Studies Are Increasingly Clear: Uber, Lyft Congest Cities (apnews.com)

One promise of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft was fewer cars clogging city streets. But studies suggest the opposite: that ride-hailing companies are pulling riders off buses, subways, bicycles and their own feet and putting them in cars instead . From a report: And in what could be a new wrinkle, a service by Uber called Express Pool now is seen as directly competing with mass transit. Uber and Lyft argue that in Boston, for instance, they complement public transit by connecting riders to hubs like Logan Airport and South Station. But they have not released their own specific data about rides, leaving studies up to outside researchers. And the impact of all those cars is becoming clear, said Christo Wilson, a professor of computer science at Boston's Northeastern University, who has looked at Uber's practice of surge pricing during heavy volume. "The emerging consensus is that ride-sharing (is) increasing congestion," Wilson said. One study included surveys of 944 ride-hailing users over four weeks in late 2017 in the Boston area. Nearly six in 10 said they would have used public transportation, walked, biked or skipped the trip if the ride-hailing apps weren't available. The report also found many riders aren't using hailed rides to connect to a subway or bus line, but instead as a separate mode of transit, said Alison Felix, one of the report's authors.

Comments

History is just repeating itself

[rayzat]

If you look at Manhattan one of the main reasons the medallion system was setup was to reduce congestion from an excessive number of taxis on the street. During the great depression people who had cars but no job just became independent taxi companies. At most times of the day there were more cabs parked or driving then potential passengers grinding traffic to a halt and eliminating street parking for most who were taxi drivers. There were some safety, pricing, and quality issues baked into the medallion design as well but the overall point was to provide as safe and consistent travel experience as possible while not over-congesting streets and parking. The medallion system was far from perfect mainly because modifications to the system and responses to changes in consumption move at a glacial pace but the historical precedent is there.