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Transportation

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.

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Uber and Lyft Are Creating Traffic, Not Reducing It

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  • Let's wait for Elon's Robotaxis then !
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:Let's wait... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Frobnicator ( 565869 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @10:11AM (#59735540) Journal

      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.

      • There are optimization procedures that decrease dead mileage. I fully expect them to be used for these services.
        • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

          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

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            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.

            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

          • Point is, you should ultimately be able to converge to some kind of virtual routes in many cases, *if you go really big* with these services. Like, city-big. At that point dead mileage is basically an empty autonomous microbus - it may happen sometimes, but like with normal buses, it should be rare.
  • Well, duh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @03:47AM (#59734890)

    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)

      by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @04:04AM (#59734908) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • I still think someone needs to come up with a craigslist/tinder-like service which lets you post a trip you'd like to take, and matches you up with others in your area wishing to make a similar trip. Then leaves it up to all of you to decide how to carpool, split costs, etc. That would reduce both the number of parking spots used and number of cars on the road. As for your chance of meeting up with a serial killer or rapist: (1) That's extremely unlikely, the media just likes to hype up those stories thu
      • That has never been the plan. Except on paper because they didn't want to be regulated like cabs.

        • by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @09:29AM (#59735402) Journal

          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."

          • Similar here, I called two taxi companies, neither one had a ride available, so I installed Uber. The experience was so much better than a taxi in every way that I never looked back.
          • 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

          • 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?

            • 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

    • 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....

      • 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.

    • 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?

      • EDUT: "...other than there are now more taxicabs."

      • 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

      • 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)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @06:46AM (#59735078)
      This is just Jevons paradox [wikipedia.org] in action again. The best-known recent (well, dating back to the 1950s but still being felt) example is the thinking that we can ease road congestion by building more and bigger motorways. This leads to more houses being built where the motorways go and therefore more congestion, not less. For motorways specifically it's called the Downs-Thomson paradox although it's really just Jevons paradox in another form. At some point someone will write this up in an economics journal and it'll either be called the Uber paradox or perhaps the Stoatgobbler-Talleywanger-Futplexer paradox, assuming the authors are so named.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Jevons paradox may be part of it, but it's not JUST that. Vehicle-sharing actually increases the number of vehicle miles traveled per passenger mile traveled, since now the vehicle sometimes travels without a passenger.
        • by Kjella ( 173770 )

          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.

      • by guruevi ( 827432 )

        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

    • ... 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

      • 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.

    • by stomv ( 80392 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @08:46AM (#59735288) Homepage
      I have a family of four, live near good mass transit, and don't own a car (nor does my spouse). We own two parking spots at our home and live comfortably.

      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.
  • 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

  • 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?!?!!?

    • by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      I'm pretty sure that Uber's founders were well aware of the rather obvious flaws in their plan. They must have at least considered the reduction in traffic angle because it was part of their initial pitch, although unless they genuinely intended for Uber to remain a glorified car pooling system then it was clearly bull even then, and absolutely became false when they transisitioned into just another (albeit large and global) "Taxi Company with an App". Really, other than their size, the only thing that se
    • You are describing the traditional Taxi model. This article does not compare the two. It claims congestion comes from non car owners using cars.

    • by Matheus ( 586080 )

      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

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @05:08AM (#59734994)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • 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.

    • by Matheus ( 586080 )

      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

  • Cars (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tuppe666 ( 904118 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @05:11AM (#59735002)

    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.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • We should (in the US and elsewhere also I imagine) but we won't. Too many people feel that anything *other* than spending on roads/cars is just plain old socialism or whatever the new term of the week is. Heaven forbid we have multiple, efficient ways to get around.
  • by sad_ ( 7868 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @06:39AM (#59735064) Homepage

    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;
    "...surveys in numerous cities found roughly 60% of riders in Ubers and Lyfts would have ... stayed home if a ride-hail car hadn't been available."

    this is a good thing, right? i mean, last week there was a /. post about too many people who never left their house.

    • 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

    • Even with public transport, services like Uber are more convenient. You don't have to sit on a bus with people you don't know, the seats are more comfortable, and the stops are custom.
    • I think this will only turn out to be true as long as Uber investors are subsidizing every ride. As a non-investor, non-Uber-user, I'm curious what will happen to ridership the moment the true cost of the ride is charged to them. I think it will be either "huh, maybe at $2 (or whatever), even with the additional inconvenience of walking to the bus/subway station, public transportation is worth it," or "Tired of overpriced Uber rides? Join Uber 2.0, now flush with fresh investor money to undercut Uber eve
      • by galgon ( 675813 )
        Uber does not lose money on every ride. Uber pays the drivers less than the amount the customer pays. Ignoring promotional/discounted rides etc. they make money on every trip. However, Uber spends a boat load of money on marketing and R&D (specifically Self Driving Cars). If Uber would layoff the R&D teams and cut back on the marketing they would have a nice profitable business. But currently there is no incentive for them to do this. Earning a steady profit is no where near as exciting to inv
        • I'm sure R&D accounts for a fair chunk of the money they lose every quarter - but every article I read indicates they also lose money on every ride, even accounting for that fact that they're externalizing costs to their drivers like crazy, and at some point that gravy train has to end for Uber as well. See, for example: https://nymag.com/intelligence... [nymag.com]
  • 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 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.

  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @09:32AM (#59735414)

    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.

    • It's actually funny, or discouraging, or something, that being able to share your travel plans so easily has not notably increased actual ride sharing (car pooling) whatsoever as far as I can tell. It wouldn't take anything revolutionary either - 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. Easy as this would be, it hasn't happened, so apparently people just do not want to c
      • 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)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @10:18AM (#59735566) Journal
    I am shocked, shocked that a transportation service resulted in more, rather than less, transportation being used!
  • by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @11:02AM (#59735792)

    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.

  • Who didn't see THAT coming. Instead of taking a bus/subway/taxi, these "hipster/narcissist" types call up and uber/lyft.
  • '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 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.

  • 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.

  • by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Monday February 17, 2020 @12:57PM (#59736320) Journal

    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?"

  • 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.

  • I am surprised that this is surprising to people.

Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis. It makes sense, when you don't think about it.

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