Uber and Lyft Are Creating Traffic, Not Reducing It (morningstar.com) 143
The Wall Street Journal remembers how five years ago, Uber's co-founder "was so confident that Uber's rides would prompt people to leave their cars at home that he told a tech conference: 'If every car in San Francisco was Ubered there would be no traffic.'"
He was wrong. Rather than the apps becoming a model of algorithm-driven efficiency, drivers in major cities cruise for fares without passengers an estimated 40% of the time. Multiple studies show that Uber and Lyft have pulled people away from buses, subways and walking, and that the apps add to the overall amount of driving in the U.S. A study published last year by San Francisco County officials and University of Kentucky researchers in the journal Science Advances found that over 60% of the slowdown of traffic speeds in San Francisco between 2010 and 2016 was due to the introduction of the ride-hail companies...
The reversal of ride-hailing from would-be traffic hero to congestion villain is the sort of unintended consequence that has become a recurring feature of Silicon Valley disruption. Companies seeking rapid growth by reinventing the way we do things are delivering solutions that sometimes create their own problems... Silicon Valley is particularly prone to focusing on positive potential effects of new technologies given a decadeslong culture of utopian ideals, said Fred Turner, a Stanford University communications professor who has written a book on the topic... Tech companies tend to have an engineering-like, narrow focus on solving specific problems, often missing the broader picture as a result. "You're not rewarded for seeing the landscape within which your device will be deployed," he said... [I]n hindsight, some of the pitfalls -- such as cars cruising empty between passengers -- seem obvious...
Riders also take car trips that wouldn't have happened before Uber and Lyft. Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant and former New York City official who has studied the topic, said in his paper that surveys in numerous cities found roughly 60% of riders in Ubers and Lyfts would have walked, biked, taken public transit or stayed home if a ride-hail car hadn't been available.
He was wrong. Rather than the apps becoming a model of algorithm-driven efficiency, drivers in major cities cruise for fares without passengers an estimated 40% of the time. Multiple studies show that Uber and Lyft have pulled people away from buses, subways and walking, and that the apps add to the overall amount of driving in the U.S. A study published last year by San Francisco County officials and University of Kentucky researchers in the journal Science Advances found that over 60% of the slowdown of traffic speeds in San Francisco between 2010 and 2016 was due to the introduction of the ride-hail companies...
The reversal of ride-hailing from would-be traffic hero to congestion villain is the sort of unintended consequence that has become a recurring feature of Silicon Valley disruption. Companies seeking rapid growth by reinventing the way we do things are delivering solutions that sometimes create their own problems... Silicon Valley is particularly prone to focusing on positive potential effects of new technologies given a decadeslong culture of utopian ideals, said Fred Turner, a Stanford University communications professor who has written a book on the topic... Tech companies tend to have an engineering-like, narrow focus on solving specific problems, often missing the broader picture as a result. "You're not rewarded for seeing the landscape within which your device will be deployed," he said... [I]n hindsight, some of the pitfalls -- such as cars cruising empty between passengers -- seem obvious...
Riders also take car trips that wouldn't have happened before Uber and Lyft. Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant and former New York City official who has studied the topic, said in his paper that surveys in numerous cities found roughly 60% of riders in Ubers and Lyfts would have walked, biked, taken public transit or stayed home if a ride-hail car hadn't been available.
Let's wait... (Score:2)
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Re:Let's wait... (Score:4, Interesting)
Robotaxies are not ride sharing. Uber and Lyft are also not ride sharing.
The concept of ride sharing --- where two individual vehicles convert into a single carpool --- would indeed reduce congestion. There is overhead for the host traveling to the guest's location, but the bulk of the trip reduces traffic by one vehicle.
Individual taxis (including Uber and Lyft) increase traffic because the taxi must travel to the person, then transport the person as usual, then the taxi must leave; the person's individual vehicle is still present in traffic, plus the additional traffic of the taxi traveling to and from the endpoints.
What we have with a taxi service (which Uber and Lyft fight hard to avoid for regulation reasons) is a reduced need for parking facilities, which has occurred.
