Well at least parking should become more available for those that still do drive themselves around I suppose...
As a public transport user I would appreciate less people being on the trains at least.
I think the other point to consider is that a lot of those driving are probably from out of town, where catching a ride-sharing service in peak hours is going to be prohibitively expensive and therefore not viable. Perhaps ride sharing services could be banned during peak hours, which puts us back to yesterday.
A lot of cities have wised up to the insanity that is on-street parking, and converted it where possible into protected bike lanes, seating/parkettes, wider sidewalks, etc. There's something to be said for lessening the demand for parking in enabling that process.
Indeed, you'll see this a lot of Europe. What's amazing is that American cities are new, have wide streets, and thus lots of room if they wanted to do something.
The availability of ridesharing lessens the need for car ownership, which is a huge win for cities because it reduces the need to devote space for the storage of automobiles.
The article ignores this benefit entirely, then makes the contradictory points that a) ridesharing apps actually increase traffic, and b) ridesharing apps siphon riders from public traffic.
All in all it’s written from the perspective of someone who hasn’t had to drive much in a high density urban area, where parking is nearly as much of a headache to figure out as traffic.
Ridesharing and public transit can play complementary roles, in which ridesharing solves the last mile problem for regional transit. It plays this role for many of my friends in the Bay Area, especially with CalTrain.
Also, I feel like we've been in a trap where it's been politically impossible to make decent public transit, because there are so many car owners.
With fewer car owners it might be possible to invest in public transit. For busses to really work in SF the city would have to close entire streets off from normal traffic and install traffic signals coupled with busses.
Public transit would work, if we invested sufficiently. As in completely independent lanes, and no stopping due to traffic.
Car owners should be enthusiastic about public transport and the amount of traffic it removes from roads. What we need to fix is the belief that more roads will ever fix traffic congestion, it only makes it worse.
A less fragmented federation would go a long way too. The fact that there's no real way to get an all zones month pass or 2-3 city bus pass and how a lot of busses routes stop just short of what would be useful due to some arbitrary city boundary is just absolutely ridiculous.
Public transportation is not more efficient in terms of my time or usability. When I have to transport my four kids somewhere or go grocery shopping, public transport is a nightmare.
Let’s not assume people needing transportation are all single people carrying a backpack with perfect physical abilities. Ever tried to get a stroller down the subway steps in New York? In those relatively few stations that have elevators, they’re all filled with piss and shit. Don’t want my 3 year old walking around amongst that. Even in “enlightened” European cities, subway elevators are often disgusting messes, not to mention more unsafe than having an Uber driver drop you at your front door.
Public transport could be great — but I live in real-ville where it isn’t — except maybe in Zurich — which is an extremely rich small, and compact city — you could put twenty Zurichs in the Los Angeles metro at least. On paper, places like New York have great public transport — but the UX is about 100x harder than using Uber — especially with kids: walking up and down multiple stairs, down long corridors, waiting on station platforms literally next to crazy people, getting on a train, finding a seat — then trying to get back home doing all that in reverse. Compare that to the literal seconds it takes to order an Uber, wait outside your door, hop in, ride in quiet, mostly pathogen-free comfort directly to your destination.
Public transport is “efficient” the same way a prison cafeteria is efficient. I am not against public transport — it serves a valuable purpose as one facet of a comprehensive transportation policy. But to claim it is more efficient is really a matter of opinion — there are a lot of variables that make up what “efficient” means.
Paris’s metro is a great example of an efficient public transit system. It’s faster, easier, and cheaper than other competing methods.
In the US, we’ve not made the proper investment into said infrastructure (profit and shortsightedness always get in the way), but that’s a problem with our instantiation, not the concept of public transportation.
I agree that for many situations, it’s not practical or appropriate, but in cases where it can be, we should encourage and make it easier to do.
> Public transportation is not more efficient in terms of my time or usability
Nope, it's not. But it's less wasteful. It uses less gas per passenger, uses less space per passenger, and is often safer. So what you're arguing is that you want something that is more convenient _for you_ but is more wasteful. That's fine, but you need to be able to pay for it. Right now ridesharing is taking advantage of the fact that in most cities, everyone pays for the upkeep of roads, and drivers pay a bit more because of gas. In essence, roads are socialized across its residents. Residents are being forced to subsidize a more wasteful option, pushing the true cost of transportation up for everyone, and pricing some people (due to congestion) out of the transit system altogether. Until American cities are willing to charge (and enforce) a congestion tax to road users, the best option to keep transportation "costs" low is to limit cars on the road.
> Until American cities are willing to charge (and enforce) a congestion tax to road users
I hear this argument far too rarely. Mostly I see either "free market! Back off commie!" Or "Your nifty ride-sharing is actually a failure, so l can steal your smugness for myself, muahahaha!" (Slight paraphrases )
Honest question: how do you rideshare with kids? (Or do you?) I have 3 little ones of my own with two still in car seats and not sure how I would make that work.
I have used a good number of metro systems in Europe and Asia and practically never smelled piss or shit, or encountered crazy people.
Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Prague, Paris, Stockholm, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul... not a single negative experience in these cities, and I have seen plenty of people with kids in the metro.
Edit: OK, in Madrid they tried to take my old iPod from my coat pocket once, in a very crowded car. But that was once in a lot of times using that metro and it's not the kind of bad experience for kids that you are referring to.
In Rome I did find some stations somewhat shabby, as in New York. In Los Angeles I had a good experience, but I only took the metro once there so it may have been just luck.
I was in central Paris last week, I saw crazies and people pissing. Reminded me how bad the shadier parts of London was 20 years ago. That was just one of the metro lines though, the other 10 trips on bus, 2 or 3 other metros and a couple of RERs were fine, although metros were always crowded.
I agree with London, Berlin, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong etc.
(The reason we took the metro late at night with 2 young kids and a large suitcase was because uber/taxis is a right pain with kids - trying to get one with 2 car seats)
The greater Zürich is 4M inhabitants, so it's more like 5 Zürich in the Greater LA. Switzerland in general is extremely transit friendly.
The difference is that life here is organized to revolve around transit. When you have to take public transit to places that are not designed around public transit, it's difficult. When all or most of your activities are better served by public transit than they are by car (try parking your car in Zürich), planning your day around transit is a breeze. Train stations in Switzerland are major retail centers. It's rare to not have a supermarket at walking distance.
Plus kids are much more autonomous. You don't have to drive them anywhere when they can safely take a tram by themselves at age 10.
> it does cause a net increase of miles driven compared to people driving themselves.
It's possible, but I'd need to see both sides of the equations as well. How many miles are driven looking for parking (I've seen estimates as high as 30%). Do people forego car use because they don't have a car (and the marginal is therefore higher)?
Interesting question, but the article doesn't really go that deep in answering it.
But "lessens the need" is very different from "actually fewer cars", a point the article makes upfront. Until there's data showing otherwise, I can fully believe the premise of the article that Uber has stolen more modeshare from cycling and real mass transit than it has from private vehicle use. That is, there just aren't that many people who either got rid of a private vehicle in order to embrace ridesharing, or are able/willing to leave it at home a significant proportion of the time.
> That is, there just aren't that many people who either got rid of a private vehicle in order to embrace ridesharing, or are able/willing to leave it at home a significant proportion of the time.
I also have this suspicion. I'd like to see some numbers on it. In my experience, most of the people I know who live in San Francisco own cars but frequently take Ubers to avoid dealing with parking at their destination, to go out drinking, etc.
Downtown San Francisco is one of those places where driving your own car and paying for parking can cost more than taking an Uber.
Ridesharing solves one particular use case - some trip where either parking is too expensive, too much of a hassle, or both. It's great for quick trips into town or to the bar or to the airport. For pretty much every other use case, it is either too expensive, too inconvenient, or both. No one is about to sell their car for ridesharing if they need to ferry around their kid for extracurriculars, or go to the Costco and pick up lots of bulky items, or want to go skiing on the weekend; you need more drastic interventions for that, like reducing the availability or convenience of parking.
> I can fully believe the premise of the article that Uber has stolen more modeshare from cycling and real mass transit than it has from private vehicle use
All this shows is that people would rather climb into a stranger's car, pay them and hope for the best than use actual public transport.
So it would be interesting to examine whether these minimums have been eased in cities where ridesharing is popular. If so, that's definitely a win (potentially also for the local mass transit advocacy groups— this is a popular talking point).
That's awesome. Yeah, a bunch of cities have abandoned or relaxed the minimums, sometimes on a zone basis if you're within X metres of a rapid transit stop.
Those aren't contradictory, if people are taking cars instead of public transit, there will be more congestion. There's potential for improvement, if people took public transportation when possible and only used rideshares infrequently, and owned fewer cars overall, it could be a win. But that's going to take more focus than most cities have put into the problem.
I think the metric they're looking at is total miles driven in a jurisdiction per capita ave.
As others pointed out, otherwise it's sucking people away from public transit and back into cars --which is counter to the design most larger municipalities want to execute.
