Submitted via IRC for SoyCow7671
Uber and Lyft admit they're making city traffic worse
Uber and Lyft may be competitors but as the two major ridesharing companies, they also have a lot in common -- including the challenges they face. To better understand their role in city traffic patterns, the companies jointly sponsored a study to determine their combined vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in six key cities. In a surprising twist, the results got Uber to admit that ridesharing companies, or transportation network companies (TNCs), do in fact contribute to congestion.
"The research shows that despite tremendous growth over the past decade, TNC use still pales in comparison to all other traffic, and although TNCs are likely contributing to an increase in congestion, its scale is dwarfed by that of private cars and commercial traffic," Chris Pangilinan, Uber's Head of Global Policy for Public Transportation, wrote in a blog post.
The study, conducted by Fehr & Peers, looked at Uber and Lyft trips in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. In San Francisco County, Uber and Lyft were responsible for 13.4 percent of all VMT. In Boston, they accounted for eight percent, and in Washington, DC they represent 7.2 percent of vehicle-miles. Just over half of those miles (54 to 62 percent) were spent actually driving a passenger.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:48PM (14 children)
As city traffic gets worse, you don't want to drive in it. So use Uber or Lyft. Problem solved.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday August 08 2019, @05:16PM (2 children)
The best reason not to drive is liability.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday August 08 2019, @09:29PM (1 child)
I get you. Its a major concern of mine when in unfamiliar areas in my van. It is all too easy to cream someone else while trying to figure out what some signage means, or if I flat did not see a sign because all my attention was on traffic in motion.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @06:44AM
One of the 1st things my UK friend noticed after I picked him up and drove him from the airport was how much signage there is on US roads. It's true. Writing and instructions EVERYWHERE. That's not even counting the flashing animated adverts they've started doing. Fuck safety, sell them more SHIT.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 08 2019, @07:53PM (10 children)
This is the whole thinking behind yellow cab medallions in NYC. Looking around the "popular" parts of town here on a Friday night, you'll see "UBER" signs glowing in the dashboard circulating up and down the street, apparently hoping to be the closest driver to the next ride requester...
I still don't understand who does this? After taking out the cost of maintenance/mileage on the car, Uber drivers could make more per hour working minimum wage.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @12:28AM
If your income expectation is at minimum wage level, which one are you going to pick: the job with the arsehole, micro-managing boss or the one where you can pick your own hours and are treated with a small modicum of respect? A modest pay cut or slightly longer hours is not an unreasonable trade-off.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 09 2019, @02:48AM (8 children)
Unless, of course, they can make considerably more than minimum wage. I figure like most such things, some people have figured out the angles.
Or they want to work a second job that never conflicts with their main job. You need some extra spending money? Gig economy stuff provides a way to get it with enormous flexibility.
And there's actual taxi drivers looking to supplement their income. They're out on the road anyway - those costs are going to be paid anyway. You can't find a paying fare? You can up your odds with a ride sharing service.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 09 2019, @12:09PM (7 children)
And I figure, like most such things, there are people who are barely breaking even at the end-game because they don't factor in all the expenses that are hitting them in the future: maintenance and depreciation costs, increased insurance cost and/or liability risk.
The "average" Uber driver is probably factoring in the cost of gas, those on the less insightful end of the spectrum probably not even that, when evaluating how much money they "made" on a particular night. It's actually the same with "professional" drivers, particularly owner-operators of things like heavy dump trucks - they underbid each other until there's almost no real income at the end of the game, even if they perform their own maintenance.
Uber corporate is in no danger of bankruptcy, particularly as long as they exploit their workers as heavily as a "home based MLM consultancy opportunity."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 09 2019, @09:56PM (6 children)
Well, they can always figure that out and then do something else. It's a solved problem and educates people at the same time.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 09 2019, @11:32PM (5 children)
It's predatory business practice which keeps people on public support, draining MY tax dollars to bail their stupid asses out of the hole they dug for themselves.
I'd rather regulate Uber and all the other predatory employers than support their victims.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 10 2019, @03:53AM (4 children)
Then don't spend your tax money on them. It's not that hard. It amazes me how people make these problems and then propose to make them worse by adding more of the same anti-solutions that caused the problems in the first place.
