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Will Lyft and Uber's Shared-Ride Service Hurt Public Transit?
An anonymous reader writes Lyft and Uber have already undercut the price of a taxi in most markets, but with this new service, both are now taking aim at public transit systems. By attempting to offer a viable alternative to the bus and metro, Lyft and Uber are offering new options to consumers in a space where few existed before. As Timothy Lee writes at Vox, "Until recently, there weren't many services in this 'in between' category. If you were going to the airport, you could get a shared-ride van. And some urban areas had dollar vans. But these were limited services in niche markets." If you're traveling with multiple people over short distances, Lyft Line and UberPool can be quite affordable, but it's still not cheap enough.
It will not. It's much cheaper to take public transportation in most cities; the only time it would make sense would be on longer trips, because you are saving alot of time by taking Lyft or Uber, but you sure the hell aren't saving money.
And it's much easier to find a cab in San Francisco nowadays, not only because they are having to compete with rideshares, but they actually will notice you now when you wave a hand. So why not take a cab instead of Uber and Lyft?
Let me know when either of these can get me from the Chicago Surbs to Downtown Chicago (45 miles) for under $10.
Or from the far north part of the city to the south part (25-30 miles) with 4 lights per mile for $2.50
Ride sharing minus the Lyfts and Ubers of this world. Preferrably something decentralized with many nodes, whereby anyone can join the network.
No, they will not hurt transit because they are quickly becoming illegal for good reason (insurance and liability) and are getting shut down everywhere.
It's not ride-sharing if you have to pay for it. Also, Uber's scummy business practices and recruiting tactics reflect the general attitude of the company. "Anything to make money" means your safety is not likely high on their list of concerns.
The only question that matters: Will they improve transportation?
Competition is a bitch; a government never likes it.
if you can afford it. I don't know anyone who takes public transportation if they don't have to. A drive that takes me 30 minutes by Car used to take a legally blind buddy of mine 90. Try spending 3 hours a day on a smelly bus with cheap, uncomfortable seats. Find when you're a teenager, not so much when you're 30.
With the Cost of Cars going up and up and becoming unattainable for many I'd like to see a real talk about public transportation. I'd also like to see Monkeys and Unicorns shoot out of Cowboy Neal's butt. I'm thinking the latter is for likely than the former...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Parked my car a year ago and I ride my bike to work most days. There's a bus stop less than 200 feet from my house. If it rains or gets below 40F (it's Texas, only gets that cold maybe 3 weeks a year) I take an Uber. Since I live 3.2 miles from downtown it costs between $6.43 and as much as $8. A single bus ticket costs $2.50, drops me off six blocks from my office, and runs on their schedule, and is frequently late. For $3 more I get dropped off in front of my office, they pick me up on my schedule, I get a real seat belt, appropriate heating/A/C, listen to NPR, nobody asking for money or sitting next to someone not having showered for a week etc etc. I usually take the bus home for $2.50 as I have more time in the afternoons to wait for a bus.
Parking downtown costs $5 for the bad lot four blocks from my office, $7 for a semi private parking garage. That's $100-$150/mo to rent an 8x10' piece of ground.
There's a very slight premium for using uber, but compared to paying for car insurance, maintenance, gas + the hassle of driving myself around, Uber is a fucking deal. In my very very corner case. That $1.50 a day premium is a really nice premium that really improves my morning, for those days that I need a car to get to work.
moox. for a new generation.
This is not at all universal. Some cities have quite nice and convenient public transit, and it can be even better if you live and work in the right places. I own a car and can afford to drive to work, but I typically take light-rail. It takes maybe 30 minutes as opposed to 25 by car, but I get 15 minutes of walking and fresh air and I can read while in transit, and I don't have to experience daily driver-rage-stress. I actually rather like taking the train to work.
As someone else pointed out to me a few days ago, "Where does it say 'News for nerds. Stuff that matters"?
And SJWs have had their 15 minutes, everyone else now thinks "Nothing to see here" when they see one ...
