Are you seriously suggesting that an entity could have both positive and negative effects? That's unpossible!
If ridesharing is so bad then govt should invest in proper public transport to create more choice, not try and crush a valuable service used by millions.
I agree that there needs to be a lot more investment in mass transit but in the meantime governments shouldn't be turning a blind eye to regulating ridesharing.
There’s plenty of reasons to have some regulation. What was missing previously wasn’t regulation, it was competition.
Payment options/scams = Uber lets you pay however you want through the app/apple pay without any need for cash, with an upfront price. Most taxis only accept cash, have unclear pricing that you only know at the end, can easily pad the meter in various ways, and may extort you if you really need a ride.
Refusing pickups = Uber drivers don't know the destination until you get in the car, and get kicked off the network if they cancel too many rides or abuse riders. Taxis are notorious for ignoring people based on looks, destination, convenience and usually won't deal with any trip they deem is not worth their time.
The difference in service and safety is magnitudes better with ridesharing vs taxis, that's why they're so popular.
"Sorry, the meter is broken"
"Sorry, the card reader is broken, cash only"
"No, don't worry, this is really the fastest way"
Also your Uber driver doesn't know your race when he accepts your ride or not. Which is probably why I find it a lot easier to get an Uber than a taxi.
Not being able to hail a cab due to racist drivers is a problem. However, in your example, the Uber driven can see your name, which is a pretty reliable proxy for your race, unless it's highly generic like John Smith or something.
Taxi drivers have to accept cash and cannot force you to pre-pay for your ride like Uber can. That at least reduces the number of drivers who would otherwise refuse to pick you up because of a perception that you wouldn't pay.
If anything there are less total cars on the road since the same Uber driver can service many passengers (or same amount of cars delivering more people with less parking).
Also the govt is not lacking for funds. The problem is poor spending and that will never get solved by giving up even more money. I'd rather have private businesses that actually produce valuable services then wait on crappy transportation delivered a decade late by the state.
It's not just because they're Taxis they suck. There is also bad Uber drivers too.
No apps, need to communicate destination (possibly in a foreign language), primarily use cash, expensive, paper receipts, no real-time status/tracking, hard to get back lost items, etc. They might be cleaner and quieter but those are minor details.
Wrong: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/japantaxi/id481647073
Need to communicate destination.
Not with the app.
Primarily use cash
Wrong, you can pay by many means, including the IC card, this is a good option and can be used with Apple wallet, super convenient.
Expensive
Compared to what?
Paper receipts
Not when using the app, you can just say you don't want a receipt.
No real-time status tracking
Wrong, the app does this too.
Hard to get back lost items
Call taxi company, get it back? Tokyo taxi drivers usually inspect the taxi before you get out too, I notice they do this every time I get a cab.
Another benefit IMO is there are cabs driving around everywhere, you don't have to hail and wait for a cab, if it starts raining, you can just jump into a cab usually in under a minute.
This is an excellent idea, and is consistent with also taxing any societally borne externalities caused by ride-sharing, the primary being congestion. And taxis should be held to the same regulatory standard.
Taxis are cars too by the way. How did all those taxi regulations improve externalities?
I think we agree completely on this, and the best other options in cities are all mass transit, not individual cars.
> Taxis are cars too by the way. How did all those taxi regulations improve externalities?
Taxis didn't impose nearly the same congestion externalities as ride shares (or single occupancy cars) simply because there just weren't as many of them, due to the controversial medallion system. They were never a form of mass transit.
And as anyone who waited hours for a taxi before the ride share era knows, the lack of supply was the primary frustration with taxis. Ride share simply multiplies out the taxi technology of low occupancy cars, which while it solves the taxi supply problem increases the existing congestion problem wrought by low occupancy cars in general. Therefore it is not the way to achieve scalable transit in even somewhat dense environments.
But to your question, maybe congestion taxes on single passenger ride sharing pushes us toward a form of dispatchable mass transit which shares many of the conveniences of ride-share with the social benefits of mass transit i.e. a fleet of dispatchable municipal minibuses that work like a larger Uber Pool.
That would be especially helpful for last-mile connectivity for mass transit like commuter trains, whose parking lots are today overwhelmed by single occupancy cars.
Lack of alternatives is the problem. Externalities of Uber are nothing but political outrage and a distraction. If the govt put even a fraction of the effort in battling Uber into building more rail and bus lines then everything would be solved.
This has been proven by the massive surge in electric scooters and bike sharing companies, which Uber also provides. Are those externalities too? Or do people just want to get around and need ways to do so?
You also have more and more people in every growing city supercommuting due to rising housing costs. A lot of these supercommuters are driving their own personal vehicle because they are now living in places where a personal vehicle is a necessity. Once you have your own personal vehicle for local use, it's economically advantageous to use it for commuting to work.
Given all the changes in growing cities in the past 5-10 years, you couldn't even begin to isolate the cause of congestion down to just one cause, but that's what these studies falsely claim because they don't understand the null hypothesis and that correlation does not imply causation.
