Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tiktaalik | Hacker News Reader

The recent realization by cities that these services are making traffic worse will induce more regulation which will make these services even less viable than they already are.

View on HN

As rides get more expensive or as these companies run lower on cash to burn; I suspect we'll eventually get back to the traffic reduction use case; an easy way to make a buck driving a route you're otherwise already taking or just a few miles from your house.

I'm not sure that actual ride-sharing like that can out-compete public transit, from the point of the view of the customer.

I heard on the news yesterday that 13% of all traffic in San Francisco is ride sharing vehicles, and that at any given time there are approximately 5700 ridesharing vehicles cruising around the city. Pretty stunning if you think about it.

It used to be a huge portion of SF traffic was people circling around looking for parking. The ride-share traffic is an improvement.

More cars equals more pressure to improve transit and introduce congestion taxes, two things that Uber et. al. are fighting against.

It may as well be trying to hold back the sea. They can do this in the short-term, but not forever.

Both companies are in favor of congestion pricing [1]. It reduces the incentives to drive private vehicles into the area and use ridesharing (and shared modes like Pool/Shared) instead.

ninjaedit: I'm in favor of this putting pressure on public transit for sure though. In SF its abhorrent how late/delayed MUNI can be...

[1] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/8/6/20757593/uber-lyft-tr...

Do they make traffic worse? I think you can only compare them to people owning and driving their own car, which has to be parked all day when not in use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com