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Bus prices are 2.50 or more now for bus service and 6.75 for lightrail (San Diego/Sacramento's equiv of BART/Subway service, using overhead lines.) And service coverage is a fraction of what's needed to allow people to not only utilize it for work, but also allow juggling schooling to get them out of the poverty range. With the exception of a few neighborhoods you cannot expediently travel from an affordable residential zone to livable-waged commercial/educational zone without spending 2-4 hours each way in transit. And that is assuming that your school/work hours align with the available bus routes, the most lenient of which close at around 10pm at night, and the strictest of which may close between 4 and 6pm. In the event you don't have a ride to call, you may be hoofing it multiple miles to either get to a functioning bus stop, or to a 'safe' thoroughfare you would feel comfortable walking down at night in order to get home. While I thankfully have never had to rely on public transit to get around here, I have second hand stories, and firsthand field experience proving this to be true. And that was *BEFORE* the current cutbacks which have made a number of the routes both more expensive and far lower serviced.
Can we please stop calling it "ride sharing"? It is no more ride sharing that a grocery store is "food sharing".
Neither one has sufficiently addressed the regulatory component of what they do. Who covers insurance for Lyft or Uber drivers? Uber claimed they didn't cover the damages when their driver killed that 6 year old and maimed her family in San Francisco, so who covers insurance? If they lose that lawsuit they'll owe huge amounts of damages and have to massively expand their insurance coverage, and if they win that lawsuit they'll look like a bunch of money grubbing jerks (which Travis Kalanick is).
What happens when this affects the metropolitan budget? I think both services are operating because they're faster than the government, but the government will catch up once the income from taxi permits drops too low. But all the cities have to do is outlaw their work if it affects their budget, and their business is shut down. I just don't see how this can last forever with the way their going. Now you have taxis complaining that Uber violates airport regs, because the taxis have to pay a fee to pick up at the airports, but Uber drivers are telling people to take the rental car shuttle to the car rental area and they'll pick up there, bypassing the taxi pick up. It's one thing to do that to a company; it's another thing to do that to the organizations that write laws.
Some places, public transit really sucks. Hard. Taking hours to get somewhere a car could go in minutes? The flexibility of never missing a switchover from subway to bus due to foot traffic-jams? Going places public transit doesn't cover? If public transit sucks, let it die.
Lyft and Uber drivers should have to follow the same not-free regs as taxi drivers. things like displaying a hack lic, certification of insurance or bonding, and penalties for systematic race discrimination are things that taxi drivers and their companies are required to follow. Undercutting these is not a good idea.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Cities that offer good transit service don't have to worry about the competition. Those transit services already offer fast and reliable service at a reasonable price.
On the other hand, cities that offer horrible transit service need the competition. They need to realize that poor coverage, poor scheduling, unreliable service, and drivers with poor safety records are unacceptable. If they don't realize that it is unacceptable, then maybe they should shutter their doors and let the private sector take over. (This coming from someone who normally supports a strong public sector.)
To give you an idea of what I mean: I work two jobs in a city with poor transit service, so I decided to sit down and do some math one day. The end result is that taking the bus cost significantly more than taking a taxi. That's a single person in a regulated cab, and not the shared-ride service mentioned here. Yes, a great part of the cost was from lost income. Yet it was real lost income in my case because I had to negotiate my work hours around transit. For other people, the loss of income will come in other forms: being unable to accept a job due to transit coverage or scheduling, or losing a job because unreliable service results in an unreliable employee. For other people it will result in a diminished quality of life, simply because much of their time is spent waiting for or being in transit.
(To give you an idea of how inefficient transit is in my city: if it takes 30 minutes to walk somewhere, you may as well walk since the bus is going to take longer. If you have to be somewhere at a particular time, you can usually increase that 30 minute walking radius to 1 hour because that bus that "arrives 10 minutes early" will end up arriving 10 minutes late so frequently that you will end up unemployed.)
astroturf man!
any more good news?
You guys should buy more into native advertising. Or take a lesson from the DoD on how to sockpuppet.
The goal of public transit is not to make money. Money paid from passengers may not pay the trip, and taxpayers money may be used to fill the gap.
If Uber widens the gap, when why not tax it? Uber benefits are just taken from taxpayer money use to finance public transit, after all.
I seriously don't understand why Uber and Lyft are getting so much flak, it seems to be an agreement between two private individuals, government has no right interfering with such an arrangement.
Threads like these always leave me flabbergasted at how people who have never lived in a big city just really, really don't get how cities work.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why are they becoming illegal rather than becoming insured?
Well, for some people, public transport is a mechanism for social control. Want people to shop in your mall? Slip a few bucks to planners to provide transportation there and not to your competitor's mall. Same for where people live, go to school, work and recreate.