I don't really feel this concern myself, particularly since we've already heavily regulated all these alleged predatory employers for generations without seeing that desired improvement. You got what you wanted, and well, there's still predatory employers by your viewpoint. Maybe it's time to change that viewpoint.
As I noted, the "victims" can simply just stop doing that work, if it really is a problem for them. And in the meantime, Uber and related businesses provide very valuable services - they do far more than merely predatorily employ people.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 10 2019, @11:58AM (3 children)
They can, but apparently they don't - judging from the legion of part-time WalMart employees, 40 year old minimum wage fast food slingers, and massive lines at the Social Security benefits offices, free food for the poor in the public schools, etc. there are far too many corporations in this country using people for cheap labor and those self-same people are making ends meet with public assistance.
The pattern is well established, for decades, not a transient thing. Business as usual needs improvement, and it's not going that way on its own.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:50PM (2 children)
I notice third deep flaws with your post. First, you haven't shown there is a problem. Second, the primary value of those people to the rest of society is their cheap labor. Take that away, and you've just grown the group performing the above behaviors. Third, one would think that predatory employers, namely those who employ the poor (notice the lack of any further distinguishing feature!), would be a good thing.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:11PM (1 child)
The flaw is in your accounting methods: you count what is paid for them by the employer. What you're not counting is the public assistance they are on paid for by taxes, the lack of insurance which translates to lack of preventative healthcare and overall higher healthcare costs - costs borne by who? Not the employee/employer where your blindered analysis ends.
These people have children, children that are even less "parented" than normal because: long hours, little money = poor child care opportunity. When these kids come around stealing from your home, car, place of business, that's another unaccounted cost of keeping the parents poor and working long hours. Are all children of poor parents doomed to a life of crime and drug abuse? Absolutely not, but - the statistics all point toward increased risk and we'd have less crackhead petty thievery if we had more parents who could earn a decent living in 40 hours or less per week.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 11 2019, @12:41PM
Note that I speak of value, you only speak of cost. I think we're a bit in error on who is blindered.
As to your earlier accusation of "predatory employment", this game has been played [soylentnews.org] before. I think it's profoundly mendacious to interpret the good of employing poor people as an evil. Note that employing poor people near the legal minimum wage is all that predatory employment really means.
Do it for the children. I'm sure that making their standard of living worse will lower the amount of public assistance they siphon from your taxes. Where's these jobs going to come from when the value of their labor is less than what they would be paid?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:51PM (20 children)
If fewer people drove their own cars, is there some potential benefit of scale for Uber or Lyft?
Suppose I am going from my home to location X. Two other people in my area are going to location X. Instant potential carpool. Possibly with the incentive of reduced cost.
Suppose an Uber is going from point A to E. Along the way it passes B, C and D. Is there potential to schedule pickups and dropoffs along a single route? But without it becoming like a city bus. Maybe just a van with seats for eight. If it comes direct to your home or office wouldn't that still beat a bus for convenience?
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:55PM (5 children)
It seems like your only problem with a city bus is that it's a city bus.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:44PM (2 children)
Well, city buses don't usually go from where you are to where you want to go. Hell, if be fine with walking to a bus stop / getting a transfer of the buses had a map with UberLyft style positions of the bus. Around here, schedules are meaningless
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @05:22PM (1 child)
Translation: I'd totally pay for the bus but I don't want to pay for the bus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @05:47AM
"I'd totally pay for the bus, but only when it works for me." That's what people do all the time; they just use a small bus. Lyft/Uber fits this behavior just fine.
The public bus will not become a convenient transportation until it goes from where you are to where you need to be, arriving timely. Not everyone can walk, being constrained by carried items, weather, safety, health, time...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 08 2019, @06:11PM (1 child)
I was going to say: No. That's not the problem.
But Yes, it actually is the problem.
Lyft / Uber have apps. They come to where you are and go directly to where you are going. Now if there were a small number of stops along the way; and only a small number of additional passengers; and those extra stops were along the route; I wouldn't have a problem with that. It's still quite a different experience than a city bus.
