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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

#141

Post by enraged_camel »

rossdavidh wrote: post #95

I live in Austin, which for a period of time had basically driven out Uber and Lyft with regulation. Then, the Texas state government overruled the city, and Uber and Lyft came back. I can say from personal experience, our traffic did not get the slightest bit better when Uber and Lyft were gone. However, our drunk driving rates did apparently go up.

I live in Austin too. The reason you didn't notice much change is that several new services swooped in to fill the gap left by Uber and Lyft. There was even a very popular Facebook group where people (illegally) solicited ride-sharing services.

So, in a sense, ride-sharing never really went away.

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

#142

Post by logfromblammo »

kazinator wrote: post #17
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…

> while being effectively subsidized by the taxpayers roads Uber driver pays taxes including whatever is in the gasoline and vehicle insurance and whatnot. The proper "get off my lawn" way to complain about non-payers of road taxes is to focus on cyclists.

And the proper way to argue with such a person is to write the fourth-power rule on a large sheet of paper, roll it up into a small, tight cone, and stab them in the eye with it.

Road wear is proportional to axle weight to the fourth power. Gas tax is proportional to total weight to the first power.

In collisions, the more massive vehicle sustains proportionally less damage. A large truck could completely pulverize an economy car while barely even denting its own grill. Clearly, collision liability insurance should be proportional to a vehicle's mass and its top speed, while own-vehicle insurance should be proportional to speed and inversely proportional to mass.

Uber is not a threat from a road maintenance perspective. It's a question of road capacity used per passenger trip distance. If you measure a road's capacity by vehicle throughput per unit time, a hailed ride can transport 0 to 5 passengers in one vehicle-plus-buffer 60m long. A bus is a longer vehicle, but it still needs a traffic buffer for safe stopping distance much longer than its own length. That bus can transport dozens of passengers with nearly the same road capacity utilization as the car.

What's needed to reduce congestion in car-heavy traffic is robovehicle-to-robovehicle communication, that can automatically negotiate multiple robocars into a train, to reduce the length of empty roadway needed ahead of each one for collision-free travel. The robocars have to agree to brake and accelerate at the same times, in the same amounts. Buses can already accomplish this easily, just by putting all the riders in the same box, and using one driver to control the speed of everyone in it. So the problem really is the ride-hailing driver. Their reflexes are too poor to drive at 60 mph with their front bumper touching the rear bumper of the car ahead.

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

#143

Post by dublinben »

nradov wrote: post #55
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).

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.

Several countries have introduced women-only transportation options to mixed success: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11824962/Women...

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

#144

Post by almost_usual »

Spivak wrote: post #138
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.

People chose a DD and then drove -- I mean it's not like we need a historian to remember back that far.

I have a hard time believing a designated driver would be willing to go to 3-4 different neighborhoods in a night and then be willing to drive everyone to their own home. Who knows, maybe I'm just selfish.

I also wonder if people used to go out on dates and not drink in that scenario? Or would only one person drink? Double dates? Hrmmm.

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

#145

Post by phyzome »

tibbon wrote: post #37

One of the biggest issues that I see is where the cars pull over to pick up / drop off people. They almost always just stop in the middle of streets, double parking. Rarely do they pull over into an empty spot that's safer for them and passengers. This often causes traffic backup, at least in the Boston area.

Also: Stopping in the middle of crosswalks ("look at this convenient place where for some reason nobody is already parked!") or just before/after intersections (which are the most dangerous part of the roads as a baseline).

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

#146

Post by blackrock »

blondie9x wrote: post #47
dantheman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could apps pushing car services increase the number of people who don't have cars? Could it make owning a car more vialble? Could it increase the density of a city (due to less parking)? Could this make it more walkable? Could it make mass transit more effective? We should be encouraging ride sharing and working to eliminate parking; parking requirements make cities unwalkable thus making public transit ineffective.

You don't need cars if you have better transit and more dense cities. You would need less parking also. Ride sharing makes congestion worse because people are less likely to use mass transit for the route.

Mass transit will never be solved.

I think it's time to give up on this dream.

In a sprawled out city like Los Angeles, the suburbs that people live in, are too far away from the job centers. It's even too far away from a supermarket, or the shopping mall.

Mass transit is a failure when it takes 2 hours to get to your destination, when it is just 15 miles away. Where you may have to walk to a bus stop to catch your bus, and then transfer to a light rail line. And then, the light rail drops you off, 4 miles away from where you need to be.

It's easier to just sit in your car, stuck in traffic. At least you have air conditioning in the hot sun. You can listen to your own music. And you won't be in danger of being violently attacked, robbed, or physically assaulted.

But I think there can be a few solutions to the last mile problem.

1. Dockless bicycles. I don't think this can work in America, the way it worked in China. The bicycles are too massive, and can get crammed up on the sidewalk, at some destination point.

2. Dockless electric scooters. I think this can actually work in America. They are small enough, that several units take the same amount of space as a single bicycle.

3. Uber to drive you the last few miles. A taxi service won't pick you up. And it might not even be profitable for an Uber driver to pick you up. But at least this is an option.

4. Fully electric and autonomous robotic vehicles that will drive you from point to point. This has to be the ultimate dream, and can actually be the real solution to the mass transit problem.

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

#147

Post by dagoat »

rossdavidh wrote: post #95

I live in Austin, which for a period of time had basically driven out Uber and Lyft with regulation. Then, the Texas state government overruled the city, and Uber and Lyft came back. I can say from personal experience, our traffic did not get the slightest bit better when Uber and Lyft were gone. However, our drunk driving rates did apparently go up.

In that time they were gone, didn't about 6-12 other companies offering the same service spin up/get popular? Which are probably not doing as great now Lyft and Uber are back.

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

#148

Post by almost_usual »

Spooky23 wrote: post #132
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.

Or get drunk, maim and kill people.

This is definitely a thing in more rural places. I'm not sure if the DD stats within urban areas have changed with the introduction of ride sharing. Would be interesting to look up.

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

#149

Post by lhorie »

almost_usual wrote: post #91
tibbon wrote: post #37

One of the biggest issues that I see is where the cars pull over to pick up / drop off people. They almost always just stop in the middle of streets, double parking. Rarely do they pull over into an empty spot that's safer for them and passengers. This often causes traffic backup, at least in the Boston area.

Definitely the same in SF, Uber / Lyft notoriously double park illegally.

In SF, I see people double parking everywhere, Uber or not - and I mean _parked_, not idling. My kid's school literally spent 20 minutes last parents night begging people not to do that in front of the school (and it's _still_ a problem).

Going westbound on Golden Gate st around Fillmore is one of the weirdest thing I've ever seen. You can see entire lines of double parked cars with no drivers inside (sometimes on both sides of the road!)

Then you also have the way-too-small MUNI bus stops where the bus has to double park (e.g. along Fulton), the delivery vans and the random dudes waiting for a parking spot to hopefully free up somewhere in the block.

Even without considering Ubers, driving in SF is already a shitshow...

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

#150

Post by paulgb »

jimmaswell wrote: post #109
paulgb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] 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.

100% agree. In NYC the serious congestion pricing proposals that I'm aware of have a big part of the revenue going to subway/transit improvements.
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