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Uber and Lyft were supposed to be using algorithms to decrease dead mileage already. The problem is that, as the GP said, these are cell phone managed taxi services and not ride sharing. As a driver, I'm not picking someone up on my way to where I wanted to go anyway, and letting them share my ride. As a driver, I'm an employee riding around town hoping that someone needs a ride, and then taking them to where THEY want to go. I'm not "sharing" anything. I'm getting paid to deliver a service.
Even if you
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Moreover, even if they solved that, the main deterrents to people using a taxi service or similar is lack of convenience and cost. Uber/Lyft have driven down the cost and increased the convenience, whic
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Well, duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Even without the passenger-less cruising... how would shifting from “I drive myself to my destination” to “someone else drives over, picks me up, drives me to my destination, then drives off” be expected to reduce traffic?
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Informative)
The original idea was "Someone drives to a destination. Both my location and my destination coincide with his route. He stops, picks me up, drops me off, gets some pennies as compensation for his fuel and trouble."
Somewhere along the way the "pennies" turned out to be enough to ditch the whole "coincide" part and turn it into a full-time taxi job.
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There are hundreds of services like that. Which is literally the problem. Which one do you list on?
Craigslist you say? (Score:2)
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I remember in 2003 I got from San Francisco to Portland for $30; with a cat in a carrier. The cat didn't enjoy the trip, but we got where we needed to go.
Re: Well, duh (Score:2)
That has never been the plan. Except on paper because they didn't want to be regulated like cabs.
Re: Well, duh (Score:5, Funny)
Two years ago, in the dead of winter, I couldn't get my car started, and neither could AAA. I had ordered food to pick up, so would have to take a taxi. (I had called the place to let them know my problem and that I wasn't a deadbeat!)
While waiting for the AAA guy I called a taxi company. They had a 20 minute wait just to take my request. I mentioned my problem to the AAA guy and he said use Uber.
5 minutes later I had Uber installed. 6 minutes after that, I was being picked up.
So go ahead and defend the established taxi and city council interests if you want. Ask me what I think should happen to taxis and their political defenders? To quote the alien in Independence Day, "Dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
Re: Well, duh (Score:2)
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So go ahead and defend the established taxi and city council interests if you want. Ask me what I think should happen to taxis and their political defenders? To quote the alien in Independence Day, "Dieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."
The problem with that outlook is not in "established taxi and city council interests" and "political defenders" - though there's a certain conspiracy theory undercurrent to that you should probably look into.
The problem is that your complaint about it taking too long to get a pizza delivered to your door is being solved not by increasing the speed of delivery of said pizzas but by creating dozens and hundreds of NEW pizzerias everywhere around you.
I.e. Increasing supply by hundreds of times - instead of eff
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Two years ago, in the dead of winter, I couldn't get my car started, and neither could AAA. I had ordered food to pick up, so would have to take a taxi. (I had called the place to let them know my problem and that I wasn't a deadbeat!)
While waiting for the AAA guy I called a taxi company. They had a 20 minute wait just to take my request. I mentioned my problem to the AAA guy and he said use Uber.
5 minutes later I had Uber installed."
It took you 5 minutes to install the Uber app?
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It took you 5 minutes to install the Uber app?
Right, now that you understand that part, run the rest of the story through the same filter. "They had a 20 minute wait just to take my request." This is obviously not literally true. These sorts of stories people tell always have a throw rug, where the person telling the story sweeps everything they were in control of that contributed to their failure.
I assume the conversation went something like: "How soon can you have a taxi here to pick me up?" "I'm not sure, it averages 20 minutes but it depends." "I'm
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Blablacar works very well in France. The company has a revenue in the order of $100M, expended worldwide, and has 65 million users (15 million in France).
Not bad for an something that "nobody would ever use" ;)
It is a real carpooling company, focused on long distance travel and cheap prices, not a pseudo-taxi service like Uber/Lyft.
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Even without the passenger-less cruising... how would shifting from “I drive myself to my destination” to “someone else drives over, picks me up, drives me to my destination, then drives off” be expected to reduce traffic?
Well, IIRC one of the major causes of congestion in cities is people driving around looking for parking [usatoday.com]. So in theory, yes, these services could reduce traffic, but obviously unintended consequences....
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IIRC one of the major causes of congestion in cities is people .. driving around looking for parking. So in theory, yes, these services could reduce traffic, but obviously unintended consequences....
Not even in theory, unless the Uber vehicle evaporates as soon as it drops you off.