I would suspect that Uber / Lyft being able to do this kind of scheduling to make transportation more efficient would be a superior experience over a city bus. Yet not create as much extra traffic, per person, as everyone using an individual Lyft / Uber. In the same way that carpools are more efficient.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 09 2019, @12:46AM
In city busses and trolleys, you have to deal with loud stinky minorities on drugs. While this is a big plus going home from rock concerts drunk and high on saturday nights, it's a big drag having to deal with coming from and going to work every weekday.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:19PM
I'd say one measurable benefit is the reduced need for parking spaces at the end of your trip. That saves time looking for one, as well as any additional distance walking from your car to your destination. Of course, you pay for that time savings on the front end by waiting for your driver (assuming you didn't schedule the pickup in advance).
Uber does offer a carpool option at reduced cost. I saved about half the cost of my only Uber ride by allowing for the pickup of others along the way. One was negligible extra distance, and the other added about five minutes to my travel time. There may have been some additional waiting pre-pickup while the Uber server coordinated the other passengers, as well.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:28PM (1 child)
Of course that is for poor people, and fuck being jammed in a station wagon full of poors
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 08 2019, @06:14PM
No, I have not. I have a grueling ten minute commute to work with five traffic lights. At Disney World we have used an Uber a few times and had no complaints. But those few occasions were a strictly a one time, nonrepeating situation.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:42PM (3 children)
What incentive does UberLyft have of ride-sharing in this circumstance?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 08 2019, @06:15PM (1 child)
That's a good question. I was thinking about the problem of UberLyft creating too much traffic, presumably due to individual rides.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday August 08 2019, @06:23PM
Maybe there is some way to incentivize them for reducing traffic. But the only ways I could think of would be to replace public transpiration with an UberLift type system, with guaranteed pickup and fixed rates. But I think that would just be swapping one set of problems for another.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 08 2019, @10:39PM
Offering car-pooling might differentiate them from taxis, and thus reduce the animosity they encounter with city governments and officially licensed taxi companies.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday August 08 2019, @05:23PM
So what if Uber or Lyft were like an old-world competitor [supershuttle.com], and drops the pretense and admits they're something other than a livery service... is that what you mean?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 08 2019, @07:57PM (5 children)
In fantasyland, maybe.
Of course, in fantasyland, everybody uses Segway scooters with mesh-network coordinated autopilots and we can circulate three wide in an existing lane boosting the carrying capacity of the existing roads 10x. With that kind of capacity increase and reduced wear and tear on the pavement, you can focus infrastructure funding on building solar panel roofs over the roads to protect the commuters from the weather while simultaneously powering their vehicles.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 08 2019, @09:15PM (2 children)
Noooooooo!
I want my flying cars!
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 08 2019, @09:22PM
The future is not what it used to be.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 08 2019, @09:41PM
Uber's Flying Cars [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 08 2019, @09:43PM (1 child)
Also, I think that would not be in fantasyland. It would be in tomorrowland. Maybe in Epcot.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 09 2019, @02:02AM
The Segway's inventor - Dean Kamen - was far enough out of touch with reality in 1999 that he actually believed that his scooter would take over the world, transform our cities, etc. etc. and he managed to convince big names (like Bezos, I think) of this "vision" while he still had it in "super secret development mode" code name: Ginger.
Kamen's not wrong, about the Segway being a more cost effective way to get around - if only you transform the transportation infrastructure, just like he wasn't wrong about its predecessor, the standing wheelchair, at $25K a copy being a cost-effective alternative to ADA remodeling of the built infrastructure. Where he was completely out of reality was believing that anyone with less than 10% of his wealth (meaning, the 99%) would spring $5K for a scooter, or that insurers or politicians would back $25K a copy for wheelchairs for the disabled.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday August 08 2019, @03:52PM (10 children)
And that's the conjunction of much higher density and city-scale public transit with right of way priority of some kind.
You can't add road capacity, it just doesn't scale. You can't use uber and lift, they just add cars to the road. You sure as hell can't use self-driving cars.
