
Lyft says nearly 250K of its passengers ditched a personal car in 2017 - shafyy
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/16/lyft-says-nearly-250k-of-its-passengers-ditched-a-personal-car-in-2017/
======
panda888888
It's part of the reason I haven't bought a car. I'm in my mid 20s and didn't
get my license in high school because insurance would have been too expensive
(my parents wanted me to pay for it).

I think driving is a good life skill so I got my license in my early 20s, but
I still have zero desire to own a car.

That said, I live in Seattle, where there is good public transportation.

Here are my numbers:

Parking (I work downtown): $250/month * 12 months = $3000

Parking spot at my apartment complex, 5 miles from city center: $130/month *
12 months = $1560

Gas: $100/month * 12 months = $1200

Car registration fees in Seattle: ~$400/year

Insurance for a 25 year old in Seattle: ~$1500 (It might actually be higher?)

Maintenance: we'll say $1000

So the total cost for me would be ~$8660+ per year. And that's excluding the
cost of the car!

With a 5 mile commute, public transit 3 days a week plus Uber/Lyft 4 days a
week is cheaper, hands down. Uber/Lyft 7 days a week cuts it closer but is
still cheaper.

So yeah, it depends on where you live.

~~~
d4mi3n
I'm in a similar situation, but from what I gather lifestyle factors heavily
into the "do I need/want a car" equation. Kids, for example, usually mandate a
car.

Outdoor activities or any hobby that requires you haul around a lot of gear
can also make having your own transportation a lot more appealing.

~~~
sebleon
> Outdoor Activities

Renting a car (via Getaround, Zipar) on weekends can be cost effective

~~~
jgust
I don't find Zipcar all that affordable except for the very shortest of trips
(read: < 3 hours). Anything over that and you're better off renting a vehicle
for the day through traditional routes.

~~~
yeukhon
Same experience. I can rent for $100 for the full day. Problem is usually I
have to pick up the car from the airport since local garages office hours are
limited. There is very few available on the weekend.

~~~
kazinator
That's crazy expensive. I rent for around $30-$40 (Canadian dollars). Booking
several weeks in advance, mind you. I often rent over Saturday night to Sunday
morning. The near by place doesn't open until 9:00 on Sunday for returns, so I
rent at 9:00 on Saturday even though they are open at 8:00 already, so I can
return it within the 24 hours. During certain peak season times, they about
double the rate. At those times, I favor the co-op in which I have a
membership.

~~~
yeukhon
Depends. I did take one from Avis roughly $70 for a whole day with some fee.
But not all the time and again depends. I have AAA though. Just to be clear,
for zipcar, one full day can be super expensive. Deals like $85 a day is
seasonal (like Labor Day).

------
starik36
I think the biggest impact is going to be felt with current generations of 18
year olds. My kid (about to be 18) has no interest in getting a driver's
license and neither are any of his friends. He's happy to be taking Uber and
Lyft anywhere he goes. And between the cost of the vehicle and insurance, it's
cheaper for me as well.

When I was 16, I couldn't wait to get a car.

~~~
bluedino
>> He's happy to be taking Uber and Lyft anywhere he goes.

What do kids who don't have any money do for a ride?

~~~
smileysteve
They're certainly not driving cars; A car has high upfront costs in purchasing
and insurance. High usage costs in gas, and maintenance. High volatility in
maintenance and accidents. And high downtime in times to have a shop fix it
correctly.

~~~
romwell
For my first car (2011), I was paid $1500 out of pocket, about $100/month in
loan for 2 years, $40/month in insurance and about $80/month in gas, including
out-of-town road trips and driving to airports 200 miles away.

That was pre-Uber, but last time I took an Uber in that town, it was about $10
one way for "short" distances (e.g. 4 miles to go to a grocery store - things
are spread out in TX).

The car never had a high maintenance downtime (and only one fender-bender in
the 7 years of ownership), and I can't account for maintenance; think it'd be
under $80/month.

So we have about $300/month for car ownership, or about 10-15 Uber
roundtrips/month. I'd say, there's no clear-cut conclusion here.

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
Not sure why so many people here are almost virtue signaling the act of not
owning a drivers license.

I agree—It's perfectly okay to not own a car if it doesn't make sense to your
life situation.

That being said, the ability to drive is nevertheless a useful skill and asset
and at least in the United States, does not have a very high barrier to entry
(for better or worse).

There is so much in the United States that a car gives you access to (most
National Parks or wilderness in general are not accessible by public
transport). And I don't see human-driven cars disappearing from our world for
the next 20–30 years at least.

