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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.
...perhaps if city planners paid more attention to mass transit this wouldn't be an issue. In most cities I've visited, mass transit charges quite the time premium if you want to get anywhere.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
No, I would not have "taken transit", when the nearest bus line is half a mile from my house, and only runs once every 30 minutes.
No, I would not have walked two miles in bad weather, especially carrying heavy or fragile items.
No, I would not have ridden a bike in an area without dedicated bike lanes, or dealt with the hassle of locking it up and hoping it wouldn't be stolen.
Yes, I absolutely would use a ride-hail service when the more expensive alternative is to drive and park my own car.
What is it with the proponents of mass transit who can't stand the idea of people making their own decisions about transportation? So if you can't make mass transit affordable and desirable, the only alternative is to outlaw the competition?
"Modern" mass transit can't die quickly enough.
It may have promised to cut down on car ownership, but that's simply because of a more efficient allocation of cars to rides. The number of rides, on the other hand, was never promised to go down, and in fact easy availability has only made it go up. I'm not quite sure why nobody was expecting that, it seems a basic economic principle...
Due to crime? You know that US violent crime numbers are way way down, right? Violent crime per 100K people has been between 360 and 400 since 2010. In the 2000 it was 510. In 1990 it was 730 Crime is currently very close to historic lows, the last time it was this low was the 1970s.
No, what's happening is that private cars (or even semi-private) are nicer than buses and subways, and if the price comes close to the same people prefer them.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The problem with the idea of "city planning" is that most cities aren't planned. They're grown. There have been planned communities, and they have tended to work OK. But public transit systems have mostly been grafted onto existing towns, rather than planned in, because the town wasn't planned.
The other problem with the idea of city planning for public transport is that the auto companies attacked public transport, and it never recovered. The ideal system would involve elevated PRT in cities, and ordinary rail between them. The good news is that once we pry people out of their cars, PRT will actually be realistic. It isn't now because people would rather drive, and you need ridership to make a system of any kind viable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If people prefer an UberPool ride in congested traffic over a subway trip, then it means that the subway trip sucks even more. Why isn't the title "UberPool reduces subway pain"? Someone is pushing an agenda.
The other problem with the idea of city planning for public transport is that the auto companies attacked public transport, and it never recovered.
In Tampa...
A major bridge is old and needing to be replaced. I expected $100-$200 million to be the cost. Its $600 million BUT they want to add a light rail to it raising its cost to $1 BILLION. Yep $400 million for a light rail on a bridge that has no other light rail on either side to connect to.
All freeways have just been rebuilt, brand new. TBX project, before that construction was even complete, had a plan to AGAIN redo the freeways adding a toll lane. Cost? $9 BILLION. To add a single lane, that is variable toll lane. Cost per worker in Tampa.. about $30,000 each. Yep, they want us workers to pay $30,000 for a toll lane that the can charge us for using.
Its not auto companies that turned people against public transit. Its blatent corrupt city officials that did it. There is no way either project should cost even HALF of what they propose, and everyone knows it. They stopped taking comments from public because each meeting was packed with a thousand outside, all against them. They instead decided the public wanted it and went ahead until our DC representative (not sure why they got involved) put a stop to it.
Corrupt government = citizens don't like it, not something from auto companies.
The left's answer to corrupt government is to call those pointing it out racists. Keep it up!
I know I'll get voted down for this, but to achieve this, you need the town to run the public transport. As long as it's private owned, profit is all they care about, why would they care about congested roads?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
National crime statistics are meaningless on the ground. Local crime statistics vary rather a lot from th national average. Crime on e.g. the BART in Oakland really is a problem, and it's disingenuous to pretend that there's not a problem with crime on public transport because of some national number.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's a constant source of stress and problems. I don't own a car for fun. I own it because I need it to get to work, and nobody will hire me if I can't get to work.
I didn't ask for my cities and transportation network to be built around cars. These decisions were made in the 30s, 40 and 50s before I was even born. Now that they've been made changing over to a system of public transportation is virtually impossible. A situation that was not lost on the car manufacturers and oil and gas producers.
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> Yep $400 million for a light rail on a bridge that has no other light rail on either side to connect to.
People complained about the lone blue line on the Portland MAX light rail.
Then they continued adding and several years later it's excellent and goes plenty of places. It takes me from a short walk from my front door to the airport on the other side of town. You have to start somewhere. Getting the difficult bridge bit out of the way first is not a bad plan.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The limited resource which is addressed by Uber is not traffic congestion, it's parking. Cities have used limited parking as a stick to make driving unbearable in cities. The market found a way around the bad planning.
I can't speak for all of America, but Crime on BART is real and rising. Gangs of people come to a platform, rob everyone, beat the few who resist, then run away before police arrive. Sometimes they board trains, too. It's not a very good situation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I love public transport -- people-watching is fun, and the subways get me there faster than sitting in traffic in a Goober. The rest of your argument is ... "I'm too good to mix with the rabble, I'm too good to walk a few city blocks." No wonder US society is becoming more stratified and obese.
Correct: most of the US is a horrible place to live in.