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Comment by subsubzero | Hacker News Reader

What people are not talking about is how much congestion these services bring to city streets. For San Francisco traffic congestion increased by 60% between 2010-2016[1] and Lyft/Uber contributed to half of that. That is very bad as more traffic leads to more traffic accidents, more fatalities and pedestrians getting hit. In addition lets not forget the heavy toll on the environment with air pollution and its myriad effects on the area. All of this for workers making barely minimum wage[2]. Given the air quality in the bay area right now due to the fires this couldn't have come at a better time.

[1] - https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/8/18535627/uber-lyft-sf-traf...

[2] - https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-driver-w...

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If Muni was any good, people wouldn't have used ridesharing. Ridesharing costs a bit more. This just shows that public transit in SF is so bad that people would rather pay more money for a taxi.

I agree about muni being bad, having took it for a while ago its really horrible. But in general people complain about SF and all of its public services, but do nothing about the clowns running the city/transit systems. Public transportation can work and work well, look to Europe for a blueprint. If you don't like the way the city and its services are run, vote!

I don't think modern car exhaust emissions are a significant factor when you have a bunch of forest fire smoke floating around. The traffic concerns are much more credible, but can the government step up on public transportation to fill the inevitable gaps?

You might want to consider doing some research before just mindlessly dismissing what other people say.

“Mobile sources of air pollution from cars, trucks, ships, emissions from construction equipment, and tire and brake wear on roadways are the biggest root cause of poor air quality in the city, and addressing these should result in positive air quality trends.”

https://sfgov.org/scorecards/environment/days-epa-air-qualit...

That is grossly misleading because one of those things is very much not like the others.

Ships measure fuel in tons per hour. It only takes a few hundred transport ships to put out as much pollution as every car on the planet and there are hundreds of thousands of them with their collective output dwarfing cars and trucks combined by several orders of magnitude.

If we really wanted to cut transportation pollution fast, we'd internationally mandate turbosails on all transport ships as current models cut fuel consumption by 25% or more.

Stepping aside from ships, big rigs are the overwhelmingly biggest NOx contributors (even beating out industrial and power plants).

Stepping back though, transportation in ALL its forms still only contributes around 1/4 of the US greenhouse emissions.

What’s misleading about it? We are talking about the health effects on people living in cities in California, not about cargo ships burning dirty fuel in the middle of the ocean or general global greenhouse gas emissions. It is a true statement that vehicle traffic is a major source of harmful pollution in US cities.

When there is a forest fire going on? If your AQI is at 800 because a forest fire is raging nearby, driving less isn't going to change that number at all. You simply have bigger problems than auto exhaust at that point.

Do you imagine that there is some hard limit beyond which adding more pollution won’t make any difference to someone’s health? Or is the relationship more linear, where every additional particle inhaled will cause more damage?

If you don’t get rid of the forest fire, you are screwed either way. Driving less maybe takes you from 60 to 30, it won’t have any impact at 800. Driving less is a good thing, it’s just not something that is going to help with forest fire pollution.

Think about the difference between peeing or not into a clear body of water and a muddy swamp. Either way, you don’t want to drink from the muddy swamp.

> but can the government step up on public transportation to fill the inevitable gaps?

I think it's more of a matter of "will" vs "can"

I'm always perplexed when people bring this issue up but never discuss the contribution to congestion by people driving their own cars.

Yes, you can say that increased congestion from single occupancy vehicles leads to a tragedy of the commons for those on buses. This can be addressed by making bus only lanes (and they should be bus only lanes, not bus and taxi lanes)

For the rest of the congestion, there's not much difference between rideshare vehicles and private vehicles. Rideshare vehicles might be empty while looking for passengers (net positive contribution to congestion), but also provide pooling (net negative contribution). Private vehicles also circle blocks looking for parking spaces (net positive contribution).

> For San Francisco traffic congestion increased by 60% between 2010-2016[1]

It's hard to pin this solely on ridesharing though. There have been no lack of road construction projects in the last decade. More recently, the Van Ness work has been an absolute clusterfuck for San Francisco traffic.

I don't think its perplexing at all, the larger the increase of ride sharing services the lower the usage of public transportation[1]. Alot of the SF traffic is not people commuting in from other cites and taking Uber/Lyft to do so. These people by and large take caltrain/muni/corporate shuttles. People that drive in using their own cars would not use lyft/uber due to cost of these services. The problem with lower public transit numbers is its starving services that are essential to lower income folks and are a greener alternative to thousands of ride hailing drivers from out of the area driving into urban areas clogging the streets.

[1] - https://sf.curbed.com/2019/1/23/18194612/lyft-uber-tnc-sfmta...

> the larger the increase of ride sharing services the lower the usage of public transportation

so does private car ownership, private bike ownership and bikesharing.

Private car ownership externalities overlap greatly with ridesharing. The solution here is congestion pricing for all vehicles except public transportation. You tax what you want less of and what causes the most wear on the systems that need to be maintained.

Humans are free to choose the systems that work best for their needs. If we want to people to use public transportation, the solution to that is to make public transportation better than the alternatives, such as providing for bus only lanes and more routes.

> If we want to people to use public transportation, the solution to that is to make public transportation better than the alternatives

There's no better way to burn up al of your free time than by taking public transportation. I've never had the balls to pull out my laptop to try to get some work done...

Maybe if public transit was better funded and managed, more people could get to their jobs without having to pay for a car or a rideshare, saving costs. And more people could have jobs working for the transit agency. And in aggregate you have more employed people with lower daily costs, leading, ultimately, to fewer people out there who need to steal laptops in order to get by.

I agree it could be improved, but it can only approach the minimum, which is somewhere near one small car per person. It's an absolutely massive chicken and egg problem. I doubt many people would be interested even if you told them their commute time would only double.

Even if you had private transportation to nearby public transportation hubs with rides that went greater distances with no/few stops, as a short term solution (similar to private FANG shuttles), you still have a distribution problem on the other side.

Within the city, it's not like people who already own cars instead use rideshare apps; it's that for anyone in the city who might have used public transportation, a portion have opted for the rideshare apps. And that leads to the effects parent et al are talking about: increased congestion and all its side effects.

Bike use and bike sharing, while decreasing public transit use, have similar positive benefits to public transit use such as reduced congestion, reduced pollution, etc.

I've never seen a rideshare "pool" multiple riders. I'm sure it does happen, but it seems pretty rare from where I am.

It happened without fail in San Francisco.

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