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But on the other hand, how is the traffic generated by today's observed situation any different from traditional taxi traffic, other than there are now for taxicabs? And if starving Uber drivers weren't making any money as we so often hear claimed, why would they be cruising for fares?
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EDUT: "...other than there are now more taxicabs."
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If you assume that 80% of Uber riders would have otherwise driven, I'm confused how this situation isn't mostly a like-for-like trade in terms of congestion.
It'd be interesting to know what's happened to parking demand with the rise of Uber. My guess is demand for parking was rising anyway, is there any chance that demand for parking is rising at a lower rate?
I also wonder if urban areas couldn't solve some of the "Uber congestion" problem by requiring Uber drivers to go to designated lots where they could
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But on the other hand, how is the traffic generated by today's observed situation any different from traditional taxi traffic, other than there are now for taxicabs?
Existing taxi schemes have kickbacks to city councils, who have ready meme defence mechanisms, Stalin's "useful idiots" and...
Oh, you probably didn't mean the gory details of the little men behind the curtain.
Nevermind.
Re:Well, duh (Score:5, Informative)
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Vehicle-sharing actually increases the number of vehicle miles traveled per passenger mile traveled, since now the vehicle sometimes travels without a passenger.
Actual vehicle-sharing like car pooling reduces miles. Taxi services in drag don't. The term has become so abused you almost forget what it's supposed to be.
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There are various paradoxes that point to similar problems from differing viewpoints. If you build bigger roads, people perceive it to be faster and thus clog them up. It's a perception problem.
People perceive their impact on the world vs personal risk differently than the average treehugger looking on at a distance at the overall picture. Individually, using an Uber vs a public bus does not make a huge impact on the world, however, when all the routes are aggregated, it does and it does make more sense to
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... how would shifting from "I drive myself to my destination" to "someone else drives over, picks me up, drives me to my destination, then drives off" be expected to reduce traffic?
He didn't expect it just to reduce trafic he expected it to make it zero, according to TFA :
'If every car in San Francisco was Ubered there would be no traffic.'
Seems bleeding obvious to me - make something cheaper and there will be more of it
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He didn't expect it just to reduce trafic he expected it to make it zero, according to TFA :
'If every car in San Francisco was Ubered there would be no traffic.'
What if it turns out that the standard meaning of "no traffic" is not zero, but below some minimum rate?
You may or may not understand some percentage of complicated words, but you have very poor comprehension of common words and phrases.
In dense areas, it impacts car ownership. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lyft -- along with walking, mass transit, ZipCar, car rental, bike share, and my own bike -- allow my family to continue not owning a car. Lyft is a pretty important part of that, because it covers trips to the doctor, trips with a big package, last minute efforts, etc.
If I owned a car, I'd drive it a whole lot more than my current ZipCar, car rental, and 2x Lyft rides. This is intuitive. The marginal cost of driving your own car is something like $0.50/mile, and that's if you internalize all costs and not just gas. The marginal cost of an uber is a few bucks a mile in a dense area, due to congestion. Higher price, reduced use. Econ 101.
Lyft helps me reduce traffic in my region by reducing my total miles on the road because it's a key component of me being voluntarily car-free. Is my status unique? Nope. Does it dominate the stories across all urban areas? Probably not. But if we characterize vehicles on a roadway as (a) commercial, (b) personal owned-and-operated, and (c) taxi/TNC, what category do you think is biggest? I think it's rarely (c), particularly during times of peak congestion.
Single occupancy owned and operated autos dominates congestion. Focusing on Uber and Lyft as the cause of congestion is focusing on the sawdust in another driver's eye and ignoring the plank in one's own.
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> live near good mass transit
And that's where your anecdote falls apart. 99% of people *dont*
He wasn't wrong, he was lying (Score:2)
The claim didn't make sense at the time. If I take a taxi/uber/whatever then I'm making a journey. What was I doing in my private car? I was making a journey. What's more, the car I was making the journey in was sitting where I left it, not halfway across town. That drive to get the car to me is EXTRA traffic while the journey is the SAME traffic that I generated on my own.
Uber might reduce car commutes among people who go to a base office location and then have to travel about town for work - so they can g
F U C K I N G D U H (Score:2)
You've got a bunch of idiots on the road going nowhere, going out of their way to pick someone up, drop them off, then go back to wherever they roam.