~~~
ghaff
It sort of blows my mind. I get that people have different interests and
hobbies but the idea that people would live in San Francisco or Seattle and be
"I'm fine with mostly just hanging around the city and looking at the
mountains from here" is a bit hard for me to digest.

And, as I said in another comment, renting a car has frequently been the
obvious approach to get to places I need to get to on business trips.

~~~
megy
So instead buy a car and add to pollution, thus helping to destroy the nature
you covet so much? And that makes sense to you?

~~~
rimliu
Yes, because that Lyft car you are using to get around does not pollute a bit.

~~~
jsemrau
Car companies assume that by 2030 they sell half the cars

------
brndnmtthws
Automobile ownership is dumb, but ridesharing isn't the answer either. Cities
need to invest in public infrastructure, especially fast efficient public
transit. People should also rediscover the joy of human power (walk, bike,
run).

~~~
vlozko
That's the bubble mentality of someone who lives in the city and/or doesn't
have a family. How about you try hauling a baby in a stroller, diaper bag, and
two other kids to a metro train (if you're so lucky to have one close) and
then onto a bus. Ride sharing doesn't solve those problems, either, especially
since you'd be in need of carseats. So no, automobile ownership is not dumb.
There's plenty of use cases where it's the obvious solution.

~~~
kasey_junk
That is a fairly normal and commonly solved problem all over the United
States. Lots and lots of people who can't afford to own cars deal with this
and worst as a matter of course.

Making life easier for people who choose to not own cars, has positive impact
for those who can't own cars (and not to even begin on reducing the negative
externalities).

For the record, I own a car but also frequently hauled a baby stroller and a
diaper bag to the metro train (though only for one kid). The secret was to
have a stroller that was geared for walking not the SUV sized strollers so
popular with the SUV set.

~~~
vlozko
I did specify being close to the city being a factor in how doable it is to go
without a car. And even then, there are limiting factors that make car
ownership worthwhile. Things like: 1\. Monthly Costo/BJs run (with family in
tow) 2\. Visiting family that's over an hour away and not along any rail/bus
line. 3\. You live in a pretty remote area.

Essentially, I'm saying that there are life choices and/or criteria met that
makes lack of car ownership feasible. But since so many Americans live in the
suburbs without easy access to public transportation, car ownership just makes
the best sense for some people.

~~~
phil21
> But since so many Americans live in the suburbs without easy access to
> public transportation, car ownership just makes the best sense for some
> people.

And I doubt many folks would have a problem with that, except for the fact
that car transportation is by far the most heavily subsidized lifestyles
around without even factoring environment or societal external costs. Add
suburbs to that and the people living the worst possible lifestyle for the
environment are being bailed out by the rest of the country who does not live
like that.

That's my major problem with car culture in the US. It's basically welfare for
the wealthiest of Americans.

------
coldcode
In SF I can believe it. In a large area like DFW the wait times for a ride are
too long to be practical. Also the question of cost is relevant, I drive a car
I have paid for in a city with reasonable insurance rates and no issues with
parking. Lyft or Uber would be impracticable here.

