A New Study Says Services Like UberPool Are Making Traffic Worse (washingtonpost.com)

The explosive growth of Uber and Lyft has created a new traffic problem for major U.S. cities and ride-sharing options such as UberPool and Lyft Line are exacerbating the issue by appealing directly to customers who would otherwise have taken transit, walked, biked or not used a ride-hail service at all, according to a new study. From a report: The report by Bruce Schaller, author of the influential study, "Unsustainable?", which found ride-hail services were making traffic congestion in New York City worse, constructs a detailed profile of the typical ride-hail user and issues a stark warning to cities: make efforts to counter the growth of ride-hail services, or surrender city streets to fleets of private cars, creating a more hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists and ultimately make urban cores less desirable places to live. Schaller concludes that where private ride options such as UberX and Lyft have failed on promises to cut down on personal driving and car ownership -- both of which are trending up -- pooled ride services have lured a different market that directly competes with subway and bus systems, while failing to achieve significantly better efficiency than their solo alternatives. The result: more driving overall. Ride sharing has added 5.7 billion vehicle miles to nine major urban areas over six years, the report says, and the trend is "likely to intensify" as the popularity of the services surges.

Comments

Makes sense

[Registered Coward v2]

UberPool/Lyft Line is often close in price to a subway trip and you go door to door. Even with the shared ride (which anecdotally seems to happen 40 to 50% of the time), it is also competitive with the time it takes once you factor in the walk, wait time and actual travel time. My mapping app shows the Lyft and Uber fares as well as travel times for public transit so it's easy to pick the cheapest or fastest depending on what I want.