The problem described in the article is a short term problem. The reason for the increase in congestion is that the new services, Uber and Lyft, have added vehicles, not displaced them. The taxis and buses that were there before are still there, plus now there are ride sharing vehicles.
But that situation won't last. If usage of taxis and buses decreases, fewer of them will be needed, so the number of them on the city streets will gradually decrease. That hasn't happened yet because those services are propped up by fees and taxes, so the fact that they are being out-competed can be hidden--for a while. Sooner or later that will cease to be feasible.
The real question is whether, after all this has shaken out, congestion on city streets will be better than it was before ride sharing services came along. It seems like it ought to be, since ride sharing seems like a more efficient way to allocate vehicle space. But we won't know for sure until the experiment is done.
Not if bus routes don't go where you need them to, they are late, congestion makes bus rides impractical, etc. Mostly this is perhaps outside of the center of a city.
Even in suburban areas where there is an influx of residents, buses are the last option because you could bike where you need to faster than taking the bus during rush hour. What if a short distance meant having to transfer? If the wait is 10-20 minutes, and if the bus comes too early, then that just compounds time wasted using the bus. If bus rides take a long time, nearly zero of them have wifi to enable work to be done. And if they don't drop you off or pick you up near your source / destination, you spend twice as much time walking. It's just impractical until localities start taking this seriously.
Cities and surrounding suburbs really need to increase bus lines (accessibility), and buses per line (frequency). In many places I've lived, buses were what the poor and disadvantaged rode.
Seriuously, you don't have 4G in the cities? Why share a painfully slow Wifi connection when I can have my one private channel and fast enough to do almost any work? And with the hotspot option on smartphones, is even simpler...
This is the problem. Having WiFi available does not mean it's availability is implemented well. If a bus provides WiFi, it should not suck; if it does, it's effectively not available. I don't want to use my 2 GiB cellphone data plan on work-related emails and files (together with my phone's usage, can exceed 2 GiB), and draw all the power from my phone everyday doing so.
It's not just about price. It's also about speed and convenience. An Uber can go anywhere a car can go, and get there a lot faster. That's a better experience, and better experiences are worth more money than lesser ones.
My commute to work is about 7 miles. I could get there faster on a bicycle than I could on a bus.
Even if this is true (which it might well not be--VC investment money for a startup usually goes to build infrastructure, not to enable under-cost pricing; the former increases your runway while the latter decreases it), it's only for the short term; if Uber and Lyft don't start operating at a profit at some point in the near future, the VC investment will be gone and they will have a hard time getting more. Public transportation, by contrast, has been subsidized for decades, because it doesn't have to answer to market forces, only political ones.
Oh I certainly hope usage of buses doesn't decrease. One person hailing an Uber takes up an entire car's worth of space on the road: 4 seats, an engine, and a trunk. One person riding a bus takes a single bus seat on a vehicle that can hold 20+ people in a minimum of space.
If each individual hailed a single Uber for each ride, it's obvious congestion would greatly increase versus each individual taking a bus, simple because one person in a private car takes up much more physical space than one person on a shared bus.
(I hope Uber doesn't continue to increase for many other reasons, congestion being just one of them.)
The only time public transport is efficient space-wise is during rush/peak hours. But the same buses/trams are used during off-peak hours. Haven't we all ridden nearly-empty public transport many times?
Maybe just restricting ridesharing during peak hours and reducing public transport during off-peak (even subsidize ride shares like has been tried).
Not to mention that the bus’s limited maneuverability and constant stopping, and pulling over (usually not out of the flow of traffic) to discharge/pickup passengers, means it contributes to traffic congestion significantly more than the equivalent number of cars taking the same linear feet.
Instead of looking at it as buses using up a lane that could have been used for cars, look at it as cars using a lane that could have been bus exclusive.
The throughput of a bus is so massively larger than that of cars that it will outweighs the frequent stopping. And if you give buses a dedicated lane they become much more efficient as well.
I find articles like this are too obviously pushing a specific viewpoint [1].
They use hard data to come up with 900 passenger vehicles per hour on a single lane at 25mph times an average of 1.6 passengers per vehicle = 1,440 people per hour.
Then they use hard data to come up with 50 buses / lane / hour. But then for the final calculation;
“A 60-foot articulated low-floor bus typically has 65 seats and can carry 55 standees (per manufacturer specification) meaning that we get a throughput of 6,000 people per hour.”
So they do the comparison based on every bus filled to absolute maximum capacity? But their own linked source claims average bus occupancy is 43 making the passenger volume 2,150.
The DOT has a great passage on their site worth quoting in its entirety;
The Bus Lane Paradox
“Bus lanes can provide a strong identity for public transit. They can reduce travel time, but only if they are designed to work properly. A single curbside lane is rarely effective. Designs which are self-enforcing, which accommodate commercial deliveries, and which permit stopped buses to be passed by other buses can be most useful. However, such designs may occupy a significant amount of street space. Where traffic is severely congested, bus lanes can provide the biggest benefit to bus passengers, but it is precisely in these places where it may be difficult to reduce the amount of space available for general traffic— and thereby seem to worsen congestion. Conversely, where there is plenty of road space available, it may be easy to install bus lanes, but they will provide few benefits, given that traffic is not likely to be congested.
On some urban streets, bus passengers account for a surprisingly high percentage of total person throughput. Focusing on moving people instead of simply moving vehicles will help to justify priority treatments for buses. Where transit users are a small fraction of street users, it will be more difficult to justify such treatments.” [3]
That assumes ridesharing is worse than individual private car use. If it isn't, then why not restrict all car use equally, say with a congestion charge like London? I don't see why ridesharing should pay for everyone else's congestion.
That's not simply wasted congestion. Ride sharing provides better service than busses as evidenced by people paying more to use it. So that's a good thing - people getting what they want. Congestion is caused by all road users, not just the latest group to join, so it's not fair to blame them any more than the people who still drive the same way they always did.
This is entirely ignoring the externalities: congestion, localized pollution[1], more inefficient use of subsidized resources like roads (and the expansion of said subsidies). It's certainly not "simply" wasted congestion, but it's very much on-net wasted, by the same cost argument you make (which doesn't include externalities).
[1]Regardles of your views on macro environmentalism, the detrimental effects of localized air pollution is pretty well documented IIUC
It's not a better service just because people pay more or it costs more.
A service can be better and cheaper.
If congestion starts to worse, I'd also definitely not blame the people who haven't changed behavior when there is another group that has changed behavior in a way that can directly impact this problem.
> One person hailing an Uber takes up an entire car's worth of space on the road: 4 seats, an engine, and a trunk. One person riding a bus takes a single bus seat on a vehicle that can hold 20+ people in a minimum of space.
I was on a train the other day and counted around 35 people in my car (there were other cars too). I was imagining the energy and congestion generated by 35 cars compared to the one train car.
If more people used public transit, there would be more availability (more routes and more frequent vehicles on each route).
> One person riding a bus takes a single bus seat on a vehicle that can hold 20+ people in a minimum of space.
The problem with this kind of theory is that it assumes there are actually 20+ people on the bus. Half the time you have a bus which is three times the size of a car with only two people on it.
The real solution here is to get riding sharing apps to actually share rides. Use the fact that the app can tell there are six people near Point A who all want to go near Point B and provide an appropriate discount to put them all in the same minivan.
Then you have something which is effectively mass transit except that it doesn't drive around aimlessly in a gigantic bus when there are no passengers to transport.
I would argue that the efficiency of public transport during peak hours compensates for inefficiency during off-peak hours.
Most public transports reduce the frequency of transports during off peak (there are 3 trains after 2200 to 0500, from 0500 to 0900 and 1800 to 2200 there are 8, from 0900 to 1800 about 9, total: 30 trains, of which >50% are used during peak hours).
Today the train cart I used held about 40 people while being about as long as 4-5 cars (which would hold about 4 people each, or 16-20 total)
Since 50% of the trains drive during peak hour, the overall efficieny is 50% peak hour: 20 people (0.5 * 40). Which would be equivalent to the number of people transported in the car.
Now keep in mind; trains are much more efficient than a car per passenger, use no roadspace, are much safer and faster and cheaper (0.50€ to 5€ depending on ticket for my particular route, which includes all costs, gasoline used for route costs about 1€ per trip, which does not include other costs incurred by the operator).
> Most public transports reduce the frequency of transports during off peak
Ah, but that's the trouble, right? If you only operate mass transit at the times and places where it's efficient, it doesn't serve the majority of people.
Trains are great for the people who want to travel between two train stations during peak hours, but then there is everybody else.
If you don't live and work adjacent to a train station then you can take a full and timely train during peak hours, but how do you get the rest of the way once the people get off the train and their paths diverge in twenty directions? Even if you do live and work near the train, if you work the late shift and leave between 2200 and 0500 you're waiting two hours for a train every night.
And if you start operating mostly-empty buses to cover the rest of the people then you're back to operating mostly-empty buses.