~~~
gorpomon
I have a family member in DFW who has really embraced Uber, and wait times for
the area are minimal, and they are around 20 miles from the Downtown area of
Dallas (very mid-cities). I never thought that Uber would catch in DFW, and
I'm really surprised to see how it's changed life for a few people I know
there.

Maybe it's been some time since you've tried Uber there, but I'd recommend
trying it again. Also my family members there now swear by it for trips to
either the DFW or Love Field airport.

~~~
dpiers
I have worked at Uber for 4 years, but I spent the first 22 years of my life
as a resident of Lewisville. It’s been amazing watching the transformation
from when I first started (No cars available) to now (ETA ~5 min) around my
parents’ house. The last time we were there, my wife dropped me off at a
coffee shop to get some work done while she did some errands, and when I was
done I got an Uber back home.

~~~
amyjess
I live in Far North Dallas and work in Plano. My experience is the same as
yours, just with Lyft instead of Uber.

------
robrenaud
> Lyft wants to make a point: Its services help lessen traffic

How can this be true? They'd need a very significant fraction of riders using
lyft line (the multi-passenger service) to make up for the the overhead in the
driver having to travel extra distance to pick someone up.

~~~
vidarh
Or people opting for public transport part of the distance. One thing these
services make convenient is to use them to get to/from train stations and the
like without worrying about parking etc., or being stuck without a ride on the
other end.

------
awwstn
From Lyft's report:

> We surveyed 30,000 passengers and 37,000 drivers in 52 major cities.

I suspect they may have done some generous extrapolation here...(e.g. "0.1% of
the 30,000 Lyft passengers we surveyed got rid of their cars for ridesharing,
so 0.1% of the U.S. population must have ditched cars for ridesharing")

~~~
clairity
you've thrown suspicion on the study without any reasoning behind it. unless
your population size is small, all studies extrapolate results. why do you
think it's incorrect?

for example, maybe the 52 cities they surveyed aren't representative of the
whole population (this can be true if they chose the 52 largest cities rather
than a random sampling of cities).

give your comment some meat to chew on.

~~~
hueving
Are you serious? Sampling Lyft riders for an life choice that makes them a
Lyft rider absolutely would not extrapolate to the US population.

It's like sampling people in an airport to get stats on how often everyone
flies.

~~~
clairity
yes. note that the article doesn't extrapolate anything to the US population,
that's something that @awwstn added in.

lyft, in the article, says 250K people on its platform have dropped car
ownership according to its survey. they extrapolate that total number from a
survey of a sample of it riders and drivers in 52 cities.

~~~
hueving
Ok, then the error is much less egregious but there is still a sampling error
I can see (at least based on my own usage pattern of Lyft).

As a user of Lyft who owns a car the odds of me being sampled by this survey
were significantly lower than the people that depend on Lyft daily.

It's the same problem with surveying people in an airport to determine how
often flyers fly. Heavy users are more likely to be oversampled because they
are in the airports more frequently.

So for Lyft to overcome this they would have needed to survey people in
population adjusted parts from each usage tier. Otherwise the 1% or whatever
that ride everyday are going to throw off the whole survey. Especially since
the most likely to answer surveys are frequent users.

~~~
clairity
that's definitely a possible sampling error but lyft doesn't seem to tell you
enough to know if they made that error. for example, if they only solicited
survey takers after a ride, your assertion would be true.