Things like private cars, cabs, Uber and Lyft undermine the central planner's control agenda by allowing them to go where and when they want. So they are evil and must be stopped.
Have gnu, will travel.
Public transit is a necessary evil.
It turns an 8:30 work day into a 10-12 hour work day.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
things like displaying a hack lic,
This makes no sense. Remember they are not sitting there waiting for you to get in - you summon them via app which automatically means they have been vetted by the service, and you have info about them beforehand before you even selected them.
Perhaps taxi drivers should start with regulations requiring you to be able to see reviews from past customers?
certification of insurance or bonding
Again - all taken care of or else they would not be on the service.
penalties for systematic race discrimination
They come and pick you up. It's funny you bring this up with zero evidence of this being a problem, while we know cabs do this from time to time. If you've not solved it for cabs forget about solving it for Uber.
Undercutting these is not a good idea.
None of that is undercut. Only price, convenience, shiftiness of drivers, and car quality are undercut (or enhanced).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have been in plenty of places where mass transit made a ton of sense to a specific place in a city, but then a car made a lot of sense to get 10-20 blocks to your final destination that had either very infrequent or no buses.
You also should not underestimate the vast service Uber serves in getting people home safe after public transport shuts down for the night. I've been caught off-gaurd a few times by public transport coming times, and it was great to have that safety net.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You should be using a bicycle for short trips of 2 miles or less...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Yes, it will.
> I assume "damage public transport" actually means "lessen demand for public transport". How is that a bad thing?
Usage of public spaces and harmful emissions would worsen badly. One articulated bus easily takes 80 people from A to B, with one driver and occupies just 3 x 18 meters of our planet's surface. One light rail unit of 70 meters lenght, with two crew, easily sits 200 people. Uber cars to carry 200 pax would need 200 drivers and occupy 2 x 5 x 200 meters, which is, when arranged into a motorcade, becomes the the lenght of 14 (fourteen) light rail units.
Not to mention the exhaust difference between 200 cars (2-5 liter displacement petrol or diesel engine each) vs 2-3 articulated bused (9-11 liter diesel or CNG engine each) vs a light rail unit, which runs off electricity from wind farms or natural gas-burning power stations or even some nuclear reactor located four counties afar. They push the excess juice back into the catenary while braking. (Stadler-Bussang of Switzerland can't make enough of its FLIRT railbus to meet demand. Even poorer european counties like Hungary buy them, despite the swiss-watch like price tag, because long term savings are spectacular on running costs.)
I don't begrudge Lyft and Uber as an experiment in alternative transport. I think the growing sharing culture is a symptom of middle class economic stagnation, such that people are "driven" to monetize the spare capacity in their personal transport, their homes, etc.
What concerns me is that they are likely cherry picking transportation consumers. Those who can normally afford to spring for Lyft are then less likely to use public transport, and become alienated to its broader utility, much as those who live in gated communities aren't as concerned about addressing the crime rate in the surrounding community.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Because "lessen demand for public transport" usually implies "increase demand for cars," which in turn has historically resulted in "get stuck in more traffic" and "replace more of the city with parking lots." It also runs the significant risk of indirectly leading to "screw over the poor and other transit-dependent people."
I'm actually genuinely curious if you know that some of us out here who have owned a car in the past find it genuinely liberating to live without one. (Never heard of the scenario in your first paragraph actually happening, by the way — got a citation? I wouldn't be surprised if it's happened at least once, but as a widespread tool, I don't see how you'd expect someone to believe that one without evidence.)
Personally I find the obsession to living in cities to be more than a little strange. Right now I'm living on the outskirts of Tampa, which is almost too close for me. Being stuck in DC or NY or San Fran again makes my teeth ache.
The fact that I am out in farm country with a triple digit symmetrical FIOS connection just tells me life is can be very good living even out in the boonies.
I live and work in a big city, so I cycle and use public transport for about 98% of my journeys. The remaining few percent I take a taxi, which is expensive but rare enough that its not an issue. If it were 5% journeys that I could not do by bike/bus/train then I would probably have to get a car, in which case probably 90% of my journeys would be by private car.
So if you make taxis cheaper, then maybe there are a lot of people who would no longer need a car for those occasional journeys where public transport or bike is not a good option. They can then use public transport most of the time, and taxis occasionally. In cities a bus is always going to be the cheapest (unless the price of fuel and labour drops to zero)
Elected government officials are what hurts public transit.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Private cars do not undermine the central planners agenda. If they want people to go to place A rather than place B they build a three lane highway to place A. In the suburbs, if they want you to avoid an area (like because the rich people there don't want the traffic) they put 20 mph speed limits, humps, and create a system of one-way roads so tortuous that anyone but a resident will avoid the area like plague. Still, enjoy the paranoia anyway.
