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A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

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Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#101

Post by mc32 »

fipple wrote: post #79
nradov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people (mainly women) have told me that they're afraid to take public transit in the SF Bay Area due to the other riders. I'm not sure how we fix that problem without restricting civil rights in ways that would be unconstitutional and politically unacceptable. It's a real dilemma.

You set rules for society and harshly punish people who break them. Look at Singapore.

For better or for worse, we are not like Singapore. Exorbitatly heavy fines, in these cases, barr the RIAA, and caning are not acceptable punishment in the US.

I’m certain most people would not want Singaporean-style justice in the US.

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#102

Post by Spooky23 »

chimeracoder wrote: post #87
lotsofpulp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the major benefits in some cities of Uber/Lyft over public transportation is not risking interaction with thementally ill, inebriated, panhandlers, or otherwise dangerous people (like the dancers on the NYC subway).

> or otherwise dangerous people (like the dancers on the NYC subway). ...what did the dancers ever do to you?

I once got kicked in the face and lost my glasses.

Navigating in Penn Station with 20/200 vision is fun.

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#103

Post by foldr »

dionidium wrote: post #98
foldr wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know, but it's still worth noting that subway dancers aren't actually "dangerous" on any sensible definition of the term. The feelings that you mention are far from universal and significantly educable. I find subway dancers mildly irritating. They've never caused me to fear for my safety. >we evolved in an environment that rewarded avoiding aggressive strangers and also in which automobiles did not exist. Peo…

> People from remote tribes who've never seen an automobile are practically scared to death when they first set foot in a city. Not being scared by cars isn't in any way the default attitude for a human to have -- quite the opposite We shouldn't conflate the experience of seeing a big, loud automobile for the first time with the experience of driving or riding in one, which is designed to be so comfortable as to elim…

It’s not a conflation of ideas. I’m simply pointing out that we’re not scared of cars, or of being in cars, because we’re accustomed to the relevant experiences. (Evolution has very little to do with it, so far as I can see.)

Similarly, once you’ve seen dancers on the subway a few times, you won’t be scared of them — if you ever were in the first place.

There is nothing inherently scary about dancers as compared to cars. Indeed, there are all sorts of good evolutionary reasons to be less scared of dancing humans than of large, heavy, fast-moving objects.

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#104

Post by komali2 »

idoh wrote: post #97
nradov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people (mainly women) have told me that they're afraid to take public transit in the SF Bay Area due to the other riders. I'm not sure how we fix that problem without restricting civil rights in ways that would be unconstitutional and politically unacceptable. It's a real dilemma.

It's not such a dilemma - most of the "bad" riders are also fare evaders. If SF simply put in any effort to make sure that riders actually paid for their trips, that would solve 90% of the problem. Riding the bus for free is not a civil right.

But not all fare evaders are "bad" riders. Some are just broke. I guess we could rehash all the "poverty causes so much unnecessary crime" argument but I'd rather not.

I'd like to see what happens if all the buses became free, with reasonable counter-actions taken (i.e. increased funding from city budget to offset loss of ticket costs, more buses to handle increased ridership, etc).

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#105

Post by mrep »

rhizome wrote: post #93
nradov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people (mainly women) have told me that they're afraid to take public transit in the SF Bay Area due to the other riders. I'm not sure how we fix that problem without restricting civil rights in ways that would be unconstitutional and politically unacceptable. It's a real dilemma.

While police and transit should deal with incidents that do inevitably happen, but I don't think fear of potential incidents is something they can fix. It may be that the person with the fear simply doesn't like to live in a large city.

And thus we have suburbs which is where my girlfriend wants to move so she can feel safer.

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#106

Post by kitsunesoba »

blondie9x wrote: post #40
lewis500 wrote: post #15

I don’t understand why this study is receiving so much attention. It’s not peer reviewed. It doesn’t contain actual data collection (the estimates are all extrapolated in a way the author considers reasonable, not measured data from traffic detectors or surveys). Schaller is not a researcher or engineer, but a consultant mainly working for taxi regulation. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But I’m surprised the study get…

Are you kidding yourself? You think people continuing to rely on cars whether they drive or they are being driven is going to reduce traffic? Buses and rail reduce traffic not cars. Mass van pooling and what not can also help. We have to get off of cars and empty seats. Apps pushing cars and pushing ride sharing are pushing laziness and congestion. Why kid ourselves into thinking that Uber and Lyft are fixing the car…

I agree that public transport should be both more efficient and readily available, but that shouldn’t be the only focus. For people used to the amenities afforded by owning a car to adopt public transport, you also have to make using public transport a good experience. It can’t have passengers packed like sardines or be smelly and grubby and constantly late like much of America’s public transport is… many who drive instead of taking public transport do so for those exact reasons.

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#107

Post by almost_usual »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #100
almost_usual wrote: post #96

I like the idea of ride sharing but the problem comes when it's abused to the extreme. It's not out of the ordinary for someone to order 3-4 Lyfts on the weekend in a single evening. That is a ton of unnecessary driving to hang out or fulfill the social obligations people have. I sometimes wonder what San Francisco was like before ride sharing. I imagine people would just pick a neighborhood and hang out there.

Is it possible that the benefit of people being more easily able to travel around town outweighs the cost of the extra traffic?

Yeah, I don't know. I'm only stating that I can see how Lyft and Uber could generate more traffic due to convenience.

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#108

Post by mark_l_watson »

fipple wrote: post #79
nradov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people (mainly women) have told me that they're afraid to take public transit in the SF Bay Area due to the other riders. I'm not sure how we fix that problem without restricting civil rights in ways that would be unconstitutional and politically unacceptable. It's a real dilemma.

You set rules for society and harshly punish people who break them. Look at Singapore.

+1 great example. I only worked in Singapore for a few weeks, but really loved the place, how it is run, lack of obvious homelessness or extreme poverty (so different than parts of SF, Chicago, NYC, etc.)

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#109

Post by jimmaswell »

paulgb wrote: post #26
sharkmerry wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Uber isn't perfect, but banning it doesn't magically fix the subway. There's no doubt there are issues with public transit, but letting the rideshare services run rampant, while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc is no solution either. >> U.S. ridership is surging, he said — up 37% last year, to 2.6 billion passengers, from 2016. >> It found that, in U.S. cities, 49% to 61% of ride-hailing tr…

> [...] letting the rideshare services run rampant, while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads, etc is no solution either. Given that any additional taxes will be passed on to ride share users, why should taxpayers subsidize private car ownership but not use of the roads by ride share users? A blanket congestion tax feels more fair to me.

Congestion taxes seem like such a lazy cop out to me - instead of working towards improving infrastructure to support more people getting around the way they want or make car commuters naturally want to choose transit instead, just beat them with the tax stick until they go away? We can do better.

Re: A new study says services like Uber and Lyft are causing urban traffic woes

#110

Post by komali2 »

fipple wrote: post #79
nradov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several people (mainly women) have told me that they're afraid to take public transit in the SF Bay Area due to the other riders. I'm not sure how we fix that problem without restricting civil rights in ways that would be unconstitutional and politically unacceptable. It's a real dilemma.

You set rules for society and harshly punish people who break them. Look at Singapore.

Or you make healthcare and education free-or-nearly-so and set up fantastic social welfare safety nets. Look at swaths of Europe, Taiwan, etc.

Kind of hard to fine someone that doesn't have the money to pay for it. Kind of hard to put a person in jail when the jail is already full of kids with marijuana sentences.

I don't think this "Singapore Solution" would work in the USA.

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