Often in locations that they're unfamiliar with and that already have terrible traffic congestion (SuRgE pRiCiNg).
You thought that would REDUCE traffic?!?!!?
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Traditional Taxi model (Score:2)
You are describing the traditional Taxi model. This article does not compare the two. It claims congestion comes from non car owners using cars.
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I want to highlight the "bunch of idiots on the road going nowhere" part.
Cabbies were already annoying for the type of operation but at least they seemed to have some amount of ethos around how they operated their vehicles including required taxi-stands vs. general curb usage at bigger events/locations (like the airport / stadiums / etc) and in many municipalities statues about where they can idle / etc.
Uber/Lyft threw that out the window. Somewhere between the MUCH larger number of vehicles trolling the ro
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The "so" is in their summary. Companies are advertising reduced traffic to cities and not delivering. Whether you or I get other benefits from their service doesn't change that point.
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I called this out in an above comment but to reiterate to this point specifically:
The hoards of Uber/Lyft vehicles are frequently *occupying parking not freeing it up. In the case where someone chooses to not have a car at all sure but that's not the typical. The cars are still on the road sitting parked around various residences (that largely don't have off-street parking). Around businesses, downtown, etc most of what was available parking is filled with rental cars waiting for a fare. Traditional cabbies
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That's great if you're going to an event downtown. But if you need to travel suburb to suburb in the US, public transit is usually near useless, while driving or taxi/Uber is fast.
Cars (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem was already too much car ownership.
Every cycle article, we see anger towards them, electric cars get subsidies with my ðY', yet those who cycle get nothing.
The car is king, maybe we should have a serious look at car ownership.
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public transport (Score:3)
Just goes to show that public transport is lacking, if it wasn't people wouldn't flock to uber/lift as they do now (according to tfa).
Also; ... stayed home if a ride-hail car hadn't been available."
"...surveys in numerous cities found roughly 60% of riders in Ubers and Lyfts would have
this is a good thing, right? i mean, last week there was a /. post about too many people who never left their house.
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Just a single data point, but it was in Manhattan, where public transport is all over the place.
I was in a group of 10 people. We went around Manhattan for 3-4 hours, used the subway for part of the tour. Generally having a good time. It was late afternoon and we had to get back to our hotel in downtown. About a 40 minute walk. Down to 5 blocks if we took the subway. Instead, a couple of the guys insisted that they get a couple Uber XLs (or whatever they're called) and go that way.
So we got in a coupl
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Uber/Lyft orders of magnitude better than public (Score:3)
Uber/Lyft is certainly orders of magnitude better than public transportation in the Orlando area (and I'm imagine, the vast majority of FL outside of SoFLa). There was no planning when the Orlando area began sprawling and thus, roads are woefully inefficiently laid out, and thus bus lines are abhorrent and ineffective for anywhere outside of Downtown.
Uber/Lyft fills a much-needed gap, especially in my situation (I do not currently drive) and is very welcome, not to mention how great it is for reducing drunk driving. Laughable that it's being railed against. It's not perfect and causes it's own issues, but it's definitely a necessary evil.
This is part of why we regulated Taxis. (Score:3)
This exact phenomenon is one of the two things taxi commissions were established to prevent, the other being unsafe drivers/vehicles.
While they also tend to be regulatory capture targets for local cartels looking to stifle competition, that doesn't make their stated purpose a lie.
Ride Sharing (Score:3)
Was what Uber was originally promoted to be. That made sense. If someone was going from A to B with their own car anyway, they could easily defray the cost of their journey and maybe make a few bucks by picking up a passenger, i.e. carpooling. That idea has long since died, as most Uber/Lyft drivers are just professional cabbies without the regulations.
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if the Uber app offered you a deep savings for going out of your way a little, Uber drivers could start driving minivans and the app would have them pick up multiple passengers.
