This article is adapted from one published at RIDE Solutions.
Uber and Lyft aren’t in Roanoke yet, but they’re now, temporarily, legal in Virginia.
For cities like mine, where Uber and Lyft will eventually arrive, it may be time to ask what these companies bring to the sustainable transportation table? As it turns out, it may not be much.
TDM Takeaway Taxis or “for-hire” services like Uber and Lyft are single components that may eventually be worked into a city’s comprehensive TDM plan.
By now you’re probably familiar with some of the newest efforts to come out of the growing sharing economy. Uber and Lyft are the mostly widely recognized example of sharing-economy services that refer to themselves as ridesharing programs – using mobile apps to connect people to empty seats in automobiles.
(Defining themselves as “ridesharing services” may be misleading and, ultimately, damaging to programs like Roanoke’s RIDE Solutions that have traditionally fallen under that label. See here for more about how these sharing-economy companies are claiming to be entities that, in several states, including Virginia, by law they are not.)
Do these services – and let’s just call them “for-hire services” for now – have an impact on traffic congestion and transportation demand? Well, it’s unclear, and a recent study by Susan Shaheen and fellow authors (PDF) at UC Berkeley only goes a little way to teasing the truth out.
On the one hand, the study shows that for-hire trips like this are peeling away folks who might have taken the bus, walked, or biked. Indeed, 49 percent of for-hire users would have taken an alternative mode or not taken the trip at all.
Since these for-hire trips are not incidental, but rather induced, it may be that these services are actually adding trips – and thus congestion and demand – to the transportation system rather than removing them.
In the statistics cited above, a quarter of Uber users were previously bus riders, which is a particularly worrying number both in terms of congestion as well as the sustainability of local transit services.
However, the other half of for-hire users would have taken a taxi anyway, and the same study shows that the for-hire services arrive twice as fast as traditional taxis. It’s unclear how this compares in terms of trip distance and miles traveled before arrival, but it might have a positive impact on congestion. Further, if Uber vehicles tend to get better gas mileage or are cleaner burning than taxis, along with being a shorter wait, the shift to Uber could have a positive air quality impact. I am not entirely sure how the for-hire service rates compare to the highly-regulated taxi industry, but if they’re anywhere close, this could be a boon:
- for previous taxi users
- for crowded downtown cores, and
- for putting some major competitive pressure on taxi services to improve their offerings.
It is in this latter area, in fact, that I think for-hire services have the greatest potential in our region – not from a transportation demand management perspective, but from an improved mobility perspective.
Aside from removing trips from the road, the lack of transit service and access to safe bike or pedestrian options means that many people have no choice but to drive to where they need to go, and for certain sectors of our population that can be a huge barrier. The elderly, the disabled, folks who have lost their license or are not able to attain one, and those with unreliable transportation – all these people already have limited or no access to jobs, medical facilities, or other necessities because they can’t drive and must rely on neighbors, friends, or taxis to get around.
Taking a taxi, in particular, might be an expensive, time-consuming way to get to the grocery store or doctor’s appointment – but if Uber and Lyft come to the region in a big way, it could open up a range of mobility options provided by private individuals that can drastically improve the quality of life for these folks with limited means. It may not take trips off the road, but the trips they make could be ones sorely needed by many of our region’s most vulnerable citizens.