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Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

advances.sciencemag.org

71–80 of 81 posts

Re: Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really hasn't. People who drive to work park in monthly lots, usually with assigned spots. Uber replaced people driving to restaurants and bars.

Either way I'd call that a net win for society. Where's the paper that estimates how many dui-related deaths Uber et al has prevented?

There are several, including papers from Uber.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/business/uber-drunk-drivi...

Re: Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The question is what is the best response to help the environment? invest in public transit that can transport people in a denser fashion instead of relying on cars. The fundamental limitation of the car is the low amount of passengers / area it can transport. http://i.imgur.com/G7cAK4Y.gif >Is that partially why many cities and countries do not want them to operate in their jurisdiction? Among other things, yes. Bu…

Make public transport remotely competitive with private transport on a time basis and people will flock to it in cities. In cities where public transport is effective (many European capitals and pretty much just NYC and select parts of DC and Chicago in the US), people of all strata of life use it because it's time effective to do so. Because "everyone" is using it, it feels (and usually is ) reasonably safe, clean,…

Sadly, that ship may have already sailed in most North American communities. A this point, they're _very_ heavily engineered to favor private vehicle ownership. Many of the ones I spend time in are so sprawled out that it takes me more time to get my errands done by car than it does for me to do them on foot in my home town.

(And then you need to waste even more time going to the gym regularly in order to make up for the desperately sedentary lifestyle that's been imposed on you by your habitat. . . but I digress.)

In a place like that, public transit is just doomed. There's no density of bus stops that will work. Either everyone lives at least a 10 or 15 minute walk from the nearest bus stop (possibly without even a sidewalk to walk on), or the stops are packed so densely that it's almost faster to walk than it is to take the bus, or the routes are packed so densely that the buses end up being a sort of hyper-expensive 4-passenger vehicle, on average. And you can just forget about any rapid transit options.

Re: Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

#73
post #30

Anything that makes it more convenient for people to get from A to B in a _car_ will, of course, create more traffic. Convenience increases usage. Uber/Lyft may make it unnecessary for some folks to own a car, but a reduction in car ownership does not mean a reduction in car usage.

One thing Uber/Lyft do for sure is reduce the need for parking spaces, which are at a premium in SF.

Not having to worry about parking would therefore be an incentive to go somewhere by car (Uber/Lyft) instead of public transportation.

Re: Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

#74

Link to the study exactly. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau2670 Having just read the study the results make sense. The authors look at car ownership reduction. They find that Uber and Lyft are not actually helping with that. We do not observe a meaningful change in car ownership, with an average of 1.08 cars per household in 2010 and 1.10 cars per household in 2016 (36). This is because as people move…

I think the environment question is easy, go forwards not backwards. Let's expedite the process of converting all those Uber and Lyft vehicles to full electric. Doing this allows consumers to get what they want while also protecting the environment.

Re: Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

#75

Link to the study exactly. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaau2670 Having just read the study the results make sense. The authors look at car ownership reduction. They find that Uber and Lyft are not actually helping with that. We do not observe a meaningful change in car ownership, with an average of 1.08 cars per household in 2010 and 1.10 cars per household in 2016 (36). This is because as people move…

I can't speak for US cities but in the UK outside of rural areas the answer is pretty much universally public transport.

London has good public transport already. Now imagine if we doubled fuel tax / parking charges / etc and spent it on putting on more buses, building more cycle lanes, having express buses go around the A406/M25/etc.

It'd be so, so much better.

Re: Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

#78
post #51
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is so simple. Eg: people now taking extra trips because it is easy and cheap to do so. Eg: "I'll just Uber the 6 blocks to my next shopping spot" instead of walking. This happens in my friend group all the time. Plus people traveling to the city at all BECAUSE Uber makes intracity travel easy. Eg: I live in the East Bay and hate driving within the city, but am happy to be escorted around it on a whim…

If the city was denser you wouldn't have to uber from one shop to the other. But the city was built for cars.

Oh for sure. I see so many areas in the city where I reimagine as pedestrian only and basically weep inside for the lost opportunity.

Re: Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

#79
post #2

Obviously. They are making it worse by exactly the number of trips that would otherwise have been done by transit, bike, walking or not at all. edit: or now scooters

Funny you say that because most of my Uber/Lyfts consist of me going to and from public transit for my intended destination. Although it is more complicated than that, as I often take a shared ride home because Bart shuts down too early on weekends to be useful on the way back. Additionally the math gets complicated when I have multiple people with me, as often times it's cheaper to uber/lyft somewhere to our destina…

I'm only comparing what happens in the world we have, where Uber & Lyft exist, vs. what would happen if they didn't, or would've happened back when they didn't. Obviously some of this is guesswork kind of like "Gee what would've happened if I'd married my high school crush" or whatnot. But in general if you would've walked or biked to transit before, and now you take Uber & Lyft, that makes congestion worse. If you would have driven to transit, using Uber/Lyft has no effect. If you would have driven the whole way, it's a partial improvement (by riding transit for that one segment).

Re: Do transportation network companies decrease or increase congestion?

#80
post #10
post #2

Obviously. They are making it worse by exactly the number of trips that would otherwise have been done by transit, bike, walking or not at all. edit: or now scooters

Clearly a trip that is taken has utility to the person taking the trip, so the "not at all" outcome is a bad one. People will use the best option they have out of the ones available to them. Transit is usually faster than Uber for trips to downtown or the Mission, but try getting to Miraloma with it.

Every trip has a cost. It's a transaction. If it costs me $1,000,000 to get to the park (and it's fairly likely I won't make $1M at said park), I will maximize utility by not taking the trip.

In addition, every trip by you, has various costs to everyone else, namely the traffic congestion we're talking about here, plus many other things we're not talking about like pollution, publicly-subsidized police/EMT/fire for cleaning up your car wrecks, etc. Transport modes that allow you to take up less space on the roads per person, or that use separate parallel networks, or that don't pollute or involve wrecks, cost everyone less on these particular axes.

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