Uber does offer this, it's called UberPool. Whether the savings are "deep" is a matter of perspective; usually UberPool prices are roughly half of regular Uber prices. But, using UberPool means that it will take you longer to get where you're going in most cases, because your ride will no longer be a direct route from your location to your destination, and you may have to spend some time waiting for other people to get in and out. Most people appear to decide that the savings aren't worth the cost in tim
Shocked! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thatâ(TM)s the wrong metric. (Score:3)
I donâ(TM)t doubt that congestion is worse now and that the average travel speed is lower. But Iâ(TM)d argue that those are the incorrect metrics with which to measure Uber/Lyftâ(TM)s effectiveness in the first place. Rather, we could consider the ability and ease of catching the ride in the first place, and the total time to get from point A to point B. Specifically... NOT the time in the vehicle itself, but the total time from the decision âoeIâ(TM)d like to get to point B.â Until your actual arrival.
See, Iâ(TM)ve lived in the city since before the ride share companies and actually remember what the taxi companies are like. And I remain convinced that the people who love to hate on ride shares are either young enough never to have had to resort to a cab, or live our in the suburbs and never have to use cabs, Ubers, or Lyfts anyway. Basically, everything negative you can think of to say about the ride share companies, applies to taxis tenfold. And thatâ(TM)s if you can get ride in the taxi in the first place. Their dispatch lines are a sick joke. Even if you are in a popular pickup location, the wait to catch an available cab is interminable vs. having the app assign you a specific car. Even when a specific cab IS dispatched from their call center, theyâ(TM)ll frequently abandon you before even picking you up; particularly if they pass by a hotel and see a line of potential airport fares. And the dispatcher doesnâ(TM)t send a replacement until/unless you call in and complain. And unless you are an airport fare yourself, returning home from SFO, just forget about ever getting to or from the avenues in a taxt. You may as well just walk.
And MUNI? Outside the Market street corridor through Castro, MUNIâ(TM)s timeliness and reliability are dubious at best. And thatâ(TM)s assuming it servers your neighborhood at all. If you donâ(TM)t live near Market, 3rd, Judah, Tarval, or Church; MUNI is equally worthless as cabs. If you live in the Mission and work downtown, thereâ(TM)s BART. But vast swaths fo the city, such as the Richmond district (No, donâ(TM)t bother mentioning the dirty-8.) transit wastelands, with service that could charitably described as wholly inadequate to nonexistent.
So yeah.... thereâ(TM)s more traffic on the roads now. And that traffic is moving slower than it used to. But you can actually get where you need to go now in a timely manner and at a significantly reduced cost. The current situation could certainly be improved. But itâ(TM)s still a win versus what came before.
LMAO (Score:2)
Typical Tech Nonsense (Score:2)
'If every car in San Francisco was Ubered there would be no traffic.'
Think about that statement for a minute.
It is obviously non-sensical, yet now we have reporters finally questioning the statement.
Jack Dorsey's claim would have emptied every parking garage and had each car on the road all day, hunting for riders - it would actually cause more traffic, not less - every hour of the day would look like the peak of rush hour traffic - because Uber drivers can't afford to park their cars for 8 hours during the work day...
Lyft/Uber are not Cruising for Rides (Score:2)
Lyft/Uber are not cruising for rides when then are empty. Unlike taxicabs it is illegal in most places to hail them from the streets--you have to use the app to request the ride. Instead when you see them empty it is because they are on the way to pick up the next fare or returning to their house or other place where they wait for the next fare.
Public Transport (Score:2)
Multiple studies show that Uber and Lyft have pulled people away from buses, subways and walking
My personal experiences align with that data, though I wouldn't have it any other way. When I lived downtown in a major metropolitan city for one year I hardly ever left my condo, and when I did I Ubered everywhere. I'm a pretty extreme introvert and germ-o-phobe. I can't stand taking public transit, and in huge cities even walking on side-walks is challenging due to the crowds. Uber saved my life during that year.
20 years ago vs. now (Score:3)
20 yeas ago: "Why are taxis so expensive and hard to deal with?". Well, because if taxis weren't regulated and limited, the streets would be clogged with underpaid drivers.
Now: "Why are the streets clogged with underpaid drivers?"
Yeah, duh (Score:2)
Uber is largely used as a replacement for parking in the most populated areas. Cities have refused to build appropriate parking infrastructure for generations. Now Uber found a workaround.
Surprising (Score:2)
I am surprised that this is surprising to people.
Re:Lyft and Uber are still better than personal au (Score:5, Insightful)
"Walking, riding a bike, or taking public transit aren't always viable options" - understatement of the year and woeful reality. Uber fills the market gap created by abysmal state of public transport.
