That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But I’m surprised the study gets so much press because some guy published something on his personal website.
I bet city officials in most places don't like ride-hailing companies, too, so they would gladly link to something like this, for the same reason.
Maybe every other reader would look at it and say: "Hey, this has no data, and the author's position produces an obvious conflict of interests". But the headlines, without this notice, would already be in many places, and look like a more or less established fact. All publicity is good publicity, you know.
Why do you think limited-supply medallion systems existed in the first place? Come on this is just classic "I forgot why these regulations existed and now a 100 year old problem is being recreated"
A form of limited licensing for ride-hailing companies can exist without any of the inputs from the taxicab lobby and work out really well.
Because there is an ideological (i.e. irrational) component to some objections. It's true.
>Why do you think limited-supply medallion systems existed in the first place
Taxi lobby pressuring municipal governments? I cannot imagine you using the past system as an example of a well-run program. There was never a good reason to limit the number of taxicabs on the streets. There were good reasons for some regulations, such as driver registration, transparent pricing, vehicle standards, but not regulations around limiting number of vehicles.
>"I forgot why these regulations existed and now a 100 year old problem is being recreated"
There is no new problem recreated. Your argument went away when EVERYONE could afford a car and clogged the streets anyway. In the present day, any transportation option that incentivizes people not to own a car is good.
Are companies offering to pay you to drive people around, with little barrier to entry, in a tough economy where it's getting increasingly difficult to afford living in urban centers, not also an incentive to own a car?
More so, since the problem isn't so much about car ownership, but rather about the number of cars actually on the road at any given time: are these companies not also creating additional incentive for many existing car owners to drive their cars more in the hopes of earning extra cash? Because even when they're not actively giving rides, many of these drivers are still going to be driving around waiting for their next client. Then we have to take into account the fact that the shifts these drivers can potentially work are much longer than the amount of time an average driver would normally stay on the road for.
Incentives in a complex system are not an easy clear-cut thing to figure out, so it shouldn't be surprising that the incentives in one direction might actually outweigh and completely counteract the intended incentives of a plan in the opposite direction. Not saying that's actually the case here, but it's far from an impossibility, and it wouldn't require any malevolent bias to happen.
You'd think so, but Uber drivers aren't exactly rolling in money. In fact, if they aren't smart about it (i.e. if they don't know how to pick their routes, their customers, and opportune times where 'surge pricing' is in effect), they'll lose money from fuel costs + wear and tear. Seriously, if you think it's easy to make money driving Uber, try it.
My buddy is a truck mechanic and he sees it all the time. Lots of truckers now are independent contractors who own the truck. Some of those guys will spend as little as possible on a truck, get a couple gigs make some "decent" money. Inevitably they'll go in for maintenance and repairs and get hit with a $15,000 repair bill (or more, there is no upper bound) and watch all their profits evaporate.
>More so, since the problem isn't so much about car ownership, but rather about the number of cars actually on the road at any given time
That's a problem today in major urban centers. Do you know what people do? They take mass transit. I make that decision all the time, and sometimes it's just not worth to grab a cab or an uber because I know it's going to get stuck in traffic and a trip that should take 10 minutes, will take 50 minutes - even when work is willing to pay for my transit.
In a world with unlimited taxi/ride-sharing licenses, an equilibrium will be established, and price will fall. There is no downside. The current medallion system is there to protect capital investment of medallion owners and (to a lesser extent) the income of operators (thought, if they are contractors they make no money anyway).
I'm not sure I agree. If I drive a car to work, it sits in a parking garage all the rest of the day. If I take a Lyft, it continues to roam the streets waiting for the next fare. Any rideshare (or taxi, for that matter) that is not actively hired is a car that would not otherwise have been out on the road. I don't think they're currently numerous enough to make a huge difference, at least where I live (outside L.A.), but the difference definitely isn't on the side of less traffic.
I'm all for transportation options (and don't forget housing options!) that incentivize people not to own cars, but replacing my car with another car that has to drive a bit farther doesn't get cars off the road.
I argued this in another post, but this is a pipe dream of driverless car aficionados. Your car is never going to be able to compete with fleets. The base operating cost of a driverless car is fuel+maintenance and fleets will always be able to underprice you due to economies of scale. In essence, you will lose money every time you rent out your car. This is also a limiting factor for fleets as well. Too many cars will impact fleet revenues too because if they can't make up fuel and maintenance costs they will also have a operating loss.
Even in the world where this somehow doesn't happen, what's wrong with deploying your capital? If the streets get clogged (like they are today in major municipal centers), people will opt to for mass public transit until some sort of equilibrium is reached (like it does today). When I'm in Hong Kong or New York, sometimes I opt for subways instead of taxis or uber because it may take uber forever to fight through traffic to my destination.
New York implemented a medallion system because Manhattan is a long, narrow island with high travel demand. Commuters, shoppers etc. do own cars and clog streets during the peak hours, but commuters and shoppers also park their cars while they're off doing their jobs and errands; taxis are constantly driving for fares.
Were medallion prices high? Sure. But that doesn't mean a race to the bottom to provide a cornucopia of taxi services doesn't have negative externalities.
