving to or from a pickup/dropoff. All of that said I've been looking everywhere for good supportable numbers on how Uber has been affecting Manhattan traffic and it has been impossible to get anything other than the total number of Ubers on the road which isn't very helpful.

zone411 8y ago
Your data on the number of daily rides seems quite outdated. It was 400k/day for Uber, 112k for Lyft, and 300k for taxis in the latest article I saw (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/nyregion/uber-taxi-drivers-struggle.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/nyregion/uber-taxi-driver...) and I don't see your numbers in this article. You'd at least need to know the average trip length and the work time per driver to make any comparisons as to who's more efficient. But I agree with you that the congestion pricing would be a better idea.
- weeksie 8y ago
  That's super weird, maybe I had another NYT article open. Seriously, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. No numbers at all in that one though. Anyway quick googling for 2017 numbers: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16468716/uber-yellow-cab-nyc-surpass-ridership https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16468716/uber-yellow-cab-ny... So we have 10k medallion holders and ~60k uber drivers giving the same number of rides per day. No, there's not enough there to give a rigorous analysis but that is a vast difference in the amount of rides offered per car. Maybe most of those Uber rides are in the boroughs and that accounts for the difference in ratio, but I'd be very surprised if that was the whole story.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    Uber cars aren't on the road most of the time. Yellow cabs are. Those taxi medallions are expensive and they operate with shifts of drivers, the goal being to keep the taxi running 24/7, except when it needs maintenance. It's pretty typical for any given cab to have three different drivers running in 12 hour shifts. That way you keep it on the road all 168 hours of every week. An Uber just requires a relatively inexpesive TLC license plate, not a taxi medallion, so it's typically only driven by one driver, say an average of 40 hours per week.
    - weeksie 8y ago
      That's a nice story but even if each yellow cab was operating 24/7 that's 3x, not 6x. // edit: right, 7 days so ~4x.
      - user5994461 8y ago
        The given 60k figure is probably registered drivers, not active drivers in the last week. Also, uber drivers don't work 5 days a week, for example some only work on the week end or on peak hours, it can be additional income rather than a full time job.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        It explains the majority of the difference. It's simply not a remotely apple-to-apples comparison to compare yellow cab medallions, which are on the streets constantly, to rideshare license plates, which are not. The difference could even be more than 4X as another commenter points out, as many rideshare drivers are part-time.
        weeksie 8y ago
        I'm curious as to what story you think is being told? To me it's clear that the following things are true: * Thera are 6x the number of uber drivers on the road. * A significant portion of those are new traffic * Substantially fewer rides are given per uber/ride for hire car There's (much) more traffic and I have a hard time seeing what has changed in the city over the last ten years to make traffic so horrid other than Uber/hire cars. Maybe the decay of the subways? Still, ridership numbers aren't down and population hasn't grown much. If you've got any ideas I'd love to hear 'em. Listen, I love not dealing with Yellow Cabs. They're a pack of assholes and Uber is far more convenient but you're bending over backward to justify a marginal magnitude difference in rides per car. FWIW I think a hard cap on the number of hire cars is stupid but we are stuck with De Blasio and even Bloomberg couldn't get congestion pricing passed. Capping new ubers at 100k (the current total) is not really that onerous all considered. It's not like it's gonna make it 2010 again.

zone411 8y ago

Your data on the number of daily rides seems quite outdated. It was 400k/day for Uber, 112k for Lyft, and 300k for taxis in the latest article I saw (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/nyregion/uber-taxi-drivers-struggle.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/nyregion/uber-taxi-driver...) and I don't see your numbers in this article. You'd at least need to know the average trip length and the work time per driver to make any comparisons as to who's more efficient. But I agree with you that the congestion pricing would be a better idea.

weeksie 8y ago
That's super weird, maybe I had another NYT article open. Seriously, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. No numbers at all in that one though. Anyway quick googling for 2017 numbers: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16468716/uber-yellow-cab-nyc-surpass-ridership https://ny.curbed.com/2017/10/13/16468716/uber-yellow-cab-ny... So we have 10k medallion holders and ~60k uber drivers giving the same number of rides per day. No, there's not enough there to give a rigorous analysis but that is a vast difference in the amount of rides offered per car. Maybe most of those Uber rides are in the boroughs and that accounts for the difference in ratio, but I'd be very surprised if that was the whole story.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  Uber cars aren't on the road most of the time. Yellow cabs are. Those taxi medallions are expensive and they operate with shifts of drivers, the goal being to keep the taxi running 24/7, except when it needs maintenance. It's pretty typical for any given cab to have three different drivers running in 12 hour shifts. That way you keep it on the road all 168 hours of every week. An Uber just requires a relatively inexpesive TLC license plate, not a taxi medallion, so it's typically only driven by one driver, say an average of 40 hours per week.
  - weeksie 8y ago
    That's a nice story but even if each yellow cab was operating 24/7 that's 3x, not 6x. // edit: right, 7 days so ~4x.
    - user5994461 8y ago
      The given 60k figure is probably registered drivers, not active drivers in the last week. Also, uber drivers don't work 5 days a week, for example some only work on the week end or on peak hours, it can be additional income rather than a full time job.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      It explains the majority of the difference. It's simply not a remotely apple-to-apples comparison to compare yellow cab medallions, which are on the streets constantly, to rideshare license plates, which are not. The difference could even be more than 4X as another commenter points out, as many rideshare drivers are part-time.
      - weeksie 8y ago
        I'm curious as to what story you think is being told? To me it's clear that the following things are true: * Thera are 6x the number of uber drivers on the road. * A significant portion of those are new traffic * Substantially fewer rides are given per uber/ride for hire car There's (much) more traffic and I have a hard time seeing what has changed in the city over the last ten years to make traffic so horrid other than Uber/hire cars. Maybe the decay of the subways? Still, ridership numbers aren't down and population hasn't grown much. If you've got any ideas I'd love to hear 'em. Listen, I love not dealing with Yellow Cabs. They're a pack of assholes and Uber is far more convenient but you're bending over backward to justify a marginal magnitude difference in rides per car. FWIW I think a hard cap on the number of hire cars is stupid but we are stuck with De Blasio and even Bloomberg couldn't get congestion pricing passed. Capping new ubers at 100k (the current total) is not really that onerous all considered. It's not like it's gonna make it 2010 again.