A good, solid piece of scientific analysis showing that the costs of such laws are outweighed by their benefits would convince me, ideally backed by studies between areas where taxis are unlicensed vs areas where they are licensed.
Wishful thinking. Effects and costs can't be measured in any truly accurate sense, variables can't be isolated, and regulatory environments vary from city to city, not to mention the differences state by state.
In any case, there are vanishingly few examples of "carefully thought out laws that have strong and clear justifications for them." There are laws which are carefully thought out, but they are usually written by overworked legislative aides and passed in exchange for a generous campaign contribution.
The law is never on your side. Anyone believing otherwise is usually just a cheerleader for some (law|legislator|president) bankrolled by either a megacorporation with profits at stake or a politician desperate to keep itself in office for another (2|4|6) years. The dream government gleefully endorsed by the denizens of technology-oriented news aggregators, comprised of empirically verified legislation, transparency on all levels, along with fair patent (but not for software) and copyright (but not for too long) policy is a pipe dream.
But hey, it could totally happen if we just got the money out of politics and stopped voting for those damned (democrats|republicans), amirite?
I use Uber in Los Angeles; as many people do.
Los Angeles has very limited subway service. It exists, it's pretty quick, but it doesn't go too many places. So, I use Uber to get to and from the subway stops closest to where I want to go; and use the train for the bulk of the transport.
Now, if I was going with a group of people instead of by myself, I'd Uber the whole way; the subway charges per person and Uber per car. But for traveling by yourself; Uber and mass transit is a great combo.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
That's why taxes are important. By subsidizing some business (with tax money collected) such as public transportation or taxi, government can prop businesses that are important to community but need time to adjust.
Take a ride on the TTC (Toronto Transit)
Its worse that that. its dead jim.
In order for Uber/Lyft to be a challenge to public transportation, you first need a public transportation system that is actually useful to a significant number of people. I'm glad folks in Europe, or the US East and West Coasts have good public transit, but the vast majority of people in the US drive their own cars out of necessity.
We've made great strides here in Denver, CO, but I've lived here for almost 40 years and I can count on two hands the number of times I've taken a bus, and my light rail/train rides still stand at zero. Three years from now, the NW light rail line will finally open in the direction I need to go, yet it will still end many miles short of my office.
I know of only one friend who has ever used Uber in Denver, and her New Year's Eve ride across town caused her extreme heartburn at the price. Uber/Lyft are fancy cab services for rich people. They aren't going to put a dent in public transportation (where it exists) anytime in the next decade, if ever.
Necron69
(NO)
I live in Los Angeles, and I seriously can't count the times I've had to drive instead of take public transit because:
* Metro closes at grandpa-o-clock, so forget partying all night at a club.
* The bus arrives once every half hour, meaning two will arrive together at some point in the next hour. Nextrip is worthless; it doesn't seem to use live GPS data from buses.
Metro's general inability to deal with unexpected road closures without forgetting to tell customers makes me much less likely to trust them in general. I don't care if the bus shows up 99% of the time if I'm stranded somewhere the other 1% of the time, which is exactly what happened to my group this Halloween stuck in the rain in West Hollywood. I'm fine with canceling buses on holidays and when shit happens, but for crying out loud, TELL NEXTRIP!
I'd love to have both choices because it's impossible to compete with public transit pricing, but it's very possible to compete with their reliability. Getting home most of the time is not good enough.
Never heard of the scenario in your first paragraph actually happening, by the way â" got a citation?
Seattle light rail. Back in the planning stages, a route was proposed that would take it near the Southcenter mall area with a stop there. The downtown Seattle business interests practically shit themselves, as one of the purposes of the rail system was to bring shoppers into the downtown shopping area. Not to feed other business/shopping areas. So they moved the route to the other side of I-5, missing Southcenter and making transit connections to that area inconvenient.
Earlier in its planning stages, the light rail system was to be funded by several counties. But the design in Snohomish county (Everett and the big Boeing plant) was to stop the rail line at a park-and-ride south of Everett. When that city proposed extending the line nearer the Boeing plant and into downtown Everett, Seattle business/real estate interests shit themselves and stopped it. The rail line's only purpose is to feed downtown Seattle. Everyone else can go fuck themselves.
