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The only thing taxis reduce is the need for parking. Everything else results in more traffic compared to individual driving. If I take my own car to work, the

The only thing taxis reduce is the need for parking. Everything else results in more traffic compared to individual driving. If I take my own car to work, the car is only on the road between my house and my office. If I take a taxi, at the very least you'll have to add the distance the taxi drove to pick me up, as well as the distance driven to pick the next customer up. There is no way around that, and any argument that taxi services (whether with actual taxis, or by the driver's personal cars) somehow reduce traffic is complete nonsense. That's not even mentioning the fact that a number of people are now going to take a taxi instead of public transport, further increasing the number of cars.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
I don't mean the case of switching from a personal car to a taxi for daily commute. I mean the case of, "I need my car few times a month to run some errands around the city - and since I already have that car, I may as well drive to work instead of using public transport". Availability and reliability of general transport infrastructure - both mass transit and taxis - will drive the decision here. If one can count on always catching fast transportation for those few errands a month, they can retire their car, and that's one less car on the road every day. This does not scale 1:1 with taxis - on a margin, a single extra taxi constantly on the road can tip the decision for several people, removing several cars from the city during rush hours. I'm a not a traffic planner, so I'm not certain if things play out this way in reality - but it sounds plausible. A different topic is that taxis unfortunately compete with mass transit too much these days. For example, in my hometown of Kraków - known in Poland for having a very good public transit system - the situation in recent years[0] evolved to a point in which, for 2+ people traveling further than a bus or tram will go in 20 minutes, it's cheaper[1] to travel in one of these VC-subsidized app-taxis! Given the economics of mass transit, I worry this is not the kind of competition that will lead to improvements of service - instead, it'll lead to further degradation of the bus and tram networks, in a positive feedback loop. -- [0] - I noticed it around 2019, so it's not a COVID-related phenomenon, though the pandemic did a lot of work to cement it, as well as reversing the ongoing efforts to remove car traffic from the city center. [1] - Unless you're a citizen/regular, and pay a monthly pass. I'm currently neither.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

I don't mean the case of switching from a personal car to a taxi for daily commute. I mean the case of, "I need my car few times a month to run some errands around the city - and since I already have that car, I may as well drive to work instead of using public transport". Availability and reliability of general transport infrastructure - both mass transit and taxis - will drive the decision here. If one can count on always catching fast transportation for those few errands a month, they can retire their car, and that's one less car on the road every day. This does not scale 1:1 with taxis - on a margin, a single extra taxi constantly on the road can tip the decision for several people, removing several cars from the city during rush hours. I'm a not a traffic planner, so I'm not certain if things play out this way in reality - but it sounds plausible. A different topic is that taxis unfortunately compete with mass transit too much these days. For example, in my hometown of Kraków - known in Poland for having a very good public transit system - the situation in recent years[0] evolved to a point in which, for 2+ people traveling further than a bus or tram will go in 20 minutes, it's cheaper[1] to travel in one of these VC-subsidized app-taxis! Given the economics of mass transit, I worry this is not the kind of competition that will lead to improvements of service - instead, it'll lead to further degradation of the bus and tram networks, in a positive feedback loop. -- [0] - I noticed it around 2019, so it's not a COVID-related phenomenon, though the pandemic did a lot of work to cement it, as well as reversing the ongoing efforts to remove car traffic from the city center. [1] - Unless you're a citizen/regular, and pay a monthly pass. I'm currently neither.