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Study finds ride-sharing intensifies urban road congestion
- scythe 5y ago>Specifically, they noted that congestion increased by almost 1 percent while the duration of congestion rose by 4.5 percent. They also found a 8.9 percent drop in public transport ridership and an insignificant decrease of only 1 percent in private vehicle ownership. This juxtaposition sounded weaselly, so I went to the paper: >TNCs had insignificant effect on vehicle ownership on average, but they reduced vehicle ownership by 1% in the top ten transit MSAs. I.e. the effect on vehicle ownership was only significant when you look specifically at large cities.
- throwawayboise 5y agoBecause Uber drivers are not always transporting people. About half the time, they are driving their empty car ("deadheading") on their way to pick someone up. This still contributes to traffic congestion. The study also found a corresponding 9% drop in public transport ridership.
- rahimnathwani 5y agoWhy half the time? I'd expect that Uber tries to allocate a nearby driver, so that most pickups are near the last drop-off. And of course with Uber Pool and Lyft Line, there may be only a slight detour for pickups. This situation seems better than taxis, which drive an empty car around when they're NOT EVEN on their way to pick someone up. They'll just drive around and around waiting for someone to stick their arm out.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoI think Boise was making a general point.
- pasttense01 5y agoActually if you look at the complete research report they quote a study which says 40% not 50%: "due to the substantial deadheading miles (miles travelled without a passenger), which account for at least 40.8% of TNC miles"
- whatever1 5y agoThey also just drive around "hot" spots with the hope that they will get a customer. Realistically Uber will not match a customer with a driver who is 45' away. They also cannot park like taxis do in designated locations (they are very rare for uber), so they have to keep driving.
- mtalantikite 5y ago> This situation seems better than taxis, which drive an empty car around when they're NOT EVEN on their way to pick someone up. This is true, but mainly for dense cities prior to Uber/Lyft, and even then cabs driving looking for fares would be in the central part of the city. Here in NYC back in the day I’d rarely find a cab just driving around in Brooklyn, you’d typically find them on main roads driving back to Manhattan after dropping off their last fare if you did. Now there are just a lot more for hire vehicles driving around the city in general. There was an artificial shortage of medallions, with about 14000 of them back before the apps, plus a bunch of for hire car services (and dollar vans on Flatbush). Now there’s about 100,000 cars for hire in NYC.
- wolverine876 5y agoCertainly, there is spare capacity of empty ride-sharing cars; it's not just-in-time inventory where they drop someone off and immediately pick someone up. Also, in many jurisdictions, capacity for taxis is limited; that's what the medallions are for. Ride-sharing capacity is not limited. I haven't seen data on whether taxis or ride-sharing have more spare capacity in terms of miles, but I have seen data that ride-sharing vehicles significantly increase traffic.
- mxcrossb 5y agoThings may have changed, but last time I read about this topic, Uber is doing a lot less to help the efficiency of the drivers than you’d think. Making real money requires the driver’s themselves to learn their local area’s hotspots and strategies. Which probably makes sense from their incentive perspective.
- asdff 5y agoDrivers ultimately choose to snag rides or not. Many a times I see local drivers circling my area, only the one who ends up grabbing my ride many times is the one 10 miles away on the freeway heading the opposite direction. Now I need to wait 15 minutes while they exit and double back, and if I cancel I might get ranked as a bad passenger.
- darksaints 5y agoIt's not just deadheading that is the problem. It's also the traffic caused by them stopping in the middle of lanes for pickups and dropoffs, driving around going 3mph looking for their pickup, and various other behaviors. None of those things are very problematic on very small scales...an inconvenience at most. But just a tad more than that, and it can create absolute chaos.
- silverlake 5y agoFTA: "The researchers think that the substantial deadheading miles (miles traveled without a passenger) by TNCs could contribute to the TNC’s negative impact on road congestion. According to some other studies, approximately 40.8 percent of TNC miles are deadheading miles." Uber could optimize this by predicting where demand will be and telling a subset of drivers to move there. Right now drivers predict and move to hotspots in herds.
- prsutherland 5y agoWhat does a 1% increase in congestion mean for people in traffic? How much value did that increase in congestion (and environmental impact) provide ride-sharing customers?
- bobwaycott 5y ago> What does a 1% increase in congestion mean for people in traffic? Well, the article indicates the increase was 1% in amount of congestion, and 4.5% in duration. So, I suppose that means people in traffic are in traffic longer?
