Given the proliferation of microtransit services trying to match drivers and passengers, you might think they had ride-sharing and carpooling all figured out. But the recent demise of Leap Transit in San Francisco—to say nothing of the other transportation start-ups that have failed without a media whimper—reminds us that even in a big city it’s not easy to fill empty vehicle seats. And in the suburbs, it’s downright mathematically impossible.
Or just about, anyway, according to a provocative new thought-experiment by Steve Raney, principal at a smart mobility consultancy called Cities21. In a working paper, the former Silicon Valley tech product manager crunched the numbers on ride-sharing in the Palo Alto area and found the odds of matching drivers with passengers long, to say the least. Raney calls it the “Suburban Ridematch Needle in the Haystack Problem.”
“I wanted to gently inject some reality into this,” he tells CityLab.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday November 18 2015, @06:52AM
What are you going on about?
This story is about ride sharing, (car pooling). Its not about taxi's or how taxi's are summoned.
People have been car-pooling since before the first gas shortage of the 70s. Local citie governments have been trying build ride-sharing programs by matching people who both work and live in the same places (or close to the same places). It works in a small town, but it just doesn't work in big cities.
The only arrangements that do work out are those of happenstance where you happen to know someone on roughly the same schedule, living very near by, and working very close to your work destination. Nobody will go very far out of their way to pick up a rider. Word of mouth works. But if you can hold a ride sharing program together for two years, you are doing very well. They break down, people change jobs, they move, they change shifts, etc.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 18 2015, @12:55PM
This story is about ride sharing, (car pooling). Its not about taxi's or how taxi's are summoned.
"Uber isn't some new hip thing. It is an Internet dispatched taxi service."
Learn to fucking read? You're talking about the story. GP is talking about a point he is making. You are allowed to introduce your own points and comments you know.