There is actually a solution to this but it has almost nothing to do with cars and everything to do with building more taller buildings near train stations.
Efficient mass transit requires high density. As long as there is sprawl there will be cars. So if you want less cars, have less sprawl.
>If you don't live and work adjacent to a train station then you can take a full and timely train during peak hours, but how do you get the rest of the way once the people get off the train and their paths diverge in twenty directions?
To get to the train I walk about 10 minutes from home.
Once I get off I take the Tram Line 4 or 6 one station, then switch to Tram Line 1 for another few stations.
>Even if you do live and work near the train, if you work the late shift and leave between 2200 and 0500 you're waiting two hours for a train every night.
I'd time my clocking out with the train so I would ideally only arrive 10 minutes before the train.
>And if you start operating mostly-empty buses to cover the rest of the people then you're back to operating mostly-empty buses.
It's not a bad thing to operate mostly empty buses as long as the full buses can compensate for the efficiency loss. And they do.
>There is actually a solution to this but it has almost nothing to do with cars and everything to do with building more taller buildings near train stations.
That solves it for new locations but existing locations will continue to face the same problems.
Especially the inner city where I live cannot build larger buildings or become any much denser. The inner city is too old and the design does not permit skyscrapers with efficiency.
Having train routes to and from major infrastructure hubs and using buses and trams to distribute into the city can get you within a 15 minute walk to and from any destination or origin. And it's cheaper, safer and more efficient than clogging up the city with cars or skyscrapers.
> To get to the train I walk about 10 minutes from home.
That's great for the people who live a 10 minute walk from the train station. But when the surrounding area is only zoned for low density housing, that constrains the number of such people who can exist and other people will have a two hour walk to the train station.
> I'd time my clocking out with the train so I would ideally only arrive 10 minutes before the train.
You don't choose your hours, your boss does. If there are trains at 2200 and 2430 and your shift ends at 2230, you wait two hours. If there are trains arriving at 2200 and 2430 and your shift starts at 2400, you get there two hours early.
> It's not a bad thing to operate mostly empty buses as long as the full buses can compensate for the efficiency loss.
Yes it is. The two things have nothing to do with each other, because you can run the full buses without running the empty buses. And why run a bus with two people on it (or zero people on it) when the alternative of not running the bus and having those people share an Uber is actually more efficient?
> That solves it for new locations but existing locations will continue to face the same problems.
It solves it for both. If you create a lot of housing in the city at affordable prices then most people who work in the city move into it and get off the roads.
Other people who also work in the city won't want to buy their old homes when there is now equally attractive housing in the city with no commute, so most of the people who buy the old homes will be people who don't work in the city. People who work from home, or work in the suburbs, or want a vacation home.
Alternatively, the low housing costs may attract people from all over to move into the city and increase the population (and therefore average density) which proportionally increases the area over which you can efficiently operate mass transit. If the city becomes popular enough, the high density section expands to consume the suburbs and all the old sprawling single family homes get bulldozed and replaced with tall buildings that have the density needed for mass transit.
> Especially the inner city where I live cannot build larger buildings or become any much denser. The inner city is too old and the design does not permit skyscrapers with efficiency.
The inner city isn't the problem. It already has enough density for efficient mass transit. It's the area just outside the inner city which is the problem.
A good workaround is to build a new transit hub in the middle of a currently low density area just outside the inner city and rezone it for high density. Then people will build high density buildings there because it has a transit hub that goes directly to the inner city and the existing buildings there are cheaper to raze.
> Having train routes to and from major infrastructure hubs and using buses and trams to distribute into the city can get you within a 15 minute walk to and from any destination or origin. And it's cheaper, safer and more efficient than clogging up the city with cars or skyscrapers.
Running empty buses is never efficient, and skyscrapers are the city. There is no traffic congestion in Hamberg, North Dakota because there are no tall buildings there for people to clog the roads getting to.
The problem comes when the city wants to grow and you don't let it grow upward so instead it grows outward and loses the density needed for efficient mass transit.
>But when the surrounding area is only zoned for low density housing, that constrains the number of such people who can exist and other people will have a two hour walk to the train station.
I haven't been to a place in my country where a train station, bus or tram stop weren't within a 10 or 15 minute walk distance.
>You don't choose your hours, your boss does. If there are trains at 2200 and 2430 and your shift ends at 2230, you wait two hours. If there are trains arriving at 2200 and 2430 and your shift starts at 2400, you get there two hours early.
Shift work is rare, though IIRC from my legal course, a boss in my country is required to accommodate your transportation needs when organizing work hours.
>And why run a bus with two people on it (or zero people on it) when the alternative of not running the bus and having those people share an Uber is actually more efficient?
Because buses have lower maintenance costs and those two people still need transportation.
As mentioned, the cost of running the buses is lower or equal to Uber even before accounting for maintenance costs on the Uber.
What do you do when no Uber is available for you? The bus will arrive at the bus stop at the time noted in the plan. Maybe 5 minutes late but it'll come.
I find it hard to believe that an Uber driver would be available in my region at 3AM in the morning, driving me about 50km home. While being cheaper than the bus or train.
>It solves it for both. If you create a lot of housing in the city at affordable prices then most people who work in the city move into it and get off the roads.
Citation needed. Even people in the city will require transportation since very very few people are lucky enough to live within walking distance to work.
>A good workaround is to build a new transit hub in the middle of a currently low density area just outside the inner city and rezone it for high density.
We already have a transport hub in my community and we are far from being large. You don't need to rezone it for high density if everyone from the local community area can get there within 10 minutes via foot, bike, bus or car.
>Running empty buses is never efficient, and skyscrapers are the city.
Running empty buses is not efficient but as noted, more efficient than uber. If you only look at individual transport units (a single train, bus, tram) then of course you'll find lots of them operating below the efficiency of a uber.
But if you look at the entire system it (probably) is more efficient than uber by an order of magnitude without any of your "fixes".
> I haven't been to a place in my country where a train station, bus or tram stop weren't within a 10 or 15 minute walk distance.
Then you obviously don't live in the US, because this country is lousy with places like that. Because the density is low.
> Shift work is rare, though IIRC from my legal course, a boss in my country is required to accommodate your transportation needs when organizing work hours.
Shift work happens in every place that needs to operate 24 hours. Power plants, news outlets, emergency services, etc. And I'm not aware of any laws like that here.
> Because buses have lower maintenance costs and those two people still need transportation.
> As mentioned, the cost of running the buses is lower or equal to Uber even before accounting for maintenance costs on the Uber.
How do they have lower maintenance costs? A bus carrying two people costs more than a sedan carrying two people.
You can't just average the peak efficiency and off-peak inefficiency together and claim the average is high enough to justify the off-peak operation. It's the incremental cost that matters, not the average.
> What do you do when no Uber is available for you? The bus will arrive at the bus stop at the time noted in the plan. Maybe 5 minutes late but it'll come.
> I find it hard to believe that an Uber driver would be available in my region at 3AM in the morning, driving me about 50km home. While being cheaper than the bus or train.
Have you actually tried it? Drivers work those hours because people are consistently needing transportation home from bars.
Obviously you'll have less luck if you're standing in a corn field in the middle of nowhere, but there are no buses there either.
> Even people in the city will require transportation since very very few people are lucky enough to live within walking distance to work.
But people who actually live in the city will live walking distance from mass transit. And if you get the density high enough then you can efficiently operate mass transit 24 hours. For example, NYC has subway lines that operate every 20 minutes even in the middle of the night, because the density is high enough for the ridership to justify it. But you can't afford to do that in the suburbs.
> If you only look at individual transport units (a single train, bus, tram) then of course you'll find lots of them operating below the efficiency of a uber.
Then why keep operating those instead of having those people use Uber?
Nobody is saying to stop operating the trains and buses that are actually full.
A bus takes as much lane space as 2-3 cars. You almost never see a bus in NY (even during off hours) with fewer than 5 people in it, and during rush hour it's not uncommon to see them packed to the gills. Sometimes people are packed in so tight you have to fight to move the 6 feet to the door.
BTW, 20 is a very low estimate. A typical bus here has about 30 seats, holds 40 comfortably, and 75-80 when crowded.
From a space efficiency perspective, you can put much, much more people in a bus than in a car. Nothing is going to change that fact. Buses are not creating traffic jams.
Not a very good article. The underlying studies are pretty weak so I would say the jury is still out on ride-sharing's impact on congestion. I advise anyone really interested to read the actual research as this has become highly politicized.
At least in San Francisco, the old Taxi system was a deliberately undersupplied crony capitalist disaster.
It served to enrich a few Taxi medallion owners and left most people without any reliable way to get a ride from A to B most of the time.
Now that we have functioning ride sharing systems, people actually can reliably get a ride from A to B. So of course we do that more than before, and there is more traffic. This is a symptom of a better functioning society with a better life for its residents.