------
blakesterz
So there's something like 260+ million [1] vehicles registered here in 2015.
That 250k number seems like an impossibly high percentage of people that have
given up on owning a car because of ride sharing apps.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-
vehicle...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-
the-united-states-since-1990/)

~~~
ggg9990
Why is 1 in 1000 too high? I used to recommend that new San Francisco
residents keep a car if they could afford to. I no longer make that
recommendation. Even my suburban parents decided against a second car because
of Uber.

------
pxlpshr
My wife and I share my Jeep but I tried really hard to be carless in Austin,
TX. I even experimented with a variety of Segways (at the expense of many
jokes) and alternatives to a bike for the longer-hauls so that I'm not
drenched in sweat when I get to the office. [1]

I was totally fine when we lived downtown as it's becoming very walkable, but
it's pretty impractical when you live even a short distance from the core.
There are people that do it, we have decent running and bike trails, but it's
just not suitable for us. My wife and I are on different time schedules which
makes commuting together hard, and Austin lacks great public transportation
combined with terrible traffic which drives up the Uber/Lyft cost per ride.

We decided to buy a 2nd car again but this time a used EV (BMW i3) so that our
total cost of ownership is really low. Based on my napkin math and the deal we
got on the car, I suspect we'll break-even or better compared with using a
ride sharing service.

[1] Texas weather is also a thing...

~~~
hycaria
Stay downtown then. If being carless was so important, that was the way to
pursue it.

~~~
pxlpshr
You speak with so much conviction about living in a shoe box with 3 dogs!

~~~
hycaria
Huh ? I'm not sure I understand. I live in a small place, I don't have pets. I
enjoy life very much though.

------
ttul
Counter example: I did NOT own a car until after April of this year, which is
when Car2Go discontinued service in my area. We don’t have Uber or Lyft, so
those were never an option.

Now, out of sheer necessity, I do own a car. And it costs me $550 a month for
insurance, financing, and fuel. $550 would have bought a hell of a lot of Uber
rides. More than enough for my needs.

~~~
Texasian
Whoa, what kinda market had Car2Go but no Uber or Lyft? Is Zipcar not an
option?

~~~
ttul
Welcome to Vancouver.

~~~
afterburner
Ouch. How are the taxis?

------
clairity
i've found the value proposition of lyft/uber less compelling over time.

typically i can either (1) take a bus or train or (2) take a lyft line (or
uber pool, if it's much cheaper for some reason--i don't mind uber paying part
of my trip). but because my trips are often 2-3 miles or less, the time
savings of a lyft is taken up by (1) pickup time, (2) driver
confusion/mistakes, (3) poor driver routing due to not knowing the local
traffic conditions, and (4) other riders added _behind us_ en route. so no
time savings, which (to me) is the big advantage of lyft/uber. the buses and
trains are on a schedule, but they usually come often enough that the time
savings of a lyft would be less than 5 minutes.

i can pay $1.75 for the bus or train, or pay $4-5 for a lyft line. lyft line
is usually more comfortable, but sometimes the car or other riders smell bad
or are rude, so that's not always an obvious win.

and if i'm not really rushed, a little walking on either end of the trip is a
good thing.

consistently paying 2-3x for short trips on lyft don't seem to make sense, and
so my usage has gone down over time (occasionally i'm in a big hurry or are
going farther, and in those cases lyft does work out better).

i don't think this bodes well for lyft or uber solving the last-mile problem.

~~~
conanbatt
A lyft line at 10pm on a sunday cost me 5.30 U$S. I did not have a direct bus
from those two locations, and we were two people.

Its a lesson on basic microeconomics. If its cheaper, more people will use it.
And it is now way cheaper than cabs.

------
stephendedalus
In 2017 I returned to America from living overseas. My mom passed away early
in the year and I wanted nothing to do with shopping for a car, much less
driving a car. So I just took Lyft to my new job until I had my feet under me
and felt up to driving again.

In the end I never felt up to driving full time. I now share my wife's car (we
did get her a car eventually), but we only purchased the 1 car. We either ride
in together, take mass transit, or one of us takes a Lyft. Sometimes we use
Lyft to bridge to mass transit.