And there lies the solution. Make public transport good enough it's competitive with Uber.
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Unfortunately, that is impossible. At my old home, a bus was ~3 minutes walking from my home, and dropped me ~5 minutes from my office. I ended up taking Lyft for about 70% of my potential bus trips because I was running a few minutes late, or needed to get to the office a few minutes early. That particular route was on one hour headways, and generally had less than 7-8 passengers. Increasing frequency would not have a meaningful impact on ridership, and realistically the city would have been better off wit
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Yes, that route had such low ridership because the low frequency made it pretty much useless.
Higher frequencies attract ridership because missing a bus doesn't mean a long wait, and because transfers are naturally timed better.
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Yes, that route had such low ridership because the low frequency made it pretty much useless.
Higher frequencies attract ridership because missing a bus doesn't mean a long wait, and because transfers are naturally timed better.
Brilliant! It's a perfect positive example of the Jevons Paradox referred to above by arglebargle-xiv.
Of course, the eventual outcome of that might result in a not-so-nice example of the paradox: more people taking more trips that they otherwise wouldn't have, 'just because it's easy', resulting in 'transit traffic congestion'.
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You are extrapolating wildly from your personal experience. There are hundreds of cities and thousands of towns around the world with excellent bus networks. London, for example, mainly has turn-up-and-go bus services, where frequencies are every 3 to 6 minutes. So no need for any planning. These buses are always well-used, because as Ichijo says: "Higher frequencies attract ridership because missing a bus doesn't mean a long wait, and because transfers are naturally timed better"
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So I could spend 2 to 3 hours on the bus every day or 40 minutes in my car.
Re:Lyft and Uber are still better than personal au (Score:5, Insightful)
Uber fills the market gap created by abysmal state of public transport
Yeah. If only someone had thought of hiring a car out for short-term use. They could even provide a driver with some sort of meter that recorded the cost for you. Incredible to think that nothing like that existed only a few years ago before Uber started pissing their investors' money down the drain.
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We tried it, and at least in big cities like Chicago and New York, it pretty much sucked. I know plenty of New Yorkers with healthy malcontent about Silicon Valley and the valley's malign influences who will fight wildly to keep Uber and Lyft available.
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This doesn't get into wanting to travel on your own schedule
Just how precise IS your schedule? From my local tube station, the trains depart every 90 seconds in rush hour, and a bit less frequently outside. I think it drops to every 10 minutes at really quiet morning times (5am), but I've never actually been there that early. Buses on many routes are around once every 10 minutes.
or having an emergency to attend to and not knowing if there's a bus, subway[...]running at 3:18 AM.
Why would you not know if th
Re: Lyft and Uber are still better than personal a (Score:2)
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You clearly live somewhere with terrible public transport. Bear in mind the GP was implying it was impossible to make public transport good enough.
Re: Lyft and Uber are still better than personal (Score:2)
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While not *everyone* wants to live in cities, it's certainly the case that the bulk of humanity does: about 55%. And that number is increasing over time. So funnily enough, designing good solutions for cities is a good thing to do.
Also, plenty of cities have lots of trees and grass. Not as much as the countryside, but they have more bars, theatres, restaurants, museums and other attractions, so it kinda evens out.
Re:Lyft and Uber are still better than personal au (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, plenty of cities have lots of trees and grass. Not as much as the countryside, but they have more bars, theatres, restaurants, museums and other attractions, so it kinda evens out.
Disclaimer: I'm only offering my personal point of view. My preferences do not make any particular point and certainly do not refute yours. I'm just making conversation.
I'm one of the 45% who wants to move *away* from cities. I'm really glad that 55% of people want to move to cities because it should mean I have more options and less competition when trying to find somewhere that's remote, but not *so* remote that I don't have access to basic amenities such as broadband and medical services.
Also, plenty of cities have lots of trees and grass. Not as much as the countryside, but they have more bars, theatres, restaurants, museums and other attractions, so it kinda evens out.
Bars, theatres, restaurants, museums and other attractions create noise and inevitably have other people. I don't want lots of trees and grass around me because I like nature. I want them around me because I value peace and quiet and find the idea of being around thousands of other people per km2 to be extremely uncomfortable.
The pollution and crime are two other reasons I don't want to live in a city.