It should still be said that if the availability of taxis matched uber/lyft, the fact that NO cash is involved. Meaning when you reach the drop off the riders can just exit the car, most likely saves an unbelievable amount of time and lane blockage compared to taxis.
And you don't have to explain the driver where you want to go. Other than being an extremely nice feature, I could see that decreasing lane blockage time as well.
GP was talking about the initial setup of a ride, the app of your uber/lyft driver will already have your destination. The conventional taxi GPS won't. The app backend takes care of the cumbersome rider to driver to GPS dataflow.
Still, as a cyclist, I'd rather have lane blocking than drivers fiddling with their apps while driving.
"the app of your uber/lyft driver will already have your destination."
So does modern taxis. It's strange that when topic comes to taxis vs Uber/Lyft here, it looks like taxis in US are very archaic. I live in Europe and taxis started using apps/GPS/SMS/time and price approximation etc. long before Uber, is it so different in other parts of the world?
My (US) last taxi ride was 3 years ago and it had GPS the driver didn't want to use and no price estimation. The big deal was that it now had a device where I could slide my card instead of the driver doing so.
4 years ago was the last time I called for a taxi. Took 20 minutes to get it (lyft takes 3 min in the same time of day), and the first taxi company didn't service my area (but did cover the opposite side of the street I later discovered).
The only time I ever had to explain to a taxi driver where to go was in an Uber, where the road was closed and google maps had no idea about it, and the driver clearly didn't know the local roads well enough to just pick a different one.
I recently talked with a Uber driver, they cannot see the destination of the client, but he said he can specify the rough area where he wants to (eventually?) go and fares will take him close enough to that direction.
So true. The last few taxi rides I took all involved the driver asking how to get to the destination. Not which way was faster, but how to get there. They used gps as a callback.
So weird. Granted, my 3 taxi rides aren't statisticly significant, but it one of several factors that makes uber/lyft more comfortable.
I would suspect that the negative impact from increasing the number of cars on the road is by far going to outweigh any savings from less lane blockage.
Dynamic pricing helps alleviate that. But also I notice more ride share drivers park and wait for rides in a parking lot, where as taxis seam to just slowly drive around blocks.
During rush hour, that's very likely true, but I want to point out that during times of low traffic, when the roads are underutilized, increased traffic is actually a net positive.
I feel like I see taxis do a better job of getting out of the lane of traffic than a lot of uber/lyft drivers. Ride share drivers will stop and throw on the blinkers absolutely anywhere. Taxis seem to at least use corners and pickup zones for loading and unloading around here (Seattle).
The monopoly on Taxi medallion issuance is held by the state. And it's a proof that centralized economy planning doesn't work.
There are issues with not enough taxis in US, in UK, in Germany, in Romania and everywhere where the state decides how many taxis people need.
Centralized economy planning is an attribute of communism and big gov, not of capitalism.
Uber and Lyft are the fruit of what you call "crony capitalism" and they seem to actually solve the issue of not enough taxis available and try to obtain a hefty profit while doing it.
> The monopoly on Taxi medallion issuance is held by the state. And it's a proof that centralized economy planning doesn't work.
I (heartily) agree with the first statement, but the second seems too sweeping. We can easily find industries where free market capitalism "doesn't work" and plenty of portions of an economy that seem to function well under centralized planning. Governments fall prey to corruption, but companies are notoriously short sighted and eagerly exploit the commons, and both embrace hubris.
> While outfits like Uber are typically more efficient than traditional taxis, they both spend a significant amount of time milling about on the street as they wait for a fare.
Instead of just finding a place to park or wait? That doesn't sound right.
Parking is still a reasonably scarce resource; I'd expect there wouldn't be enough parking available at any given time to accommodate all the drivers not currently giving someone a ride. In many cities there aren't really places you can just "stop". And often the parking that is available is metered, which might cut into a driver's income more than burning gas circling around would.
That's why I said "or wait". It should have been obvious I meant sit in a spot until you get a ride and not actually pay for a spot or leave the vehicle... You don't need an official parking spot to wait for 15 minutes, as long as you aren't blocking the bus.
I addressed that: there really aren't that many places you can just "stop" in many cities, certainly not enough to cover all the ride-share drivers roaming around.
The challenges with finding the political will and thus budget to make those improvements are well documented. And ride sharing gets most of the same hidden subsidies as private vehicles: roads are maintained for "free", congestion and pollution are externalized costs, and cars get implicit priority when there is not dedicated (or adequate) infrastructure for pedestrians, bikes, and mass transit vehicles (as well as more subtle stuff such as refusing to ban RTOR, despite how dangerous it is to people on foot).
Because there's no good way of accounting for those costs or compensating for them, transit authorities are under constant scrutiny for their spending, and starved for money to put into system maintenance and capital improvements. But billion dollar highway expansions sail through approvals because it's "needed", as if the mass transit options which might have made the expansion unnecessary are somehow an extravagant amenity.
Note as well— transit authorities are often balancing conflicting requirements from their political overlords. In particular, maximizing profit vs. access. Politicians (especially non users of transit) often want to see as many of their constituents as possible "covered" by the transit system, which leads to meandering, infrequently serviced routes of limited usefulness. But then when this is done, there are complaints that the transit authority hasn't done enough to "build ridership" and justify its own existence.
In a world where ride sharing is out-competing buses, perhaps there can be more attention given to straightening out bus routes and increasing service frequency accordingly.
Well, also, you've got the factor that if you can use uber to get to the places transit doesn't go, then you're more likely to go car-free. I live in ATL, and take transit to work, but if I had a car, I'd likely end up driving everywhere just because of the "well, I'm paying for a car, may as well save 5 minutes instead of paying for transit". Sure, some of the trips probably are instead of transit, but having uber as an option certainly dramatically increased how often I took transit.
I think this is a shame, but for SF at least, it's kinda "well, duh". I would love to take transit more often, but when I have to go somewhere, and map it, I see things like:
Car: 12 mins
Transit: 40 mins
Walking: 55 mins
If I have the time, I'll walk. If I don't have the time, I'll take a Lyft (pre-Uber/Lyft I would usually drive myself, and then have to deal with the pain of parking). Why would I ever take the bus?
I would love it if SF had a transit system like Tokyo's, or hell, even NYC's. But we don't, and there's little political will and money available to dig more subways. The new central subway is a start, but we really need to be building 5 of those, simultaneously, at all times. So... what's the solution here?
You should consider bicycling. Bicycling is usually faster than transit and nearly as fast as car travel (at least for getting around SOMA and the surrounding areas that aren't well served by elevated freeway). You don't even need a bike! A Ford GoBike membership is $150/year, and rides under 30 minutes are free after that. I personally use Ford GoBike almost daily for getting around SF.
“Even” NYC? I know New Yorkers love to complain about the MTA, but don’t take it too seriously. New York’s subway is extraordinary. It has no match in the U.S. (by a long shot) and is still very, very big by world standards.
The next time a New Yorker feels like complaining that they had to wait 20 whole minutes for a 7 train in far out Queens, they might do well to remember that most cities in the world wouldn’t have a station there at all.
>The next time a New Yorker feels like complaining that they had to wait 20 whole minutes for a 7 train in far out Queens, they might do well to remember that most cities in the world wouldn’t have a station there at all.
Living in Germany, almost all the far out places have train stations. And 30min to 1h wait times between trains.
As part of the primary subway system? Crucially, we're only looking at "subway" stops here (i.e. places where there is no system transfer to the primary, inner-city subway).
New York also has the LIRR, Metro-North, and Path, which are commuter rail systems that reach even further and wider (and with headways more like what you describe).
I'm just poking fun at New Yorkers. I understand why late trains are frustrating, but a little perspective never hurts.
Most cities in Germany have 2-3 primary "subway" systems, one operated by the national railroad company, and the other usually municipal.
Above that the national railroad operates regional trains (RB, RE), express trains (IC and ICE).
IC and ICE is what you would take from Stuttgart to Frankfurt.
RB, RE is what you would take from Stuttgart to some surrounding town like Tübingen.
Then there's the S-Bahn, U-Bahn and Strassenbahn (not always), which are the somewhat local trains.
The S-Bahn usually comes every 30 mins (but often multiple trains on the same line lead you to have enough selection for a 10 minute wait in the city) and fans far out (~30-50km in many cities), but often it's the fastest local train. The stops are about 2-5km apart.
The U-Bahn is more local and doesn't fan out as far, usually goes every 10min and has stops every km.
The Strassenbahn stops every 500m-1km and is above ground (so not technically a subway), also this doesn't exist in all the major cities.
I was referring to the S-Bahn. For me it's my city train service, It's the closest station and takes 10 min to downtown with a train running roughly every 10min. I can take it far out of town as well.
I'm putting all three in the same pool because you usually buy a single ticket valid for S-Bahn + municipal transport (U-Bahn, Strassenbahn and Buses).
The S-Bahn is both a primary subway for many people and it goes far out like some commuter trains in NYC.
