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New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

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Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#181

Post by Impossible »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #175
bluedino wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> because they don't want to deal with parking or drive drunk. That's what my friends use it for. It's a shame, because in the smaller midwestern towns, we don't really have Uber yet so it can't be used. Drunk driving here isn't even given a second thought.

Most bars have the names of taxi services to call if you're over the limit. To still drive because that's inconvenient is quite literally criminal.

In many smaller towns, and even larger cities where taxies are not common, this isn't an option. When I lived in Mesa years ago I'd call cab services multiple times and they'd just never show up. Many smaller towns just don't have taxi services.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#182

Post by yardie »

walshemj wrote: post #75
yardie wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even biking works if you have bike racks on the bus and light rail. But most buses can only accommodate 1-3 bikes and light rail has no racks onboard at all.

well a folding bike aka the Brompton works better for this use case

Would love a Brompton. I ride a Dahon (less so with Lyft) for the commute and Cannondale on the weekends. Once we move to a larger flat I'm going to gift myself a folding electric bike.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#183

Post by othersideofcoin »

smsm42 wrote: post #140
distances wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers not giving change sounds ridiculous. What's the reasoning behind that? In Europe it doesn't seem to be a problem.

Most likely reason is to avoid drivers being robbed - if there's no (easy and accessible for the driver) way to take money out of the thing, local addicts won't get an idea "let's jump on a bus and take money from the driver" because driver can't really give the money. Also a bit of avoiding fraud from driver's side - if the driver is allowed to take money out, it's impossible to control whether all the payments actu…

It's also to speed things up. Many drivers want to hit their timetable; having to give change to 3 or 4 different people per stop is going to kill that.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#184

Post by isostatic »

walshemj wrote: post #86
isostatic wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In London taxis are classed as public transport - don't have to pay congestion charges, and the legacy expensive cash-only ones can use bus lanes (but not south of the river at this time of night). The upshot of this is its far cheaper to park outside and get a taxi from outside the zone than to drive all the way in, despite not saving on congestion. The reason it didn't used to be as easy was black cabs are an archa…

I have always found black cabs reliable I lost my wallet in one and it was handed into my bank with the £200 intact

Reliable as in being able to get one. If you park somewhere out near Hanger Lane say, an uber is a few minutes away from your side street, a black cab is unlikely to be there for some days.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#185

Post by aninhumer »

zten wrote: post #69
capkutay wrote: post #20

Its pretty disappointing that transit advocacy groups spend more time fighting ride-share and jitney transit services than actually working to improve transit in their cities. Instead of looking for solutions to making faster, cleaner, more reliable transit more feasible, they're blaming riders and ride-share companies for a 5% reduction in ridership.

If you're in a city that mostly moves people by bus, and has incredibly high construction costs, of course this is the solution they're going to chase. The bus service suffers with more competing vehicles on the road. People prefer rail and dedicated right-of-ways, but they also don't want their neighborhood destroyed while it's built. The transit advocacy groups end up hamstrung by these competing desires. Uber and…

I think once people are used to getting around by opening a smartphone and putting in a destination, there's a lot of potential for offering transport-as-a-service more efficiently than a private car the whole way. I've already seen Uber appearing in Google Maps directions, and with a bit more work you could combine that to offer Taxi -> Train -> Taxi for the full journey.

Indeed, I think there are a lot of benefits once these systems start being integrated. It would likely facilitate ride grouping, since you'll have a lot of people arriving or departing from the same place at the same time. Combined ticketing could also allow stations to have special entrances for taxis that bypass ticket barriers, since they know everyone inside has already paid.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#186

Post by stuaxo »

tradersam wrote: post #136
jdavis703 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people die in automobile crashes than from train crashes and crimes in public transit systems.

This doesn't mean anything. Although many more die from automobile crashes doesn't make using public transportation in some major cities inherently dangerous or unpleasant - even unhealthy.

Being on a busy road surrounded by cars all burning petrol is not exactly a healthy place to be either.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35504768

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#187

Post by true_tuna »

jessriedel wrote: post #22

I'm very interested in the convergence of Lyft-Line/Uber-Pool service with bus service. It's easy to imagine Lyft and Uber running dynamically adjustable bus/van routes -- basically jitneys/peseros that take advantage of smart phones -- that are faster, more reliable, and cheaper than city buses. (Vans are super cheap per passenger if they are always full.) Lyft has taken small steps in this direction by asking Line…

Chariot is doing a good job of bridging the gap between Lyft line and public buses. Providing an alternative to the overloaded, slow and unpleasant public transit in my area. They haven't added an on-demand offering, but I'd love to see it.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#188

Post by jblow »

colechristensen wrote: post #116
yardie wrote: post #18

I’m a big proponent of mass transit and when it’s available I use it if I can. But I can get Lyft door to door for just $1-2 more than a bus or train. If mass transit wants to keep with rideshare and livery they need to: expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment. When I was a kid I knew how to read a bus schedule and train map to plan my trip. Now, there is an entire generation of kids in school an…

I'm regularly bothered by the fact that mass transit is more expensive than driving. Alone it is definitely cheaper disregarding sunk costs (price of car, etc.), it's still cheaper as long as I don't have to have a new car every few years, and if I have passengers mass transit is many times as expensive as driving. Shouldn't it be the opposite? I figure I can take 4 people from Mountain View to San Francisco and back…

The problem is that your car-driving case presumes the driver already wants to go to MV and is bringing his friends and they don’t mind coordinating to make that happen.

If you change your thought-experiment to a paid service, good luck being cheaper than CalTrain.

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#189

Post by true_tuna »

samtho wrote: post #159
walshemj wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really such a hard ship to walk a mile?

It is when you need to be somewhere at a specific time or not be sweaty when you get there. There are also areas which lack proper pedestrian infrastructure making it very dangerous to walk.

Places like Mountain View CA

Re: New Research on How Ride-Hailing Impacts Travel Behavior

#190

Post by ilamont »

The research (and ride-hailing firms themselves) suggest that ride-hailing can be complementary to public transit.

I'm a former PT taxi driver (suburban city next to large urban area) and a lot of our business was from or to mass transit stations and the airport. These services (car and mass transit) complemented each other, but I don't recall anyone criticizing them for taking riders away from buses or the subway. The main complaint was cab rides were too expensive and the medallion system was unfair.

One thing that was different then compared to the use of ride-sharing services now: Rarely did we have a pickup from a private home or random street address to another home, random street address, restaurant, or movie theater. However, this was before the smart phone era, so random street pickups were either flag-downs or via public phones.

I also used to live in London where private car services used to be very common before the rise of the smart phone or ride-sharing services. They were necessary, particularly in neighborhoods where it was hard to get black cabs or there were no tube stations nearby. The main complaints against the private car services came from the black cab industry.

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