- bluGill 5y agoA fair amount of people will adjust their working hours to get a reasonable commute. They would prefer to work 8-5 (because that is what the day is setup to be - at least one friend (or their kid's school!) is on a fixed shift that cannot change, so matching shifts makes sense as it means the most time outside of work. However if that ideal time is too crowded they will adjust to a more reasonable compromise for their situation. That is why rush hour exists. In Des Monies it is more like 15 minutes, in Minneapolis it is several hours. The idea is the same though: the time when the most people are trying to get someplace at the same time.
- after_care 5y agoThe title is misleading, it found a 1% increase in congestion.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dmoy 5y ago1% in amount, 4.5% in duration
- Animats 5y agoThey don't mean "ride sharing". They mean unlicensed taxi services such as Uber. It's not carpooling.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fennecfoxen 5y ago"Unlicensed taxi" is a stock phrase from anti-Uber scaremongering, but my Uber is licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission. (Well, these days it's more an occasional Lyft, but still.)
- xenocyon 5y agoSo call it a taxi then. It's still not a rideshare (except for the actual shared ride services like UberPool).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoThat is probably an exception, and Uber and Lyft were definitely breaking the law acting as unlicensed taxi for the vast majority of their existence.
- lghh 5y agoGood. Everyone who is not relying on the strongmen with guns to put a moat around their business is benefiting from Uber and Lyft.
- wolverine876 5y ago> strongmen with guns You mean the democratic choice of local citizens?
- mimikatz 5y agoPeople prefer an Uber to public transportation.
- manigandham 5y agoOften public transportation isn't available, isn't reliable, or still requires last mile coverage from rideshares.
- bluGill 5y agoAccording to their medical doctor: the vast majority of people would be better off if they walked the last mile. I don't even need to be a medical doctor to make that obvious statement. There are a small minority who cannot walk that far, and so yes we should provide something for them. However that is a tiny minority.
- manigandham 5y ago"Last mile" is a term referring to the final connection from the transport hub to the destination; it doesn't mean a literal mile. A major problem with public transport in many cities is that this "last mile" segment is often several miles which would be hours of walking and therefore necessitates ridesharing/vehicle travel.
- bluGill 5y agoNo, if it is more than a mile there is no public transit to those people at all. Don't try to pretend there is, just subtract all such people from the transit roles. There is one exception: a park and ride lot can work in some cases. though then the last mile is solved. In general I don't like park and ride, but they have their place.
- manigandham 5y agoPublic transit is shared transport for the general public. It's not defined by how close it is to people, however last-mile logistics is a common reason for lack of usage. All of this is covered in my original comment. Your replies are nonsensical and add nothing to this discussion. It seems you're replying just to argue and I'm not interested.
- bmitc 5y agoI expect the same thing or worse with “self-driving” cars.
- bluGill 5y agoTrue, but slightly different. Self driving cars will mostly leave the built up area looking for free parking as close as possible. Gas (or electric) is a lot cheaper than downtown parking, so for those going to work sending your car to find cheap parking is cost effective even though it adds to congestion - and you aren't even in the car to care. There will be a few people who give up the car for taxis since without paying a driver taxis are cheaper, but those won't be near as popular as people think.
- opportune 5y agoI have no way of knowing whether this true in aggregate, but personally the existence of ride sharing has led to me dropping my car, since it covers some tail-end last mile problems that public transit cannot. Maybe there was only a 1 percent drop in car ownership, but if public transit were improved I think ride sharing would still be solving important last mile problems.
- wdb 5y agoI think for last mile, the bike is a great solution, if the infrastructure would be there. Bike lanes separate from car roads etc.
- judge2020 5y agoIt also seems like e-scooters would solve this given the proper infrastructure and planning, but those have other problems and that infrastructure wasn't there when the idea was done 2018/2019.
- wdb 5y agoYeah, it has to be safe to cycle (or scoot) and the infrastructure to exist but that's in my opinion not the case in American big cities.
- judge2020 5y agoMaybe rented Segways would work better :)
- opportune 5y agoThis is actually what I do for most last-mile needs, but I use ride share when I need to travel 5+ miles one way quickly. Also, scooters and bikes just aren't safe at night or in rainy/windy weather.
- pvarangot 5y agoIt's impossible to sustain most big cities with just bikes for the last mile problem. It's just not practical to do your last mile on the cold or the rain every single day if you have a coastal or a very cold winter. Whatever that thing is that's there for those days is probably very similar to ride sharing, or it's just very good public transportation so that it's the last block and not the last mile.
- oceliker 5y agoThat makes sense. Congestion-wise, if you’re not carpooling, it’s no different than the case where every single Uber rider chose to drive their own car instead. It does alleviate parking issues, which is certainly nice in downtown.
