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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 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!