As I mentioned to the other commenter, NYC has an extensive network of commuter rails (and suburban light rail), too. If you want to add that stuff in, fine, but NYC's lead over Paris doesn't shrink, it grows.
Commuter rail would be Transilien in Paris. RER is really a lot like NYC subway, maybe express trains. It's the normal Paris subway that is weird in that its stops are waaaay too dense. To give you some perspective: a decent cyclist with a decent bike can outrun the subway in Paris, not in NYC.
In terms of frequency: RER in a station on the main branch in rush hour is around 2-3 minutes, Transilien around 15 minutes, métro can be even under 2 minutes (that's why it runs on tires and not on metal wheels).
I'm not saying NYC has a bad subway system, and agree that it's one of (if not the) best in the US. I've spent enough time there to know that. But when compared with most other large cities outside the US (where I've also spent enough time to enjoy their trains), it's merely decent.
If you try to do this, Uber/Lyft will throw money bags at regulators to ensure such a regulation never passes.
Uber is already known for working with city authorities to reduce the required number of parking spaces, which in theory helps increase Uber's rides, but also leads to more congestion due to people driving around looking for parking.
Especially once uberpool came around: almost every ride I take is either a dollar more expensive than the bus (and 3x as fast), or is far enough that the unreliability of Muni makes it not worth it.
My first couple years in the city (before UberX but after Uber), I took 100% transit, but it's really just not worth it outside of the tiny portion that's a subway.
how about entirely get rid of cars within zones and use bicycles? When I lived in SF I wondered about the people who would drive from one end of the mission to the other. So easy to ride a bike.
I'm talking about the 9-10 months of clear weather.
If we could get rid of cars and make some streets bus+bike only (no taxi, no ride-share), I'd almost certainly get myself a GoBike membership and use it nearly all the time.
I just don't feel comfortable riding a bike on most SF streets; it's (as another poster put it elsewhere) a blood sport, and the police tend to knee-jerk side with drivers whenever there's a crash involving a bike.
>Nearly 60 percent said they would have used public transportation, walked, biked or skipped the trip entirely
Skipping the trip entirely is not a desirable economic outcome. The whole point of all this technology is to enable people to go places. If it doesn't do that, it's broken.
I think you make a good point. The study[0] broke down the numbers further.
> When asked how they would have made their current trip if ride-hailing hadn’t been an option, 12% said they would have walked or biked, and over two-fifths (42%) of respondents said they would have otherwise taken transit. Some of this "transit substitution" takes place during rush hours. Indeed, we estimate that 12% of all ride-hailing trips are substituting for a transit trip during the morning or afternoon commute periods; an additional 3% of riders during these times would have otherwise walked or biked. Overall, 15% of ride-hailing trips are adding cars to the region's roadways during the morning or afternoon rush hours.
As a current college student who was just beginning highschool in Dallas when Uber first starting becoming a real thing rather than a curiosity, I used Uber all the time to get around even before I had a license (sometimes even taking it to school in the morning), and continued to use the service once I did. Almost all of my peers did, too.
I go to college in Los Angeles now and haven't had my car for a few years, so I mostly rely on a mix of the Metro in addition to Uber for the last mile problem.
I figured if I can make LA work without a car, I can make it work anywhere. I have no plans to buy a car after college, instead choosing to rely on public transit + Uber. Discussions with my friends from home and college reveal this is not an uncommon plan upon graduation.
Perhaps these studies are looking at the "long-term" effects of Uber too early? Could it be plausible that there's an "uber-generation" which will contribute to a sharp decline in car sales?
I live in a very suburban, if not 'literally next door to large national rainforest' area in Australia. Uber is not 100% reliable, but it works well 95% of the time and the rest can be solved via taking the bus.
Captain obvious here again!
There could be a danger of false dichotomy here.
It needs to be kept in mind that generally there are more options than A) lots of people using ride sharing services or B) lots of people mainly using personal cars.
Of course many cities in the US of A and the world in general are designed to support A to B single passenger rides. This means lots of are covered by parking spaces and assorted infrastructure.
If however cities are already designed or can be transformed in a way that most people are assumed to not own a car and even ride sharing systems can be accounted for, then most likely the congestion situation is affected as well.
That isn't even happening in NYC, where most people in fact don't own a car, and virtually nobody (who lives in the 5 boroughs) commutes in one.
We're still prioritizing on street parking above transit, cycling, and even pedestrianism - and the streets are clogged with Ubers and with the vehicles of suburban commuters, to the point that buses might as well be pedal powered for how fast they move, and cycling is suicidal.
> We're still prioritizing on street parking above transit, cycling, and even pedestrianism - and the streets are clogged with Ubers and with the vehicles of suburban commuters
I'm not sure what part of the city you are referring to, but this is not what I see in the lower half of Midtown. I see few personal vehicles, and none are parked on the street. In fact, most street parking is explicitly commercial-only during the day on weekdays.
I agree that a large amount of the congestion is caused by hired cars of one sort or another, but contractors, delivery trucks, and sidewalk vendors are #2 and the primary drivers of street parking availability (in Midtown).
- active measures taken to eliminate lanes and slow traffic (the avg speed is down to 6mph)
- the continued decline of the transit systems (the subway system is dirty, full of homeless people and unreliable... on time arrival has declined significantly)
- also its not just the subway, nj transit and lirr both have major reliability and cost problems. I take a train from nj every day and I consider myself lucky if my train isn't cancelled once every other week, leading to 3 hour commutes. I dread the next major tunnel failure leading to a week or more of no transit options
- the inability to add more capacity to aging infrastructure. It took over 50 years to add the 2nd ave subway and it still isn't finished. almost everything is packed at rush hour leading to a deeply unpleasant commute
- taxi service was artificially limited which led to the proliferation of ride sharing services. They're all subsidized by the companies though, so its hard to know if they're actually viable businesses
- recently enforcement has been more strict in midtown. You will see traffic police at most intersections, and drivers are ticketed for blocking lanes. The blatant disregard for laws is a major issue. Cars and cyclists regularly run red lights and people walk into traffic ignoring crossing signals, which leads to cars slamming on their breaks, and then because traffic stops, all the other people on the sidewalk decide to cross, and the whole thing grinds to a halt.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadAs a public transport user I would appreciate less people being on the trains at least.
I think the other point to consider is that a lot of those driving are probably from out of town, where catching a ride-sharing service in peak hours is going to be prohibitively expensive and therefore not viable. Perhaps ride sharing services could be banned during peak hours, which puts us back to yesterday.
The article ignores this benefit entirely, then makes the contradictory points that a) ridesharing apps actually increase traffic, and b) ridesharing apps siphon riders from public traffic.
All in all it’s written from the perspective of someone who hasn’t had to drive much in a high density urban area, where parking is nearly as much of a headache to figure out as traffic.
It is also true that as more people rideshare, fewer take public transit, which is more efficient in fuel and the number of people-miles driven.
These points are not in conflict.
With fewer car owners it might be possible to invest in public transit. For busses to really work in SF the city would have to close entire streets off from normal traffic and install traffic signals coupled with busses.
Public transit would work, if we invested sufficiently. As in completely independent lanes, and no stopping due to traffic.
Let’s not assume people needing transportation are all single people carrying a backpack with perfect physical abilities. Ever tried to get a stroller down the subway steps in New York? In those relatively few stations that have elevators, they’re all filled with piss and shit. Don’t want my 3 year old walking around amongst that. Even in “enlightened” European cities, subway elevators are often disgusting messes, not to mention more unsafe than having an Uber driver drop you at your front door.
Public transport could be great — but I live in real-ville where it isn’t — except maybe in Zurich — which is an extremely rich small, and compact city — you could put twenty Zurichs in the Los Angeles metro at least. On paper, places like New York have great public transport — but the UX is about 100x harder than using Uber — especially with kids: walking up and down multiple stairs, down long corridors, waiting on station platforms literally next to crazy people, getting on a train, finding a seat — then trying to get back home doing all that in reverse. Compare that to the literal seconds it takes to order an Uber, wait outside your door, hop in, ride in quiet, mostly pathogen-free comfort directly to your destination.
Public transport is “efficient” the same way a prison cafeteria is efficient. I am not against public transport — it serves a valuable purpose as one facet of a comprehensive transportation policy. But to claim it is more efficient is really a matter of opinion — there are a lot of variables that make up what “efficient” means.
In the US, we’ve not made the proper investment into said infrastructure (profit and shortsightedness always get in the way), but that’s a problem with our instantiation, not the concept of public transportation.
I agree that for many situations, it’s not practical or appropriate, but in cases where it can be, we should encourage and make it easier to do.
Nope, it's not. But it's less wasteful. It uses less gas per passenger, uses less space per passenger, and is often safer. So what you're arguing is that you want something that is more convenient _for you_ but is more wasteful. That's fine, but you need to be able to pay for it. Right now ridesharing is taking advantage of the fact that in most cities, everyone pays for the upkeep of roads, and drivers pay a bit more because of gas. In essence, roads are socialized across its residents. Residents are being forced to subsidize a more wasteful option, pushing the true cost of transportation up for everyone, and pricing some people (due to congestion) out of the transit system altogether. Until American cities are willing to charge (and enforce) a congestion tax to road users, the best option to keep transportation "costs" low is to limit cars on the road.
