Uber and Lyft May Cause Lower Car Ownership In Big Cities, Says Report (slashgear.com)

A new study from the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute has shed light on what may turn out to be a growing trend: lower car ownership in cities where ride-sharing services are available. SlashGear reports: While Uber and Lyft have both deployed in a number of cities, they have, at times, had to abandon those cities due to local governments driving them out for one reason or another. That's what happened in Austin, Texas, opening the door for an interesting study on personal car ownership. Did the sudden absence of these two services cause increased car usage and/or ownership, or did things remain unaffected? The result, according to the study, was a big increase in personal car usage and a statistically significant increase in car ownership. The researchers surveyed a total of 1,200 people from the Austin region, and found that 41-percent of them started using their own car more often to make up for the lack of Uber and Lyft rides. As well, a total of 9-percent of those surveyed bought their own personal car to make up for the services' absences.

Comments

You what else lowers ownership

[DrXym]

A decent public transport system and a city that is spatially planned around the needs of people who live there.

Re:You what else lowers ownership

[Solandri]

The problem with spatially planning a city is that the plan for a small city is different from the plan for a big city, but it's impossible to predict if a small city will become a big city. So short of reclaiming areas via eminent domain and re-purposing them (wasteful since you're demolishing established structures), you're left with an either/or choice. Either spatially plan for the size city you have today and get burned if the city becomes significantly larger in the future. Or spatially plan for future city growth, and get burned if the city doesn't increase in size or even shrinks.

Public transportation systems can also have the same problem of city not growing as expected (subways), although they can be slightly more flexible (buses). Taxis are even more flexible, since the number of taxis in service can be scaled up or down more quickly than buses. And Uber/Lyft vehicles are even more flexible yet since they're otherwise used as personal vehicles.

In other words, this isn't a problem with just One Correct Solution. It's a problem with multiple solutions - the more efficient solutions quickly drift out of their optimal range if city growth doesn't follow projections, the less efficient solutions are more flexible and can adapt more quickly to deviations in city growth from expectations.