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From research out of the University of Colorado Denver:
Ride-hailing accounts for an 83 percent increase in the miles cars travel for ride-hailing passengers in Denver's metro area, according to a study published this week in the journal Transportation by researchers at the University of Colorado Denver.
[...] For this first-of-its-kind study, the researcher-driver collected real-time data and surveyed passengers for feedback and demographic information. By surveying passengers, Henao learned that a combined 34 percent of his ride-hailing passengers would have taken transit, walked, or bicycled if ride-hailing hadn't existed.
Journal Reference:
Alejandro Henao, Wesley E. Marshall. The impact of ride-hailing on vehicle miles traveled. Transportation, 2018; DOI: 10.1007/s11116-018-9923-2
So, is ride hailing a net good, or not?
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday September 28 2018, @03:07PM (1 child)
It's not about fewer miles. It's about folks in dense cities not needing the space and expense of owning a car. It's about folks in other areas being able to do things public transit would make too cumbersome or impose time constraints that make it not worth it. It's about efficient use of the capital - fewer cars being used more of the time.
This is probably trips that are happening that enrich the lives of those folks that wouldn't have if ride hailing weren't an option. You know, 2 hours by bus and you might not be able to get home vs 20 minutes via ride hail is a big deal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday September 28 2018, @04:46PM
There is a tradeoff, though.
While you need some individual cabs to go efficiently on awkward trips, most people actually have similar enough trips (work to home, home to fun, fun to work) that the city overall is better off with a dial-a-van service (requiring you to walk up to a quarter or half a mile to a rendezvous point where more people gather) than with an army of idling individual cars clogging the streets.
The fixed high-capacity bus/train route, the dial-a-van and the cab have to be balanced better, because the current glut of the latter has negative effects for the traffic, which could be alleviated in most cases with limited efforts from the users.
And that's mostly because people have been relying on a service subsidized by VC money, with the VC hoping to run out of competitors before they run out of seed money. Cant' blame people for abusing it, except that what's left when the dust settles will hurt (prices going up to sustainable levels, and public transit reeling from the accumulating losses)