I hear this argument far too rarely. Mostly I see either "free market! Back off commie!" Or "Your nifty ride-sharing is actually a failure, so l can steal your smugness for myself, muahahaha!" (Slight paraphrases )
Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Prague, Paris, Stockholm, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul... not a single negative experience in these cities, and I have seen plenty of people with kids in the metro.
Edit: OK, in Madrid they tried to take my old iPod from my coat pocket once, in a very crowded car. But that was once in a lot of times using that metro and it's not the kind of bad experience for kids that you are referring to.
In Rome I did find some stations somewhat shabby, as in New York. In Los Angeles I had a good experience, but I only took the metro once there so it may have been just luck.
I agree with London, Berlin, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong etc.
(The reason we took the metro late at night with 2 young kids and a large suitcase was because uber/taxis is a right pain with kids - trying to get one with 2 car seats)
The difference is that life here is organized to revolve around transit. When you have to take public transit to places that are not designed around public transit, it's difficult. When all or most of your activities are better served by public transit than they are by car (try parking your car in Zürich), planning your day around transit is a breeze. Train stations in Switzerland are major retail centers. It's rare to not have a supermarket at walking distance.
Plus kids are much more autonomous. You don't have to drive them anywhere when they can safely take a tram by themselves at age 10.
It's possible, but I'd need to see both sides of the equations as well. How many miles are driven looking for parking (I've seen estimates as high as 30%). Do people forego car use because they don't have a car (and the marginal is therefore higher)?
Interesting question, but the article doesn't really go that deep in answering it.
I also have this suspicion. I'd like to see some numbers on it. In my experience, most of the people I know who live in San Francisco own cars but frequently take Ubers to avoid dealing with parking at their destination, to go out drinking, etc.
Downtown San Francisco is one of those places where driving your own car and paying for parking can cost more than taking an Uber.
All this shows is that people would rather climb into a stranger's car, pay them and hope for the best than use actual public transport.
In European cities this is less of a problem. Maybe ride-sharing will reduce car ownership enough that you can one day invest in public transit.
The parking spots built with a new condo development have an enormous cost which impacts everyone: https://grist.org/cities/parking-rules-raise-your-rent/
So it would be interesting to examine whether these minimums have been eased in cities where ridesharing is popular. If so, that's definitely a win (potentially also for the local mass transit advocacy groups— this is a popular talking point).
The initial reports on it look really good: https://www.nickmagrino.com/blog/2018/1/30/when-you-dont-hav...
As others pointed out, otherwise it's sucking people away from public transit and back into cars --which is counter to the design most larger municipalities want to execute.
But that situation won't last. If usage of taxis and buses decreases, fewer of them will be needed, so the number of them on the city streets will gradually decrease. That hasn't happened yet because those services are propped up by fees and taxes, so the fact that they are being out-competed can be hidden--for a while. Sooner or later that will cease to be feasible.
The real question is whether, after all this has shaken out, congestion on city streets will be better than it was before ride sharing services came along. It seems like it ought to be, since ride sharing seems like a more efficient way to allocate vehicle space. But we won't know for sure until the experiment is done.
Buses are way cheaper than Uber. Until it's cheaper for me to use Uber, there's still a good place for a city bus.
Not if bus routes don't go where you need them to, they are late, congestion makes bus rides impractical, etc. Mostly this is perhaps outside of the center of a city.
Even in suburban areas where there is an influx of residents, buses are the last option because you could bike where you need to faster than taking the bus during rush hour. What if a short distance meant having to transfer? If the wait is 10-20 minutes, and if the bus comes too early, then that just compounds time wasted using the bus. If bus rides take a long time, nearly zero of them have wifi to enable work to be done. And if they don't drop you off or pick you up near your source / destination, you spend twice as much time walking. It's just impractical until localities start taking this seriously.
Cities and surrounding suburbs really need to increase bus lines (accessibility), and buses per line (frequency). In many places I've lived, buses were what the poor and disadvantaged rode.
This is the problem. Having WiFi available does not mean it's availability is implemented well. If a bus provides WiFi, it should not suck; if it does, it's effectively not available. I don't want to use my 2 GiB cellphone data plan on work-related emails and files (together with my phone's usage, can exceed 2 GiB), and draw all the power from my phone everyday doing so.
My commute to work is about 7 miles. I could get there faster on a bicycle than I could on a bus.
Only because they're subsidized, so that the price you pay per ride is well under the operating cost.
If each individual hailed a single Uber for each ride, it's obvious congestion would greatly increase versus each individual taking a bus, simple because one person in a private car takes up much more physical space than one person on a shared bus.
(I hope Uber doesn't continue to increase for many other reasons, congestion being just one of them.)
Maybe just restricting ridesharing during peak hours and reducing public transport during off-peak (even subsidize ride shares like has been tried).
The throughput of a bus is so massively larger than that of cars that it will outweighs the frequent stopping. And if you give buses a dedicated lane they become much more efficient as well.
Ever since bus-only lanes, as well an HOV has been added to SR-520, my commute by bus during peak became faster then my commute by car.
That one HOV lane has more throughput then both of the regular, non-HOV lanes on the highway combined.
I find articles like this are too obviously pushing a specific viewpoint [1].
They use hard data to come up with 900 passenger vehicles per hour on a single lane at 25mph times an average of 1.6 passengers per vehicle = 1,440 people per hour.
Then they use hard data to come up with 50 buses / lane / hour. But then for the final calculation;
“A 60-foot articulated low-floor bus typically has 65 seats and can carry 55 standees (per manufacturer specification) meaning that we get a throughput of 6,000 people per hour.”
So they do the comparison based on every bus filled to absolute maximum capacity? But their own linked source claims average bus occupancy is 43 making the passenger volume 2,150.
The DOT has a great passage on their site worth quoting in its entirety;
The Bus Lane Paradox
“Bus lanes can provide a strong identity for public transit. They can reduce travel time, but only if they are designed to work properly. A single curbside lane is rarely effective. Designs which are self-enforcing, which accommodate commercial deliveries, and which permit stopped buses to be passed by other buses can be most useful. However, such designs may occupy a significant amount of street space. Where traffic is severely congested, bus lanes can provide the biggest benefit to bus passengers, but it is precisely in these places where it may be difficult to reduce the amount of space available for general traffic— and thereby seem to worsen congestion. Conversely, where there is plenty of road space available, it may be easy to install bus lanes, but they will provide few benefits, given that traffic is not likely to be congested.
On some urban streets, bus passengers account for a surprisingly high percentage of total person throughput. Focusing on moving people instead of simply moving vehicles will help to justify priority treatments for buses. Where transit users are a small fraction of street users, it will be more difficult to justify such treatments.” [3]
[1] - https://www.theurbanist.org/2016/05/26/the-supply-and-demand...
[2] - http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_webdoc_6-b.pd...
[3] - https://www.transit.dot.gov/research-innovation/bus-lanes
[1]Regardles of your views on macro environmentalism, the detrimental effects of localized air pollution is pretty well documented IIUC
A service can be better and cheaper.
If congestion starts to worse, I'd also definitely not blame the people who haven't changed behavior when there is another group that has changed behavior in a way that can directly impact this problem.
I was on a train the other day and counted around 35 people in my car (there were other cars too). I was imagining the energy and congestion generated by 35 cars compared to the one train car.
If more people used public transit, there would be more availability (more routes and more frequent vehicles on each route).
The problem with this kind of theory is that it assumes there are actually 20+ people on the bus. Half the time you have a bus which is three times the size of a car with only two people on it.
The real solution here is to get riding sharing apps to actually share rides. Use the fact that the app can tell there are six people near Point A who all want to go near Point B and provide an appropriate discount to put them all in the same minivan.
Then you have something which is effectively mass transit except that it doesn't drive around aimlessly in a gigantic bus when there are no passengers to transport.
Most public transports reduce the frequency of transports during off peak (there are 3 trains after 2200 to 0500, from 0500 to 0900 and 1800 to 2200 there are 8, from 0900 to 1800 about 9, total: 30 trains, of which >50% are used during peak hours).
Today the train cart I used held about 40 people while being about as long as 4-5 cars (which would hold about 4 people each, or 16-20 total)
Since 50% of the trains drive during peak hour, the overall efficieny is 50% peak hour: 20 people (0.5 * 40). Which would be equivalent to the number of people transported in the car.
Now keep in mind; trains are much more efficient than a car per passenger, use no roadspace, are much safer and faster and cheaper (0.50€ to 5€ depending on ticket for my particular route, which includes all costs, gasoline used for route costs about 1€ per trip, which does not include other costs incurred by the operator).