The biggest study was in SF and was inherently flawed by looking at traffic over years. It's obvious that an increasing population will generate more traffic, and Uber has allowed more people to travel than before. Serving more people isn't a bad thing, it's a natural situation that cities should plan for instead of being constantly surprised by.
Are you sure?
100% of riders, for all rides they take, would choose to use a car if they could not use ride sharing?
Absolutely none would walk, ride a bike, take a bus, take a train, choose not to go?
I have a hard time believing that it's purely a "car I have access to or a ride share," 100% of the time. So I believe some amount of rides are happening that would not have people driving.
Of the drivers for ride sharing, there is some amount of time between trips that they are simply waiting for the next customer. This is time they wouldn't be on the road if they were not driving, and time the person who is using the ride sharing wouldn't be on the road either. So, I also believe that drivers must be on the road more often than the sum of the time they've kept other people from driving.
If drivers are on the road more with ride sharing, and if less than 100% of people using the ride sharing service would choose a method of transport other than a car, I cannot see how ride sharing wouldn't strictly require an increase in traffic?
Uber will add to traffic but traffic always increases anyway. Check any city over any period of time. It's normal. Uber isn't the problem, it's the lack of capacity for a growing population and other viable transportation. For example, look at electric scooters and bikes in big cities that people are using for medium distances instead of cars. That's what happens when there's progress and competition instead of regressive regulation.
The Uber driver has to drive to pick them up. Then once they drop them off, they have to drive to the next fare. Sometimes they even circle around high traffic areas in heavy traffic in order to get to customers faster.
Basically anytime you see an uber driver without a passenger is likely extra car time on the road compared to what those passengers would have done with private cars.
I agree. We should be making it more expensive to operate any low-occupancy vehicle during peak congestion hours in congested areas, not just ride-shares.
Where I live taxis are regulated yet provide a decent/high quality of service. And it’s true even in cities like mine where the public transportation network is crap (bus based).
Nothing has improved commercial services like competition. Nothing has ruined it like regulation. I've yet to hear how any of these externalities are solved with regulation, or how they are unique to ridesharing vs private car ownership.
no, this isn't correct and on its face looks like a straw man, so i'm pretty sure you're arguing in bad faith, but i'll try to give someone of the "market" mindset a market argument.
market zealots tell us that as things become cheaper, people do more of them. subsidizing ride sharing, evading regulations, etc. generally made ride sharing become a cheaper alternative to taxis. as a result, it suddenly became generally affordable for well off people to "ride share" around everywhere as a manner of commuting. this very likely led to more congestion than a world without ride sharing would have.
that some of these well off individuals could have done the same in private cars is not really relevant. ride sharing became so economical that bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists changed their behavior to make use of it. this isn't controversial - there's at least one study from SF that found this; i'm guessing other municipalities have found the same.
Please refrain from ad hominem attacks. GP has a valid point.
> ride sharing became so economical that bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists changed their behavior to make use of it.
If that is your concern, what explains popularity of Uber in London / Paris, which have excellent public transport as well as massive customer base for that public transport? Clearly, Uber is providing good value there.
That's entirely consistent with parents point though.
If you could walk somewhere then you don't need a car, but if you need a car then you weren't a pedestrian or cyclist anyway. There are also many people who didn't have any good option at all before (like kids, disabled, elderly, etc) and it's a good thing that they can get around now.
"Uber and Lyft Admit They're Making Traffic Worse"
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/uber-lyft-tra...
Traffic always increases over time, that's a natural thing that cities need to plan for. It's great motivation to build public transportation instead of complaining about Uber helping people get around.
He didn't say that at all, read his post again. He says that uber takes pedestrians and cyclists and PT users and turns them into car (Uber) users.
Typical subsidies for transit are in the $0.50+ per passenger mile range for rail, and $0.80 for bus: https://opportunityurbanism.org/2019/09/transport-costs-and-... (scroll down to the graph).
>Commercial exploitation of subsidized infrastructure What makes trucking different than Uber in this scenario? Is driving my own car around not abusing the infrastructure, but hailing an Uber is? Uber doesn't make money if nobody is riding somewhere in the car, so the market forces try and make utilization as efficient as possible.
>Increased collision risk to cyclists and vulnerable road users Are Uber drivers more likely to hit people than non Uber drivers? If you control for the population utilization of the roads, does this have a measurable affect?
>Abuse of contract law by preventing independent rate setting and concealing negotiable information You have a point there, but personally I disagree that these should be required by law in the first place.
>Artificially depressed prices fueled by venture capital in order to create a monopoly and capitalize later Well its doing a pretty bad job if the goal is to create monopolies. For most tech companies, they have a reasonable amount of competitors given the chicken-and-egg situation they need to solve. Prices are artificially depressed, not going to lie, but a lot of prices are artificially depressed to make them usable by the masses, and its all the better for it.
This happens naturally. From a previous calculation I did, I estimate that a hybrid Prius allows a full-time rideshare driver to gross more than $500 each month than a typical ICE sedan. The economics of more efficient vehicles biases drivers to get more efficient vehicles with fewer externalities. This is why Priuses and other hybrid cars are the most common vehicles used by rideshare drivers.