- jayd16 5y agoI wonder how this contrasts with any added throughput. If we move away from being bound by available parking, would we not increase congestion but also throughput?
- burnished 5y agoExact same experience. Used to work as a concierge in a downtown and while taxi calling wasn't a huge part of my job I definitely did enough of it to hate working with taxi companies. I think that must be where the smaller luxury towncar services used to make a lot of money, recommendations from people like me for people trying to catch a flight and willing to pay extra for some certainty.
- asdff 5y agoStudies have shown that uber doesn't necessarily take drivers off the road, but riders off bikes, trains, and busses, and pedestrians off of sidewalks. Considering a bus or a train as orders of magnitude higher throughput than a private car, throughput has probably gone down. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-28/uber-s-impact-on-transit-in-new-york-city-reexamined https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-28/uber-s-im...
- JohnJamesRambo 5y agoWell yeah I can see their ass circling the block like vultures constantly looking for a pickup in the app.
- benhurmarcel 5y agoJust like taxis
- yalogin 5y agoThis is not new, there have been other studies that pointed this out. An economic engine like ride sharing will not be stopped because of congestion. Unfortunately, there is going to be a lot of noise year over year. Delivery robots are going to be ubiquitous and are going to swarm streets to the extent that it will be a pest in cities and crowded areas. Remains to be seen what the lawmakers do about it.
- wolverine876 5y ago> An economic engine like ride sharing How is it an economic engine? Who benefits? The jobs don't apy well. AFAICT, the main economic beneficiary is the shareholders of the ride-sharing companies, but I genuinely wonder what the truth is.
- kortilla 5y agoThe main beneficiaries are the millions of daily users FFS. Uber/Lyft provide service in markets where taxis were so unreliable they were fundamentally broken. In the suburbs/college towns/etc in the US, getting a taxi had to be done hours in advance if you wanted a guarantee they would even show up. Otherwise you would call a dispatcher on the phone, tell them where you were and wanted to go, then they would say something like “someone should be there in 30-60 minutes”. Then it would be about a 30% chance they would actually show. That’s right, too much to drink at a bar around closing time and you will likely end up just walking home drunk in the dark. Really great industry. This was my experience throughout all of the 00s in multiple large suburban cities and college towns. An absolutely dead industry kept alive by regulatory capture that deserved to get fucked.
- wolverine876 5y agoI was alive then too. I don't recall having trouble getting around without Uber and Lyft (which, despite the story that you repeat above, provide service in markets well-served by taxis and public transit).
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- marlor 5y agoThe rise in ride-sharing requires a rethink in transportation planning within cities and campuses. We did a study for a major university after it found a huge increase in traffic volumes within its main entry “plaza”, and an associated logjam that radiated from there. A large proportion of that traffic was due to ride-sharing drivers circulating in and around the plaza waiting for passengers. The university built a dedicated ride-sharing area nearby and prohibited ride-sharing services from the plaza. This largely solved the problems (although enforcement is an ongoing issue). Ride-sharing absolutely can cause local increases in congestion if nothing is done to accommodate it. However, it’s a modern reality, so planners who don’t accommodate it aren’t doing their jobs.
- wolverine876 5y agoThe obvious solution is to the free-market one: Businesses who want to use a scarce (in the economic sense, i.e., 'limited') public good, road capacity, bid on it. If I understand correctly, that's what taxi medallions are. Many respond with outrage about anything that limits ride-sharing, but they are taking my road space, which my tax dollars pay for.
- heterodoxxed 5y agoIs that the only obvious solution? Wouldn't better public transportation (which benefits from economies of scale unlike private automobiles) be equally if not more obvious? Especially since it has a much more proven track record.
- wolverine876 5y agoSorry, good point. I meant, given that ride-sharing exists, this is the solution. No idea why you are getting downvoted!
- hcurtiss 5y agoI'm not so sure about that track record. In many major cities public transportation has proven miserable, and that has been exacerbated by the pandemic.
- IndySun 5y agoHow much of the measured additional increase of congestion (from the flood of hail sharing services) can also be considered from, sheer weight of numbers, poor road infrastructure, wasteful navigation (bad driving)?
- vvpan 5y agoUber and Lyft business are terribly dishonest. Getting billions of dollars pumped into them so that they could use their non-profitable momentum to destroy other means of transportation is the modern equivalent of streetcar company takeovers of the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
- Ceezy 5y agoMore accessibility to a car => more car on the road => more traffic jam.