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So when people are presented with a more convenient transportation option that gets them to their destination much faster, but at a higher price, then they choose to take it. What a shocking conclusion. Clearly, Uber and Lyft must be destroyed ... or at least that's how some social engineers will view it.
The observation is that Uber is more popular than the social engineers first thought. Therefore this must not only be evil, but the extra riders must be at the expense of ridership for their precious bicycles. Given that it's San Francisco we're talking about, these are probably people who are tired of getting their bikes stolen.
Bike theft (Score:2)
From a modern technical standpoint. I am surprised bike theft can even happen. Seems pretty trivial to electronic tag a bike.
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Re:Lyft and Uber are still better than personal au (Score:5, Insightful)
They started out as ride sharing services, and thus the promise was to reduce the absolute number of rides, as several persons were riding to the same destination and sharing a car. Instead they turned into cheap cab services. Not many rides are actually shared, instead Uber and Lyft drivers are working full- or parttime as drivers for other people on trips they wouldn't be driving if they didn't get money for the trip. And because Uber and Lyft make trips cheaper and more convenient, they add trips that wouldn't have happened otherwise, because of being too expensive or too inconvenient.
And this is just an observation and a statement of facts. Nowhere in the article, any ideas how to deal with the situation were brought forward.
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The reason this paper was necessary is because Uber and Lyft themselves have argued they reduce congestion. Whether the congestion is enough of aa public disbenefit to outweigh the private benefit from Uber and Lyft is a separate discussion, but the starting point is that Uber and Lyft were talking out of their fat ride-hailing asses when they said they cut congestion, and if if you believe they did that inadvertently, you should definitely sign up for a ride-sharing job because Uber and Lyft say they're re
Re:Lyft and Uber are still better than personal au (Score:5, Interesting)
It's still a better option than driving a personal vehicle.
By which metric?
despite the trendy hatred against the ride sharing concept
Uber is not ride sharing. It is just a taxi service with a better app.
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Most people like Lyft and Uber, despite the trendy hatred against the ride sharing concept.
Most people like Lyft and Uber because they're cheaper than normal taxis despite the social impact because it's not their own job that's being pushed into the gutter.
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No, most people like Lyft and Uber because the traditional taxi experience sucks:
- as recently as 2015 (last time I took a traditional taxi in the US) there were still many times where I'd turn away cabs because they required cash
- often taxis are dirty and in poor condition
- the cost of the transaction can't be known in advance. With Uber, the price is known up front, so you don't have that sinking feeling as you watch the price slowly spiral out of control as you sit in traffic.
- similarly, there's no rea
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Not a single one of these problems exist with taxis in my city.
Maybe your real problem is that you don't have direct democracy, and your people can't vote directly on the rules they want to have? Or more commonly in the US, you live in a city where people don't bother to be involved in setting the rules.
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Maybe your real problem is that you don't have direct democracy, and your people can't vote directly on the rules they want to have? Or more commonly in the US, you live in a city where people don't bother to be involved in setting the rules.
Woah, set down the anti-US torch, friend. The issues you cite are (a) far more nuanced than your simplistic generalization implies and - more importantly - (b) completely orthogonal to my point: Uber got a foothold because traditional taxis in the U.S. often suck. The degree to which government played a role in them becoming sucky is probably interesting but completely irrelevant to the person who is standing on a street corner and deciding how to get from point A to point B.
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Not trendy, the word is "astroturfed".
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Earlier than that. Way, way earlier [wikipedia.org] than that.
The internet was a better place when you needed an IQ above room temperature to participate.
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The average IQ of the internet user was higher. Either you needed to have access to an university computer system or you had to know that TCP ain't the Chinese secret service. Both kept the majority of conspiracy nuts away.
it's the people, not the Internet (Score:3)
A French philosopher predicted that a free press would advance knowledge and create a more informed public. John Adams famously quipped: "There has been more new error propagated by the press in the last ten years than in an hundred years before 1798,” (Let's recall how much forget how much fake news Thomas Jefferson levied against Adams during the 1800 election.)
I am sure if the Internet were around in the 1800's we would have the same problem, but is it because of people or the internet that this
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Try only visiting archive.org, wikipedia, the BBC, and slashdot. Enlightenment, information, news, and entertainment.
Stay away from those Other Places.