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

Or is it the other way around?

[WoodstockJeff]

As the transit system collapses from maintenance issues, and walk/ride options become more dangerous due to crime, that people are turning to alternatives?

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[AuMatar]

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.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[ausekilis]

Another suggestion: Urban planning is crap in a lot of locations.
People turn to the easiest alternative. Cars have the best convenience since you're free to go at your own schedule, no waiting 30 min for a bus or train. Uber fills that gap for a lot of folks who would rather wait 5 minutes and get *exactly* where they are going than wait in a cattle car to get *close* to where they want to be.

I live in a city with no real mass transit *AND* all the roads suck. Millions of people stuck on two-lane roads with speed limits between 40 and 45 mph. Rush hour is miserable - if there's a wreck (and there is at least one on every road i take weekly) then can easily add an hour to your commute. I'd love to be able to bike to work, but I'm not brave enough to share a lane with drivers that don't pay attention on a good day flying by at 50+ mph (what speed limit?) 3 feet from me.

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[lgw]

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.

Ownership, not rides

[johannesg]

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...

Re:People will use what works best

[Opportunist]

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?

I own a car and I hate it

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:Maybe if mass transit weren't an afterthought..

[TechyImmigrant]

> 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.