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New Research Confirms That Ride-Hailing Companies Are Causing a Ton of Traffic Congestion
A study published today in Science Advances comparing pre- and post-rideshare boom traffic in San Fransisco found that the presence of Uber, Lyft, and similar companies has been an overall detriment for people who like getting where they're going quickly.
That businesses which pay people to have their vehicles on the road would, well, increase the number of cars blocking up the transit grid might appear to be a forgone, perhaps even obvious conclusion. But the body of writings on Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) as they're sometimes called is, surprisingly, mixed. Some studies found that Ubers and Lyfts were choking the streets of New York, Boston, and Chicago; a few claimed, conversely, that rideshares were alleviating traffic. Thus the team behind today's paper—composed of two University of Kentucky staffers and members of San Francisco's County Transportation Authority—had their work cut out for them.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday May 12 2019, @08:38PM (5 children)
OK, we might be able to measure this, but what's the theory?
Let's say I need to go to a store that's two miles away. If I use my own car, I drive 4 miles (there and back). If I use a service, there might be a car 0.5 miles from my house. It picks me up and takes me to the store. Even if it's still at the store when I return, the trip now involves 0.5 more miles of travel than it did otherwise. This scenario looks bad for ride-sharing. In general, you have to "deliver a car" for every trip, whereas with your own car, the vehicle is only delivered when you buy it--resulting in a virtually negligible penalty of travel for shipping the car to your door.
Now let's look at another scenario--one where you share the car with another passenger who lives 0.5 miles from you and has to go to the same store which just happens to be the same distance from her. The car is 0.5 miles from you as before. The sequence of events: 0.5 to you, 0.5 to neighbor, 2 miles to store. Then let's say, just to keep it simple that the car is still there when you both need to go back, so two people put the car on the road for 6 miles. If they both drove their own cars, there would be 8 miles driven, and more importantly there would be two cars on the road doing it.
So just spitballing real quick here, it seems like ridesharing is *bad* for congestion if you go it alone, because it keeps cars driving longer, but it's *good* for congestion if you actually share the car with another customer.
I don't know what the statistics are, but anecdotally it seems like most riders aren't splitting their rides with another customer.
I'm willing to wager that in most areas, the services increase congestion by keeping cars on the road longer than they would otherwise be, which jibes with this research.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday May 12 2019, @10:14PM (1 child)
Introducing the price of the ride into equation, you'll discover that it can go down with the minor inconvenience of having to get at a 'meeting point', on a regular schedule, to be picked by a car doing a route. Something like public transport?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 13 2019, @05:49AM
It can also go up. Public transportation is typically heavily subsidized.
Nor is that "minor inconvenience" always minor.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 13 2019, @01:52AM (2 children)
Doesn't sound like much to me. Maybe spend more time upgrading traffic systems than in complaining that the present ones are congested?
(Score: 1) by istartedi on Monday May 13 2019, @06:07AM (1 child)
This was just an example to show how ride-sharing would theoretically put more cars on the road. I have no idea what the average number of non-revenue miles is for an average single-passenger ride.
Also, if the extra 0.5 miles involves an intersection that's already congested it's actually more impact than a 10 mile pickup down a road that's clear. ie, it's not just the quantity of the extra driving, it's the quality.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 13 2019, @12:33PM
Sure. But my point is that we're missing a bunch of solutions to that problem that can change the dynamics without a lot of effort. Ignoring the matter of improving infrastructure (which to be honest is a thing that San Francisco routinely does and probably will continue to do), another option is to create incentives to split rides which as you note would reduce congestion. That could be done via subsidies or access to special lanes and parking. It would be rather easy for ride hailing services to incorporate such.