I'm sure it was well intentioned ... initially. And then it became a boondoggle that protected the invested capital of medallion owners.
>Commuters, shoppers etc. do own cars and clog streets during the peak hours, but commuters and shoppers also park their cars while they're off doing their jobs and errands; taxis are constantly driving for fares.
OK. But they aren't just driving around. They are moving people meaning there is a public good being served. I have no doubt there will be traffic LIKE THERE IS TODAY and customers will price that in. If traffic gets too terrible, more people will move to mass public transit LIKE THEY DO TODAY. When I'm in New York or Hong Kong, I'd love to be able to cab or uber it everywhere but I don't because many times a 10 minute trip will take an hour - so I opt for subway in many cases. An equilibrium which balances price, convenience, time, etc. will be established - so don't fight it, let it establish itself.
I didn't even talk about costs. Low density transit options like Taxis/Ubers are pricey compared to high density transit options liks buses and subways - people will opt for those just for price alone. You see that with the daily commute to work where even affluent people will take the subway instead of cabbing it. I did that because Uber is great for going to a bar on a Friday night, but it sucks to pay $30/day on a round-trip to work ... and subways are faster during rush hour.
>Were medallion prices high? Sure.
Talk about an understatement.
An equilibrium for local passenger travel might be established. Which does a whole lotta nothing for the emergency vehicles, the delivery vehicles, the commuter and local and intercity buses, etc., all of which have to share the same roads.
In fact, average bus speeds citywide in New York have declined due to increased traffic, which drives more people to Ubers instead of buses, which increases traffic. Unpriced traffic is a classic tragedy of the commons.
The second only covers state highways, of which most of the roads in New York City, especially Manhattan, are not.
The third is a flat fee; to get the most value out of it, it actually incentivizes driving more.
None of this is an actual price on traffic; you pay the same rate whether or not you do all your traveling on lightly trafficked country roads, or bumper to bumper city streets. In DC, for example, they started charging tolls to maintain a constant speed of 55MPH, and it turns out the market clearing price could go as high as $40. https://ggwash.org/view/65796/the-new-i-66-tolls-offer-great...
IMO gas tax is the best we can do. There not that many teslas, at least not yet.
It scales proportionally with miles driven. It’s roughly proportional to vehicle size. It even scales with traffic intensity, cars consume more fuel per mile in cities. It’s inexpensive to manage. Best of all, unlike direct traffic tax, gas tax is anonymous, no need to track who went where, all people will eventually go to a gas pump, except people living near a state border but that’s IMO acceptable losses.
I think that’s one of the reasons why fuel costs 2-3 times more here in Europe compared to US, and on average we have better public transportation.
For this reason US states have started experimenting with taxing VMT. You don't actually need to track mileage; just measure the odometer at the end of the month.
As far as tracking concerns, Manhattan is an island connected via bridges and tunnels; all you need to do traffic pricing is to toll the crossings.
Without some kind of limit/pricing on the public good that is city streets, what in particular is to stop Cab Company X from saturating the roads with cabs in a brute force attempt to capture a higher proportion of the ridership (and incidentally ballooning road wear & travel times to the detriment of everyone else)?
Same kind of problem as people anticipate with driverless cars (e.g. while I go in to shop at this store, my car circles the block for the next hour waiting for me). City streets are a "common good" that is largely unpriced.
It's a brute force solution with obvious shortcomings, to be sure.
They can, but so what? The sheer number of cabs it would take to 'saturate the roads' means enormous amount of upfront capital. But that also means cheap prices (essentially 0 profitability) - and isn't that what we want?
Leaving that aside, if the roads get clogged to the extent that service is compromised, people will do what they do today, and that is, rely on mass public transit (LIKE THEY DO TODAY). If I'm in New York or Hong Kong, sometimes I'd rather take the subway than have my taxi or uber fight traffic.
There are no issues here.
>while I go in to shop at this store, my car circles the block for the next hour waiting for me)
I heard that argued before, and I say this: never going to happen. That's a pipe dream of driverless car aficionados.
Your car is never going to be able to compete with a fleet because the base operating cost of a driverless taxi is going to be fuel cost + maintenance and fleets will always be able to underprice you due to economies of scale. In essence, if you rent out your car, you will lose money because you will, at the very least, have to contend with the wear and tear.
But even if you just want the car to 'wait' by circling the block (instead of 'working' while it waits for you) ... it's not cheap to have the car circle the block for an hour. 1 hour of driving is going to cost you in fuel. It's going to put wear and tear on your car. You'll risk collision and traffic tickets. It may not be worth it to do that all the time. HAVING SAID THAT, once in a while, maybe you want to take that hit, and isn't it nice to have the option to do that? Maybe you're running late for your flight, and you want to quickly run in to the store to pick something up - take the hit and the risk.
There is no free lunch but options are good.
Why do you think Uber and Lyft exist in the first place?
now they cause a different inefficiency.
but without reinventing the wheel, medallions can probably be reimplemented in a better way. instead of turning the drivers into debt serfs, Uber and Lyft can buy all the medallions until the municipality stops issuing them.
it is an anti-spam prevention, anti congestion in this case. it'll also likely force the ride hailing companies to likely be even more discerning about their drivers
the negative? well yes the egalitarian side job that "anybody" can do is probably going away now. fares may also go up. this was inevitable.
