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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 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.