Americans are allergic to that. We still feel the need to buy single family suburban homes like one of those on a lot size of 4000 sq feet is in any way different in lifestyle from a fucking townhome. We want a car and a garage and a driveway, even if it means spending a fucking 12th of your life driving.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:21PM (8 children)
You don't want the car and the garage and the driveway; you want a garden and a place for the kids to play plus storage place for stuff you've accumulated. The car, driveway, and garage are only the price you pay for that.
That is all.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:37PM (7 children)
Yeah, and you don't get that with the shitty suburban homes we're building nowadays. You can pay a half million dollars for a "garden" consisting of 200 sqft of grass that has to be maintained as grass according to some subsection of some bullshit binding covenant.
In high-rise-homes-only beijing, they have gardens and parks that kids play in within a block or two of every home.
Storing useless garbage plastic stuff is useless, and is one of the reasons americans are so allergic to density. The fantasy of the fake rural life is killing us in more ways than one.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:50PM (3 children)
I think suburbs suck; but I'm not going to tell people "you can't have that" and them force them into a high density housing complex like some totalitarian regime.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday August 08 2019, @05:28PM (1 child)
Right, but the thing is we're even afraid of saying "we must build a society where this is available, and the people who want it will go" because that means taxes. Even if total cost to society is lower, for the same services, we still balk at the very notion of collectively working towards a thing that needs to happen.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 09 2019, @03:05AM
More like we're afraid of the bullshit, not just taxes, that would result. The thing is we already have this society. You just have to pay your own money to get that sardine can you always wanted. Get enough like minded people together and you can make it happen.
The problem is not that we aren't forcing people to live in your paradise, but rather that people don't want to live that way up to and including spending a twelfth of their lives in the car.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday August 09 2019, @05:58AM
Economics is doing that where I live.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:50PM (2 children)
Please move to China.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday August 08 2019, @05:33PM (1 child)
It's a nice place to visit, but I'd rather fix the problems we have here, caused by you, anonymous website user, being fucking stupid, than fix they have there, caused by different people being pretty dumb in different ways.
Me: Hey look, this other country does a specific thing better and it works way better than an awful we've created through flawed ideology, wouldn't it be great if we incorporated good ideas that work and skipped the ones that don't?
You: I hate america too much for that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 09 2019, @03:11AM
For this particular story, what specific thing were you thinking of? All I got from previous posts was something about ending traffic and suburbs, which doesn't sound that good to me.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 09 2019, @12:26PM
1/12th of a life driving?
If you ignore pre-work and post-retirement years...
~240 working days per year, ~90 minutes per day driving to/from/for work = ~360 hours per year.
That's only ~1/16th of your waking hours - such a bargain! (If you can afford to live within 45 minutes commute time of the office...)
I prefer to put it to my employer this way: I can be online and "productive" from 8:30 to 5:30 - 9 hours, with the usual bio-breaks which also happen at work. Or, I can start getting dressed in the dry-cleaned clothes at 8am, be in the car by 8:15, on the road until 9, walking in from the parking lot to my desk until 9:15, coordinating with fellow office workers about where to go to lunch starting at 11:45, back in the parking lot from lunch by 1 but not really back to the desk until 1:15, then wrapping things up by 4:45 in preparation for the drive at 5 which gets me home by 5:45, except on days when I have to deal with the drycleaner, or car maintenance, etc. so let's really call that 6.
Option A is 9 hours out of my life for ~8 productive hours. Option B is 10 hours out of my life for ~6 productive hours. Which do we prefer?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rupert Pupnick on Thursday August 08 2019, @04:35PM
It makes perfect sense if you assume parking is always available. To go from A to B, a personally owned vehicle only goes from A to B. Uber-like services (including autonomous vehicles) always require some additional mileage so that the vehicle can go from the point from which it is summoned, to point A to pick you up.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday August 08 2019, @07:05PM (2 children)
This could be a deceptive way of saying "look we account for 10% of all traffic you should invest/hire us" without actually claiming that's the purpose.
This study shows Uber and Lyft contribute to traffic. But of course they do! They're not like, ghosts that pass through everything and interact with nobody.
It does not show, I think from what I have been able to find, if they are affecting the total amount of congestion. Unless there's some data they aren't sharing, which if they are increasing congestion overall I assume they would not share. We'd need some pre/post-Uber/Lyft measures of congestion to compare I would think to determine this. Just showing a percentage of their current contribution to congestion doesn't help anything except their advertisements to clients/investors as far as I'm aware.