The same thing is happening with the rail link to the east side (Bellevue). The east end is going to be land-locked in such a way as to make it only practical to commute into Seattle. Not the other way around. To top that off, the transit planners had the opportunity to pick up an abandoned BNRR right of way for a north-south link on the eastside (Southcenter, Renton/Boeing, Bellevue, Redmond/Microsoft). But they actively chopped it up, abandoned sections of it and turned other parts over for use as a bicycle trail. Because transit money is only supposed to feed downtown Seattle businesses. Nothing else.
Have gnu, will travel.
London Heathrow sees 191,000 people arrive and depart per day.
Excluding passengers in transit, that's still going to be an awful lot of people moving in and out of the airport on the edge of London. I can't see you shifting them all in 4 person cars without more traffic jams that already plague the M25 (ok, I suspect from your post you're unhappy with more than 1 to 2 people per car, but in principle car sharing and multiple car passengers is feasible).
Maybe airports can be serviced in small rural areas by cars but in major metropolitan areas mass transit systems are more efficient.
In Arlington VA I take the bus every day. It's not only faster (it takes HOV on 395 which is 10x faster than the regular travel lanes), but I don't have to pay for parking either. The only better alternative I could use for commuting would be to ride my bike, but I really don't have a good solution for my suit. WMATA has its huge flaws, but the buses are usually on schedule, clean, and safe.
None of us know everything. Therefore we're all naïve.
This is the next frontier/competitor...
I wonder how many Uber/Lyft customers know about the chinatown bus transportation options...
Uber and Lyft haven't seen real competition like this before... They may not know what hit them if they manage to show these guys a profitable new business...
Does anyone know what the drivers cut is these days. I know the two big companies have had to slash prices to compete (try to drive the other one out of the market). So the drivers take has gone way down. I wonder how far down they can go before the drivers don't see it as a workable situation anymore.
Yeah, I live in Seattle and have heard about the Southcenter deal. Forgot about it when I was reading your earlier comment. I wouldn't necessarily call that social control, but I see what you're saying. That was definitely shady.
The rest of your comment, though, sounds like you're extrapolating from that one deal. ST2 goes up to Northgate, for instance. And have you considered how far Everett is and what the ridership numbers would be like? The ridership question goes for the BNRR right-of-way as well. It doesn't really go through anywhere useful (and I say this passing under the damn thing on my daily commute!). East Link was supposed to go through a useful part of downtown Bellevue, but the Bellevue City Council wouldn't foot the bill for that. There's a whole lot of politicking going on with Sound Transit that isn't merely one party being the big shots. If it were all about what serves Seattle, we'd already be building a Ballard line. Instead, we're shooting North Link off to Lynnwood first and talking about Ballard in the same breath as Federal Way.
Anyhow, all of this is to say that Seattle is special. Public trans isn't the only thing that gets fucked in the planning process here. Wikipedia has a whole entry devoted to it, in fact.
And have you considered how far Everett is and what the ridership numbers would be like?
Before Sound Transit's final go-ahead vote in 1996, there was another proposal which included Snohomish County. Sound Transit planners said they only wanted to go as far as a park-and-ride in south Everett, somewhere along Highway 99. The city of Everett wanted the line extended to the Boeing plant and downtown Everett. But when ST nixed that idea, the Snohomish County voters turned it down. It was widely viewed by them as a rail system intended to feed people out of the suburbs and into downtown Seattle. Screw everyone else.
The ridership question goes for the BNRR right-of-way as well. It doesn't really go through anywhere useful
Nothing useful? The Seattle city fathers' propaganda is powerful. BNRR parallels I-405, which is overloaded. People must be going someplace they consider useful.
Some years ago, there was a website (its gone now) that showed the ownership of operating and abandoned railroad rights-of-way. I was surprised to see how much of the abandoned system Sound Transit was buying up (with tax dollars intended for transit) and then tearing out and quit-claiming to other groups. Strange behavior for a group charged with building transportation systems.
Have gnu, will travel.
Public transport is primarily funded by taxes. If a free-market alternative meets the needs of the people, why should we try to keep the government-run program alive? In fact, there's a good argument to shutting public transit down completely. If someone wants to go someplace, why should someone else be forced to subsidize the cost?
--- wad