But I still think their origin can be traced to numerous problems with taxi services, definitely including the false economy of medallions. But taxi companies in the US have been ridiculously poor providers of service. Prior to Uber/Lyft, I had numerous problems with taxis, e.g. even scheduling them 24 hours ahead, they would show up late, resulting in being late to work or (nearly) missed flights; the dispatchers would lie about drivers accepting credit cards; etc. etc..
> fares may also go up. this was inevitable.
Right now Uber/Lyft are subsidising fares. Once they've achieved market dominance, they will surely raise rates.
https://steps.ucdavis.edu/new-research-ride-hailing-impacts-...
"Net vehicle miles traveled (VMT) changes are unknown."
"While this data provides initial insights into the travel behavior changes associated with ridehailing, it is still limited in that it does not provide a complete picture of individual travelers’ trip generating activities, the modes they used before ride-hailing services, and the potentially new patterns of behavior that have since emerged."
Meanwhile, here is coverage of this study: "Lyft, Uber increase traffic 180 percent in major cities, says report" https://sf.curbed.com/2018/7/27/17622178/uber-lyft-cause-tra...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46212892_On-street_...
Sure, more rigor is nice but it's not necessary to get people to start looking at a problem.
I don't think someone needs to be an authority to raise legitimate concerns. That shouldn't be a requirement because otherwise we run into "appeal to authority" types of fallacies.
It does make an interesting argument that ride sharing makes transportation by car available to a wider audience (walking, bike, public transportation) and that is why it is causing congestion. Those people would have just suffered through it or not moved to a city that required them to do those things in the first place before ride sharing.
I found this statement funny though:
> There’s no way that ride hailing could move people around as efficiently as mass transit.
Efficiency is subjective to the actual metric. Clearly the metrics people actually care about (time and convenience most likely) are not being addressed; otherwise, they would be using public transportation more.
I personally drive to work despite being walking distance to Caltrain on both ends because it takes me 25 minutes door to door. If I take public transportation it is 60-90 minutes. Plus my time options are extremely limited. No train options past 7:30 AM. Plus it's more expensive than the gas, wear, and tear.
The Embarcadero in SF was turned into a surface road after the Loma Prieta earthquake permanently damaged it: http://www.preservenet.com/freeways/FreewaysEmbarcadero.html
Chonggyecheon, Seoul was restored as a stream after the highway capping it was demolished: https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2017/09/14/braess-paradox...
We have to get off of cars and empty seats. Apps pushing cars and pushing ride sharing are pushing laziness and congestion.
Why kid ourselves into thinking that Uber and Lyft are fixing the car traffic problem and climate change?
Imagine for a second all these cars as chairs. Imagine sitting in your chair with a wheel attached then getting onto a freeway and propelling forward. All these people in chairs with empty chairs in their walled off metal combustion tank. We need to stop all this empty chair insanity and use more efficient ways to move people sitting down going from place to place.
Want to combat obesity? Fight climate change? Prevent accidents? Motor deaths? Depression and isolation? Do away with cars.
We should be encouraging ride sharing and working to eliminate parking; parking requirements make cities unwalkable thus making public transit ineffective.
Ride sharing makes congestion worse because people are less likely to use mass transit for the route.
In LA the biggest difficulty facing new dense/affordable construction is the number car spaces required per apartment. http://www.accessmagazine.org/spring-2014/parking-requiremen...
I think it's time to give up on this dream.
In a sprawled out city like Los Angeles, the suburbs that people live in, are too far away from the job centers. It's even too far away from a supermarket, or the shopping mall.
Mass transit is a failure when it takes 2 hours to get to your destination, when it is just 15 miles away. Where you may have to walk to a bus stop to catch your bus, and then transfer to a light rail line. And then, the light rail drops you off, 4 miles away from where you need to be.
It's easier to just sit in your car, stuck in traffic. At least you have air conditioning in the hot sun. You can listen to your own music. And you won't be in danger of being violently attacked, robbed, or physically assaulted.
But I think there can be a few solutions to the last mile problem.
1. Dockless bicycles. I don't think this can work in America, the way it worked in China. The bicycles are too massive, and can get crammed up on the sidewalk, at some destination point.
2. Dockless electric scooters. I think this can actually work in America. They are small enough, that several units take the same amount of space as a single bicycle.
3. Uber to drive you the last few miles. A taxi service won't pick you up. And it might not even be profitable for an Uber driver to pick you up. But at least this is an option.
4. Fully electric and autonomous robotic vehicles that will drive you from point to point. This has to be the ultimate dream, and can actually be the real solution to the mass transit problem.
Anecdotally, yes.
In the time that I drove for Uber, I met a number of people who gave up their cars because Ubering was cheaper than having a car.
To me, that makes sense because every time I move from a small city to a large city, the first thing I do is sell my cars. Then when I move from a big city to a small town, I end up buying new cars again.
Though I haven't lived in a large city since Uber became widespread, my family managed just fine with public transit, Zipcars, and taxis.