Disclaimer: I could be wrong here, I might have been looking at the wrong data, I didn't spend a lot of time researching this and relied way too much on press summaries so take this with a grain of salt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 08 2019, @07:17PM (1 child)
Just over half of those miles (54 to 62 percent) were spent actually driving a passenger.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday August 08 2019, @09:43PM
So the "parking lot" where cars waiting for use has been shifted from being stored in a lot, engine off, to being stored in lanes of moving traffic, engine on.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Friday August 09 2019, @12:07AM (1 child)
Amateurs who are driving like they're on a mission. Do they include accident statistics in the study? But I'm sure Uber/Lyft would lie about those anyway.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @05:40AM
Well, anecdote is not data but I definitely had an encounter with an uberdick.
I was on the highway and he turned left to get on in front of me. Fine if you gun it like you should. No. He didn't. Maybe he doesn't have the pickup. I had to brake, it was not dangerous, just annoying. Speed limit is 55, but drops to 45 and then 35 quickly. He doesn't do me the courtesy of speeding up to 55... maybe because he knows that.
He's doggin' it through town, and keeps going slower than the limit through the 45 zone north of town. Limit picks back up to 55, and he's still 50. OK. Annoying, but almost forgivable so far.
Here's the kicker. When a passing lane opens up, I gun it to pass him and he starts speeding up. I'm like.. no.. this can't be, and I speed up and the next thing I know I'm going 90 on the fucking byway, which I never do but I have to admit the dumbass had goaded me into road-raging.
Consistently slow? Forgivable. Racing to "be no. 1"? Unforgivable. About the only good thing you can say about that worthless POS is that he didn't try to pass on the next two passing zones, or when the road opened up into a freeway.
So. Fuck that uber driver. I hope he tries that on an undercover cop next time. Sorry. Just had to vent.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday August 09 2019, @09:44AM
Deliveries. In the run up to Christmas I might get several deliveries a day from various websites that I've ordered stuff from. Each delivery means another van. I'd be interested to see a study that calculated the amount of traffic and CO2 that online shopping has created.
Also, I propose a solution:
A city council could build a giant warehouse on the outskirts of a city and fill it with storage lockers. Now ban all small deliveries from the city centre (with certain exceptions - local jobs, perishables, deliveries that include installation services) and have all companies deliver all citybound consumer deliveries to the warehouse. Logistics companies will love it - now they don't have to pay for a bunch of vans to sit in inner-city traffic all day, they can just dump it all at the warehouse and be on their way. You're basically aggregating all the last-few-miles logistics of UPS, TNT, DHL etc into one big city-run postal service.
Now, the customer' s stuff has to get from the warehouse to the customer. There are various options:
1 - If s/he's passing, the customer can go to the warehouse and pick it up in person, for free, just like an Amazon Locker.
2 - The people running the warehouse can deliver: They send their own vans into the city every day. All city residents get a certain number of free deliveries per week (maybe 3 or 4 per week, to encourage allowing stuff to collect.) The customer would be able to log in online and choose delivery slots, within a range dictated by some clever algorithm that balances efficient delivery schedules vs customer choice.
3 - If the allocated number of deliveries per week isn't enough, then the customer can buy additional deliveries. (The allocated number could be increased around Christmas, Black Friday etc)
4 - Drone deliveries for small parcels. why not?
Advantages:
- Instead of 4 vans making 4 deliveries to one house over 2 days, you'd have one van making one delivery.
- Customers no longer have to wait in all day for different delivery services. Just have it all dropped at the warehouse and get it delivered in one go when it suits you.
- Get stuff delivered when you're not home: You're away on business and realise you haven't bought your Dad's birthday present. You can order it online from the other side of the world and know it'll be waiting in your locker when you get home.
- Reduced logistic costs could result in reduced costs for customers.
- Less diesel belching vans clogging up inner city roads.
- Multiple small vans on intercity roads can be replaced by a smaller number of big trucks. Hell, you could put your warehouse near a train line and use freight trains!