- crowf 5y agoI wonder how ride sharing effects parking congestion. If, say ride-sharing increases congestion by 1% but lowers the requirement for roadside parking, then maybe the solution should be to replace roadside parking in congested areas with an extra lane.
- nmeofthestate 5y agoIn this article ride-sharing is just a weird euphemism for taxis you order via an app, right? Or are they referring to something other than Uber?
- esperent 5y agoNo, it's just Uber etc.. Which is a completely different meaning than ride-sharing had ten years ago.
- a_imho 5y agoFrom what I recall it was exactly the same 10 years ago. This is a repeating pattern, let's reinvent X but call it something else to bask in the rays of disruption and mislead regulators/consumers long enough to succeed.
- esperent 5y agoUntil recently, ride sharing meant sharing a ride with another driver who was already going the same way as you, without a commercial side (although you might be expected to chip in for petrol). Somewhere in between carpooling and hitchhiking. Uber hijacked the term and took it over to mean a commercial enterprise that is basically unlicensed taxis via smartapp.
- nottorp 5y agoAnd another normal word is appropriated by marketing to mean something completely different. Why is Uber called ride sharing? It never was. Okay, maybe in the beginning there were actual people taking extra passengers now and then, but considering drivers are treated like employees now (which means they spend significant time ferrying passengers back and forth), it's just a smarter taxi service. Ride sharing would be when a group of people with the same destination share one car instead of taking one car per person. Which is not Uber, not Lyft. Real ride sharing would indeed reduce traffic. Taxis... why would they? At best they reduce parking lot congestion.
- christophilus 5y agoI almost exclusively use it as ride sharing. Is that not the norm?
- piva00 5y agoFrom my experience using Uber and similar services outside of the US: not at all. Here in Europe at least they all work as taxis, more specifically here in Sweden almost every Uber I've ever got was a normal taxi using Uber as well. The same in Berlin, Oslo and Barcelona, at least that has been my experience with Uber since 2017 in numerous cities around here.
- fergie 5y agoIsnt Uber effectively banned in Oslo?
- piva00 5y agoIt wasn't when I was there last time in September/October 2020, I could still call cabs through the app and pay. I believe they only connect to licensed taxis, at least the app worked for hailing one.
- Gwypaas 5y agoUber tried launching "ride-sharing", also called the UberPOP service in Sweden in 2015 completely flouting the laws. Many of the drivers were quickly convicted for illegal taxi services and Uber had $2M in unpaid taxes and social security from the short period of time they operated which they paid without question . Since anyone is free to run a taxi business in anywhere Sweden as long as they fulfill the base requirements the whole "ride-sharing" angle to get around medallion systems and what not does not apply here. For now Bolt has completely eaten Ubers cake and is the largest taxi app in Sweden. News about the conclusion of it in Swedish: https://www.breakit.se/artikel/15246/skattesmall-for-uber-i-sverige-har-ar-notan-for-uber-pop https://www.breakit.se/artikel/15246/skattesmall-for-uber-i-... Edit: Flaunting -> Flouting.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- m101 5y agoIt was lower prices and app convenience from Uber/Lyft that caused more congestion through increased demand, hence congestion. Not Uber/Lyft themselves. This could have come about in the same way if normal taxi companies had reacted in the same way (but they wouldn't because they are basically protectionist).
- varispeed 5y agoWhy is that so often things so obvious to me like drug prohibition increases violence and health issues rather than drugs themselves, but for so many people it is difficult to comprehend - like they can only make a simple connections aka drugs are bad, therefore violence and health issues. Like if they were not capable of incorporating more than two variables in their thinking. Then such people also seem to be dominating in the political scene. Do such limitations in thinking give some kind of advantage when it comes to entering politics?
- sokoloff 5y agoFor optional travel, the existence of Uber and Lyft has made it much more likely that I’d go into Boston for a dinner or evening of entertainment. In that sense, Uber also added to sidewalk congestion as I’d previously have spent that time and money in a Cambridge or western suburban location. With convenient and reasonably priced transport, my life is more flexible and enjoyable. Whether that’s worth the trade-offs is a valid question to entertain, but it seems odd to focus only traffic rather than also looking at how much of that traffic is a result of people enjoying life more.
- smileysteve 5y agoThe most obvious congestion I see with Ride-Hailing and Delivery services is a lack of ingress for people without cars. And the driver familiarity of driving to the back entrance. So, what ends up happening, is even though there is a garage or pick up parking inside a building; the 2 lane road turns into 1 lane with parking (but with no signage)_or street parking turns into street double parking.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoGrowth in ride-sharing seems to imply a failure in basic public transportation.