We have that. It's called Uber pool/Lyft Line. I argue with people on my city's reddit about this. Ad hoc point to point transit is the future but they want to spend billions on rail that won't be operational for decades.
In big cities where congestion is a problem, you have to look at space efficiency. Cars—including Uber & Lyft—are extremely inefficient in terms of the amount of space required to move a person from one place to another. In a big existing city, it's impossible to add traffic capacity, the roads just can't get wider. The only way to increase capacity is by using more space efficient forms of getting around. Buses, trains, bicycles, scooters, and foot traffic are space efficient. Uber and Lyft are not.
Uber and Lyft are also not economical for a lot of people which is one of the other big reasons you don't see them taking off in many places.
At least in my city we don't need to go from 100 cars -> 1 train to solve the issue. Going from 3 solo drivers -> 1 Uber/Lyft will cut congestion to 1/3-1/2. That's enough to alleviate the worst traffic.
>Uber and Lyft are also not economical for a lot of people which is one of the other big reasons you don't see them taking off in many places.
The shared services are pretty comparable to what public transport costs in my city. A single bus/train trip costs ~$5 when taking all taxes/fares into account. Most journeys from point A to B require a transfer so the cost is more like $10. $10 in a Uber/Lyft shared ride gets you pretty far.
Even if it nets out to be more expensive it's at least something that people will use. The current riders are mostly those too poor to own a car and have no other choice.
This isn't true. Even if you assume every Uber Pool ride is full, you aren't achieving anywhere near a 50% drop in congestion. Legs where there are 3 passengers are offset by legs where the driver is alone.
> The shared services are pretty comparable to what public transport costs in my city. A single bus/train trip costs ~$5 when taking all taxes/fares into account. Most journeys from point A to B require a transfer so the cost is more like $10. $10 in a Uber/Lyft shared ride gets you pretty far.
I have no idea where you live, but your numbers seem way off. Pretty much everywhere I've lived, bus/ subway/ BART pricing is way cheaper than Uber. I can get an in-town day pass for $3.50 and can to the next town 20 miles away for less than $5. In the California Bay Area, you can take BART from one end of the line to the other for under $8. Uber's fare estimate for that same route is over $50. Oakland to SF? $3.70 versus $26. There is no single route were the prices are remotely close.
> Even if it nets out to be more expensive it's at least something that people will use. The current riders are mostly those too poor to own a car and have no other choice.
My original point here was that in Ecuador, bus service does work and it's crap in the US.
This is just quibbling about exact numbers. You don't address the main point that we don't need the space efficiency of trains.
> Pretty much everywhere I've lived, bus/ subway/ BART pricing is way cheaper than Uber. I can get an in-town day pass for $3.50 and can to the next town 20 miles away for less than $5
BART's farebox recovery rate is 2/3 so up those by 50% to get a better idea of actual cost.
And yes, long trips on the train are likely cheaper than Uber. But most trips aren't that. At least, in my city they aren't. If you look at something in the 3-4 mile range the price of mass transit and shared Uber/Lyfts are pretty close.
I gave your hand-wavy explanation of how Uber reduces congestion more credit than it deserves. Most evidence suggest that Uber actually increases congestion, not the reverse.
> And yes, long trips on the train are likely cheaper than Uber. But most trips aren't that.
There is no trip by Uber which is less than twice as expensive than BART or 3 times as expensive as a bus here in Oregon. A short hop on BART is about $2.00 versus the $5.80 base rate on Uber. If your Uber gets stuck in traffic which is common in the Bay, the math gets even worse.
And again, this is in a country with rather mediocre public transportation options. Other countries have vastly better funded and run public transportation which is even more cost effective.
Ok, well let me know if you want to actually address the point.
>There is no trip by Uber which is less than twice as expensive than BART or 3 times as expensive as a bus here in Oregon. A short hop on BART is about $2.00 versus the $5.80 base rate on Uber. If your Uber gets stuck in traffic which is common in the Bay, the math gets even worse.
(1) The BART may be different than my city
(2) You're looking at the fare and not the actual cost. What's the actual cost of providing those short trips?
(3) You're not looking at the cost to develop new service. What would the actual cost be of creating a new line in the heart of the city?
I don't presume to know the right answer to this question, but it seems unlikely that Uber/Lyft will continue to exist in their current form indefinitely. Rail, on the other hand, appears to be a proven solution in many large cities.
There's just not the density to support rail at a level to make the system fast an reliable. To make it work you need trains every ~10 minutes or so and enough coverage where people only have one transfer. Otherwise, your commute time becomes too variable based on your luck missing the connection and it becomes too long on average because of transfers. The infrastructure to create that coverage is extremely expensive and only makes sense if you can keep the trains mostly full. It's also sometimes flat out impossible because if you add stops to increase coverage you get slower travel times due to increased stoppage and loading time.
In short, to make a rail system work you need ~100 people going from point A to point B at any given time. For an Uber/Lyft style system to work you only need ~10.
We wanted to visit another city, and ended up in a kinda bus depot except it was filled with cars. One lane per destination. We paid, got in the first car in "our" lane, and when the car was full the driver headed off.
It was cheap (in local terms) and flexible. Waiting time was reasonable, and the driver stopped when people wanted off.
Meanwhile back here in Norway they're talking about expanding the railroads around the capital. The projected cost is just insane, and I'm 100% confident the estimates are not at all realistic due to difficult terrain, and politicians not being sure about exact placement of certain track segments yet. Should it go through town, or on the outside?
Capacity is certainly a strong point for rail though.
Even if their model is not profitable, public transportation in my city is subsidized to the tune of half a billion a year. So there's plenty of room for subsidizing.
And even if we end up spending more money it's worth it for a system that people actually want to use. With a viable alternative to car ownership more people will give up their cars and use public transport. That will spur demand and maybe make a train system justifiable in the future.