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Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

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Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#31

Post by TheCoelacanth »

IntronExon wrote: post #25
arcticbull wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't cars be a premium product? Buses and subways are so much more efficient, and if Europe or Hong Kong is anything to go by, they can be nice, clean and faster than driving. If people want to spend the extra money to drive by themselves that is a luxury not a right, and we should be open to charging it accordingly. I feel ridesharing services have a place, but less so than then Zipcar. Lastly, I don't thin…

When Parisian subways show up in NYC, then make your argument about shafting the poor because you’re currently not one of them.

NYC has fantastic transit. Maybe not as good as Paris, but that is an extremely high bar to meet.

Poor people already don't drive in NYC because it is already too expensive for them, so it is disingenuous to suggest that they are being shafted by making it more expensive.

Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#32

Post by tachyoff »

closeparen wrote: post #28
tachyoff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they were preferable, people would choose them. Balivernes. That’s just a tautology. I’m sure if you ask any American if they think the electoral college system is fair, 99/100 will tell you it isn’t. Yet it persists. Why? Many reasons, among them being institutional inertia. Institutions are big and slow, especially ones involving concrete and steel. There are also power amplification issues. That is to say, ce…

There is no institutional inertia or political organizing involved in walking, riding your bike, or taking the bus for your next trip. The real challenge is in building out the transit infrastructure and dense transit-oriented development that would make these options genuinely preferable to most people. Not in declaring that they're preferable or forcing people into them today.

> There is no institutional inertia or political organizing involved in walking, riding your bike, or taking the bus for your next trip.

Assuming you live in a bikeable or walkable area, sure. Bus service exists, but it can be patchy and/or underfunded. Some people simply have none of these options.

I live in Detroit (yes, Motor City), and this area is crying out for good mass transit. In fact, two out of four necessary counties voted down a regional transit mileage (which amounted to peanuts every year on property tax bills), which would have provided billions to develop rapid transit for southeast Michigan, because of pretty much racial hangups and “screw you, got mine”-ism from the suburbs.

These are complex issues. I agree that building out transit infrastructure is complicated, but I think making them politically attractive are equally difficult.

Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#33

Post by mrep »

bparsons wrote: post #16

Cars congest cities. Articles like this encourage policy makers to target users of ride sharing, while ignoring the obvious broader problem. If cities build appropriate multi modal transportation networks and restrict the amount of space allowed for vehicle traffic, people will walk, bike or take the train rather than drive. All three are preferable to being stuck in traffic.

> people will walk, bike or take the train rather than drive. All three are preferable to being stuck in traffic.

Maybe for you but my girlfriend could write a book about all of the harassment she has received from random strangers in Seattle. She has even been assaulted which is why we are now car shopping after trying to go without one for 2 years and that is just so she can feel safe traveling. She would easily drive multi hour commutes to avoid having our future kids risk/deal with what she experiences while walking around downtown.

Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#34

Post by awalton »

ams6110 wrote: post #24
so33 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bus with 50 people is 49 cars taken off the road. Even with a self driving carpool option the bus still takes off 9 other vehicles (assuming 5 passengers in a vehicle).

What is a 50-person bus with 1 passenger aboard? That is a very common sight in my town. There are a few routes that are heavily used, but the rest of them are just huge vehicles very inefficiently transporting a couple of people and blocking lanes of traffic and frustrating drivers at the same time.

> What is a 50-person bus with 1 passenger aboard?

A poorly designed bus route. But, that's not surprising giving the state of urban sprawl; it's quite a hard problem to design a route that maintains ridership, simply because everything that people need access to is so spread out and randomized that people will prefer cars/lyft and 15 minutes of travel time to taking three buses over 50 minutes and then walking the last mile to get to where they want to go.

Bus agencies could do better if they were a bit more adaptable/flexible too - other countries have experimented with bus-on-demand, and having smaller buses ("shuttles") would help on lower demand routes. But it's already hard enough for these transit agencies to maintain budgets when ridership is so poor that it's difficult for them to spend money to try something new - it's a self-defeating cycle.

Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#35

Post by IntronExon »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #31
IntronExon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Parisian subways show up in NYC, then make your argument about shafting the poor because you’re currently not one of them.

NYC has fantastic transit. Maybe not as good as Paris, but that is an extremely high bar to meet. Poor people already don't drive in NYC because it is already too expensive for them, so it is disingenuous to suggest that they are being shafted by making it more expensive.

The chief of the MTA doesn’t agree with you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/nyregion/subways-new-york...

Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#36

Post by swozey »

iamdave wrote: post #27
swozey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a city that banned U/L for about a year. Nothing was improved. A bunch of companies popped up to replace them but they were absolute jokes and so much worse. DWIs went way up. People stopped going out. I don't think there were any net positives from it.

Hrm. This sounds a lot like a certain city I just got away from. By chance, did your state legislation come down pretty much immediately and strip away the power of cities to regulate TNC's in their city limits? That was a real fun session of The Lege.

Yup. I'm actually on my way out myself at this point. I loved this place 6+ years ago. I haven't been happy here in the last few years.

Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#37

Post by chrismcb »

bparsons wrote: post #16

Cars congest cities. Articles like this encourage policy makers to target users of ride sharing, while ignoring the obvious broader problem. If cities build appropriate multi modal transportation networks and restrict the amount of space allowed for vehicle traffic, people will walk, bike or take the train rather than drive. All three are preferable to being stuck in traffic.

Uber and lyft aren't "ride sharing" they are taxi service. And we had rules and regulations to limit tazi services, and congestion was one of the reasons. But everyone complained that these rules are based and antiquated.

Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#38

Post by mrep »

beguiledfoil wrote: post #18
bparsons wrote: post #16

Cars congest cities. Articles like this encourage policy makers to target users of ride sharing, while ignoring the obvious broader problem. If cities build appropriate multi modal transportation networks and restrict the amount of space allowed for vehicle traffic, people will walk, bike or take the train rather than drive. All three are preferable to being stuck in traffic.

Even Seattle is seeing per capita transit ridership drops, odd considering expansion of rail lines. In an urban environment the car is what turns transportation into a game of the prisoner's dilemma. From this point of view ride shares are just the latest way that America has managed to extend the game. My desire is that we develop ways to make cities hospitable to carless families. That goal seems more remote now th…

Light rail usage has grown by leaps and bounds [0].

The reason you are seeing a per capita transit ridership decline is because Seattle is the fastest growing city in the country [1] so it's understandable why public transit rates are declining despite the huge investments.

[0]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sou...

[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-once-...

Re: Studies are increasingly clear: Uber, Lyft congest cities

#40

Post by mrep »

chad_oliver wrote: post #17
notatoad wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

taxing a particular road will only divert traffic onto other nearby roads that are probably less able to handle high traffic volumes. I wouldn't want hundreds of cars driving down my residential street just because the nearby arterial street has switched over to congestion-pricing mode. congestion taxes need to be regional, not per-road.

The best approach is to have congestion pricing applied to all roads, but with each road (or road segment) having its own price. After all, 'hundreds of cars driving down a residential street' is a case of demand exceeding supply, so we can fix it by increasing the cost and therefore decreasing the demand.

In a society with perfect information [0], I agree.

However, people don't have perfect information so how would you coordinate millions of drivers about their different driving paths and their various costs? Not everyone has smartphones running GPS all the time.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information

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