Ah, but that's the trouble, right? If you only operate mass transit at the times and places where it's efficient, it doesn't serve the majority of people.
Trains are great for the people who want to travel between two train stations during peak hours, but then there is everybody else.
If you don't live and work adjacent to a train station then you can take a full and timely train during peak hours, but how do you get the rest of the way once the people get off the train and their paths diverge in twenty directions? Even if you do live and work near the train, if you work the late shift and leave between 2200 and 0500 you're waiting two hours for a train every night.
And if you start operating mostly-empty buses to cover the rest of the people then you're back to operating mostly-empty buses.
There is actually a solution to this but it has almost nothing to do with cars and everything to do with building more taller buildings near train stations.
Efficient mass transit requires high density. As long as there is sprawl there will be cars. So if you want less cars, have less sprawl.
To get to the train I walk about 10 minutes from home.
Once I get off I take the Tram Line 4 or 6 one station, then switch to Tram Line 1 for another few stations.
>Even if you do live and work near the train, if you work the late shift and leave between 2200 and 0500 you're waiting two hours for a train every night.
I'd time my clocking out with the train so I would ideally only arrive 10 minutes before the train.
>And if you start operating mostly-empty buses to cover the rest of the people then you're back to operating mostly-empty buses.
It's not a bad thing to operate mostly empty buses as long as the full buses can compensate for the efficiency loss. And they do.
>There is actually a solution to this but it has almost nothing to do with cars and everything to do with building more taller buildings near train stations.
That solves it for new locations but existing locations will continue to face the same problems.
Especially the inner city where I live cannot build larger buildings or become any much denser. The inner city is too old and the design does not permit skyscrapers with efficiency.
Having train routes to and from major infrastructure hubs and using buses and trams to distribute into the city can get you within a 15 minute walk to and from any destination or origin. And it's cheaper, safer and more efficient than clogging up the city with cars or skyscrapers.
That's great for the people who live a 10 minute walk from the train station. But when the surrounding area is only zoned for low density housing, that constrains the number of such people who can exist and other people will have a two hour walk to the train station.
> I'd time my clocking out with the train so I would ideally only arrive 10 minutes before the train.
You don't choose your hours, your boss does. If there are trains at 2200 and 2430 and your shift ends at 2230, you wait two hours. If there are trains arriving at 2200 and 2430 and your shift starts at 2400, you get there two hours early.
> It's not a bad thing to operate mostly empty buses as long as the full buses can compensate for the efficiency loss.
Yes it is. The two things have nothing to do with each other, because you can run the full buses without running the empty buses. And why run a bus with two people on it (or zero people on it) when the alternative of not running the bus and having those people share an Uber is actually more efficient?
> That solves it for new locations but existing locations will continue to face the same problems.
It solves it for both. If you create a lot of housing in the city at affordable prices then most people who work in the city move into it and get off the roads.
Other people who also work in the city won't want to buy their old homes when there is now equally attractive housing in the city with no commute, so most of the people who buy the old homes will be people who don't work in the city. People who work from home, or work in the suburbs, or want a vacation home.
Alternatively, the low housing costs may attract people from all over to move into the city and increase the population (and therefore average density) which proportionally increases the area over which you can efficiently operate mass transit. If the city becomes popular enough, the high density section expands to consume the suburbs and all the old sprawling single family homes get bulldozed and replaced with tall buildings that have the density needed for mass transit.
> Especially the inner city where I live cannot build larger buildings or become any much denser. The inner city is too old and the design does not permit skyscrapers with efficiency.
The inner city isn't the problem. It already has enough density for efficient mass transit. It's the area just outside the inner city which is the problem.
A good workaround is to build a new transit hub in the middle of a currently low density area just outside the inner city and rezone it for high density. Then people will build high density buildings there because it has a transit hub that goes directly to the inner city and the existing buildings there are cheaper to raze.
> Having train routes to and from major infrastructure hubs and using buses and trams to distribute into the city can get you within a 15 minute walk to and from any destination or origin. And it's cheaper, safer and more efficient than clogging up the city with cars or skyscrapers.
Running empty buses is never efficient, and skyscrapers are the city. There is no traffic congestion in Hamberg, North Dakota because there are no tall buildings there for people to clog the roads getting to.
The problem comes when the city wants to grow and you don't let it grow upward so instead it grows outward and loses the density needed for efficient mass transit.
I haven't been to a place in my country where a train station, bus or tram stop weren't within a 10 or 15 minute walk distance.
>You don't choose your hours, your boss does. If there are trains at 2200 and 2430 and your shift ends at 2230, you wait two hours. If there are trains arriving at 2200 and 2430 and your shift starts at 2400, you get there two hours early.
Shift work is rare, though IIRC from my legal course, a boss in my country is required to accommodate your transportation needs when organizing work hours.
>And why run a bus with two people on it (or zero people on it) when the alternative of not running the bus and having those people share an Uber is actually more efficient?
Because buses have lower maintenance costs and those two people still need transportation.
As mentioned, the cost of running the buses is lower or equal to Uber even before accounting for maintenance costs on the Uber.
What do you do when no Uber is available for you? The bus will arrive at the bus stop at the time noted in the plan. Maybe 5 minutes late but it'll come.
I find it hard to believe that an Uber driver would be available in my region at 3AM in the morning, driving me about 50km home. While being cheaper than the bus or train.
>It solves it for both. If you create a lot of housing in the city at affordable prices then most people who work in the city move into it and get off the roads.
Citation needed. Even people in the city will require transportation since very very few people are lucky enough to live within walking distance to work.
>A good workaround is to build a new transit hub in the middle of a currently low density area just outside the inner city and rezone it for high density.
We already have a transport hub in my community and we are far from being large. You don't need to rezone it for high density if everyone from the local community area can get there within 10 minutes via foot, bike, bus or car.
>Running empty buses is never efficient, and skyscrapers are the city.
Running empty buses is not efficient but as noted, more efficient than uber. If you only look at individual transport units (a single train, bus, tram) then of course you'll find lots of them operating below the efficiency of a uber.
But if you look at the entire system it (probably) is more efficient than uber by an order of magnitude without any of your "fixes".
Then you obviously don't live in the US, because this country is lousy with places like that. Because the density is low.
> Shift work is rare, though IIRC from my legal course, a boss in my country is required to accommodate your transportation needs when organizing work hours.
Shift work happens in every place that needs to operate 24 hours. Power plants, news outlets, emergency services, etc. And I'm not aware of any laws like that here.
> Because buses have lower maintenance costs and those two people still need transportation.
> As mentioned, the cost of running the buses is lower or equal to Uber even before accounting for maintenance costs on the Uber.
How do they have lower maintenance costs? A bus carrying two people costs more than a sedan carrying two people.
You can't just average the peak efficiency and off-peak inefficiency together and claim the average is high enough to justify the off-peak operation. It's the incremental cost that matters, not the average.
> What do you do when no Uber is available for you? The bus will arrive at the bus stop at the time noted in the plan. Maybe 5 minutes late but it'll come.
> I find it hard to believe that an Uber driver would be available in my region at 3AM in the morning, driving me about 50km home. While being cheaper than the bus or train.
Have you actually tried it? Drivers work those hours because people are consistently needing transportation home from bars.
Obviously you'll have less luck if you're standing in a corn field in the middle of nowhere, but there are no buses there either.
> Even people in the city will require transportation since very very few people are lucky enough to live within walking distance to work.
But people who actually live in the city will live walking distance from mass transit. And if you get the density high enough then you can efficiently operate mass transit 24 hours. For example, NYC has subway lines that operate every 20 minutes even in the middle of the night, because the density is high enough for the ridership to justify it. But you can't afford to do that in the suburbs.
> If you only look at individual transport units (a single train, bus, tram) then of course you'll find lots of them operating below the efficiency of a uber.
Then why keep operating those instead of having those people use Uber?
Nobody is saying to stop operating the trains and buses that are actually full.
BTW, 20 is a very low estimate. A typical bus here has about 30 seats, holds 40 comfortably, and 75-80 when crowded.
http://static.rappler.com/images/20140213-share-road-04.jpg
It served to enrich a few Taxi medallion owners and left most people without any reliable way to get a ride from A to B most of the time.
Now that we have functioning ride sharing systems, people actually can reliably get a ride from A to B. So of course we do that more than before, and there is more traffic. This is a symptom of a better functioning society with a better life for its residents.
Still, as a cyclist, I'd rather have lane blocking than drivers fiddling with their apps while driving.
So does modern taxis. It's strange that when topic comes to taxis vs Uber/Lyft here, it looks like taxis in US are very archaic. I live in Europe and taxis started using apps/GPS/SMS/time and price approximation etc. long before Uber, is it so different in other parts of the world?
4 years ago was the last time I called for a taxi. Took 20 minutes to get it (lyft takes 3 min in the same time of day), and the first taxi company didn't service my area (but did cover the opposite side of the street I later discovered).
So yeah, archaic.
So weird. Granted, my 3 taxi rides aren't statisticly significant, but it one of several factors that makes uber/lyft more comfortable.
There are issues with not enough taxis in US, in UK, in Germany, in Romania and everywhere where the state decides how many taxis people need.
Centralized economy planning is an attribute of communism and big gov, not of capitalism.
Uber and Lyft are the fruit of what you call "crony capitalism" and they seem to actually solve the issue of not enough taxis available and try to obtain a hefty profit while doing it.
I (heartily) agree with the first statement, but the second seems too sweeping. We can easily find industries where free market capitalism "doesn't work" and plenty of portions of an economy that seem to function well under centralized planning. Governments fall prey to corruption, but companies are notoriously short sighted and eagerly exploit the commons, and both embrace hubris.
Instead of just finding a place to park or wait? That doesn't sound right.
If cities don't like that, they should improve public transit.
The challenges with finding the political will and thus budget to make those improvements are well documented. And ride sharing gets most of the same hidden subsidies as private vehicles: roads are maintained for "free", congestion and pollution are externalized costs, and cars get implicit priority when there is not dedicated (or adequate) infrastructure for pedestrians, bikes, and mass transit vehicles (as well as more subtle stuff such as refusing to ban RTOR, despite how dangerous it is to people on foot).
Because there's no good way of accounting for those costs or compensating for them, transit authorities are under constant scrutiny for their spending, and starved for money to put into system maintenance and capital improvements. But billion dollar highway expansions sail through approvals because it's "needed", as if the mass transit options which might have made the expansion unnecessary are somehow an extravagant amenity.
In a world where ride sharing is out-competing buses, perhaps there can be more attention given to straightening out bus routes and increasing service frequency accordingly.
More on coverage vs. ridership: http://humantransit.org/2015/07/mega-explainer-the-ridership...
Car: 12 mins
Transit: 40 mins
Walking: 55 mins
If I have the time, I'll walk. If I don't have the time, I'll take a Lyft (pre-Uber/Lyft I would usually drive myself, and then have to deal with the pain of parking). Why would I ever take the bus?
I would love it if SF had a transit system like Tokyo's, or hell, even NYC's. But we don't, and there's little political will and money available to dig more subways. The new central subway is a start, but we really need to be building 5 of those, simultaneously, at all times. So... what's the solution here?
You do develop a kind of situational awareness over time.
The next time a New Yorker feels like complaining that they had to wait 20 whole minutes for a 7 train in far out Queens, they might do well to remember that most cities in the world wouldn’t have a station there at all.
Lots of fun stuff here: https://www.citymetric.com/transport/what-largest-metro-syst...
Living in Germany, almost all the far out places have train stations. And 30min to 1h wait times between trains.
New York also has the LIRR, Metro-North, and Path, which are commuter rail systems that reach even further and wider (and with headways more like what you describe).
I'm just poking fun at New Yorkers. I understand why late trains are frustrating, but a little perspective never hurts.
Above that the national railroad operates regional trains (RB, RE), express trains (IC and ICE).
IC and ICE is what you would take from Stuttgart to Frankfurt.
RB, RE is what you would take from Stuttgart to some surrounding town like Tübingen.
Then there's the S-Bahn, U-Bahn and Strassenbahn (not always), which are the somewhat local trains.
The S-Bahn usually comes every 30 mins (but often multiple trains on the same line lead you to have enough selection for a 10 minute wait in the city) and fans far out (~30-50km in many cities), but often it's the fastest local train. The stops are about 2-5km apart.
The U-Bahn is more local and doesn't fan out as far, usually goes every 10min and has stops every km.
The Strassenbahn stops every 500m-1km and is above ground (so not technically a subway), also this doesn't exist in all the major cities.
I was referring to the S-Bahn. For me it's my city train service, It's the closest station and takes 10 min to downtown with a train running roughly every 10min. I can take it far out of town as well.
I'm putting all three in the same pool because you usually buy a single ticket valid for S-Bahn + municipal transport (U-Bahn, Strassenbahn and Buses).
The S-Bahn is both a primary subway for many people and it goes far out like some commuter trains in NYC.
Seems a bit disingenuous to count far out Queens as subway, but not RER in Paris, which is just as far and unfrequent.
In terms of frequency: RER in a station on the main branch in rush hour is around 2-3 minutes, Transilien around 15 minutes, métro can be even under 2 minutes (that's why it runs on tires and not on metal wheels).
Then setup traffic signals that prioritizes busses and run a bus every 2-5 min depending on time of day.
This is cheap and effective. But requires some serious political support to close streets for ordinary traffic.
You could also just forbid street parking in some streets and repurpose the extra space for dedicated bus lanes.
But you can't solve this cheaply without down prioritizing private cars.
Uber is already known for working with city authorities to reduce the required number of parking spaces, which in theory helps increase Uber's rides, but also leads to more congestion due to people driving around looking for parking.
My first couple years in the city (before UberX but after Uber), I took 100% transit, but it's really just not worth it outside of the tiny portion that's a subway.
I'm talking about the 9-10 months of clear weather.
I just don't feel comfortable riding a bike on most SF streets; it's (as another poster put it elsewhere) a blood sport, and the police tend to knee-jerk side with drivers whenever there's a crash involving a bike.
Skipping the trip entirely is not a desirable economic outcome. The whole point of all this technology is to enable people to go places. If it doesn't do that, it's broken.
> When asked how they would have made their current trip if ride-hailing hadn’t been an option, 12% said they would have walked or biked, and over two-fifths (42%) of respondents said they would have otherwise taken transit. Some of this "transit substitution" takes place during rush hours. Indeed, we estimate that 12% of all ride-hailing trips are substituting for a transit trip during the morning or afternoon commute periods; an additional 3% of riders during these times would have otherwise walked or biked. Overall, 15% of ride-hailing trips are adding cars to the region's roadways during the morning or afternoon rush hours.
[0] Fare Choices - A Survey of Ride-Hailing Passengers in Metro Boston Report #1 http://www.mapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Fare-Choices-...
As a current college student who was just beginning highschool in Dallas when Uber first starting becoming a real thing rather than a curiosity, I used Uber all the time to get around even before I had a license (sometimes even taking it to school in the morning), and continued to use the service once I did. Almost all of my peers did, too.
I go to college in Los Angeles now and haven't had my car for a few years, so I mostly rely on a mix of the Metro in addition to Uber for the last mile problem.
I figured if I can make LA work without a car, I can make it work anywhere. I have no plans to buy a car after college, instead choosing to rely on public transit + Uber. Discussions with my friends from home and college reveal this is not an uncommon plan upon graduation.
Perhaps these studies are looking at the "long-term" effects of Uber too early? Could it be plausible that there's an "uber-generation" which will contribute to a sharp decline in car sales?
I assume by "anywhere" you mean "any reasonably urban area".
It needs to be kept in mind that generally there are more options than A) lots of people using ride sharing services or B) lots of people mainly using personal cars.
Of course many cities in the US of A and the world in general are designed to support A to B single passenger rides. This means lots of are covered by parking spaces and assorted infrastructure.
If however cities are already designed or can be transformed in a way that most people are assumed to not own a car and even ride sharing systems can be accounted for, then most likely the congestion situation is affected as well.
We're still prioritizing on street parking above transit, cycling, and even pedestrianism - and the streets are clogged with Ubers and with the vehicles of suburban commuters, to the point that buses might as well be pedal powered for how fast they move, and cycling is suicidal.
I'm not sure what part of the city you are referring to, but this is not what I see in the lower half of Midtown. I see few personal vehicles, and none are parked on the street. In fact, most street parking is explicitly commercial-only during the day on weekdays.
I agree that a large amount of the congestion is caused by hired cars of one sort or another, but contractors, delivery trucks, and sidewalk vendors are #2 and the primary drivers of street parking availability (in Midtown).
- the continued growth of the population
- active measures taken to eliminate lanes and slow traffic (the avg speed is down to 6mph)
- the continued decline of the transit systems (the subway system is dirty, full of homeless people and unreliable... on time arrival has declined significantly)
- also its not just the subway, nj transit and lirr both have major reliability and cost problems. I take a train from nj every day and I consider myself lucky if my train isn't cancelled once every other week, leading to 3 hour commutes. I dread the next major tunnel failure leading to a week or more of no transit options
- the inability to add more capacity to aging infrastructure. It took over 50 years to add the 2nd ave subway and it still isn't finished. almost everything is packed at rush hour leading to a deeply unpleasant commute
- taxi service was artificially limited which led to the proliferation of ride sharing services. They're all subsidized by the companies though, so its hard to know if they're actually viable businesses
- recently enforcement has been more strict in midtown. You will see traffic police at most intersections, and drivers are ticketed for blocking lanes. The blatant disregard for laws is a major issue. Cars and cyclists regularly run red lights and people walk into traffic ignoring crossing signals, which leads to cars slamming on their breaks, and then because traffic stops, all the other people on the sidewalk decide to cross, and the whole thing grinds to a halt.