Either way, "ride sharing" has definitely taken one more full time car off the
road. I know it's not that simple and I know it's an economically dubious
arrangement in the first place, but I think there's something to this idea if
we could figure out the economics of it (how much drivers should be paid,
etc.).

~~~
smileysteve
> Either way, "ride sharing" has definitely taken one more full time car off
> the road

one more full time car out of the parking lot.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
It's true that the same miles are still being accrued, just by a Lyft car
rather than a personal car.

However, when multiple people use a lyft car throughout the day, it is more
efficient than having each person own their own car. Maintenance, insurance,
and the construction of the car itself are all shared.

Perhaps it's half a full time car off the road.

------
birdman3131
I don't get how using lyft/uber as your only form of transportation can be at
all cheaper.

Let me run some basic math. Uber wants $11.50 to take me home right now. Lyft
wants $13.40

$11.50 * 2 = $23/day

23 * 5 = $115/week

$115 * 52 weeks = $5980/year (I am ignoring vacation weeks for now.)

My yearly cost for car ownership are roughly as follows. (Assuming only work
and back.)

Insurance(1): $886/year

Fuel(2): $292.50

Maintenance(3): $1000

Car purchase price(4): $1000

Total yearly cost: $3178

(1) I only run Liablilty + uninsured/underinsured but I run cheap cars

(2) 2340 miles/year (Work is just under 4.5 miles.) Figure 20 mpg (I get
better but have not calculated it in a while.) Figuring fuel prices at $2.50
although the last year has been much closer to $2 and less at times

(3) This is way more than I would put into a car yearly if I only drove it to
work and back but I do many of my own repairs so I am boosting it a bit for
those unwilling to do so. Also including stuff like taxes and tags here

(4)I buy cheap cars off craigslist, run them into the ground and replace them.
My normal cost is $500-600 but by the time you add a new set of tires
($250-300 installed) and fix whatever random issues the car came with $1000 is
closer to actual purchase price.

~~~
debt
Maintenance is time too. So pulling over and getting gas, bringing a car in
for an oil change/replacing air filter/shocks/tire realignment etc.

You have to get smog checks regularly. Parking tickets, speeding tickets,
street cleaning. Maybe even a parking sticker.

Also, don't ever get into an accident. I think a range depending on your risk
profile makes more sense. Low end would be $3178 high end might be double
that.

Do you drink/smoke weed/sleepy as hell and drive ever? Owning a car puts you
at a higher risk for paying much more for making poor driving mistakes whereas
a comparable situation wouldn't hold you personally liable for the same
mistakes if it happen in a ride-sharing car.

On top of all this, you run your car into the ground and regularly buy a new
one?

You've grossly underestimated the cost of owning a car to a frustrating
degree. Owning a car blows if you live in a city.

~~~
fossuser
You don't necessarily need to buy a junker to have an inexpensive car.

You can lease a Fiat 500e for $90/month in California (which is what I do).

That has the added benefit of removing fuel costs too.

~~~
burlesona
Uh... how? That seems improbably cheap.

~~~
fossuser
They're inexpensive, you can usually just go to a dealer:
[http://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/smartphone-or-
fiat-50...](http://autoweek.com/article/green-cars/smartphone-or-
fiat-500e-discounts-mount-compact-ev)

------
lsc
Yup. I ditched my car because of uber/lyft.

the problem, from a business perspective, is that I live in silicon valley,
and still have the expensive parts of owning a car; there's still the parking
that came with my residence, and my employer is still paying for parking at
work. (I dunno about you, but my desk is rather smaller than a car parking
spot.)

If Uber/Lyft were to raise their prices to profit-making levels, all I would
have to do is buy the car, which is, as far as I can tell, not the most
expensive part of the infrastructure required to support owning a car, at
least not in my area.

If uber/lyft want to make this sticky enough that they can raise their rates,
they need to hurry to lobby the cities to build housing without parking, or
otherwise allow me to opt-out of buying car infrastructure, otherwise... well,
yeah, I'm going to get driven when it's subsidized (I take uber and lyft,
whatever is cheapest) but once that subsidy goes away? if it becomes as
expensive as I think it will, I'm just going to buy a car again.

------
ilaksh
I have managed to get by for around three years now without a car in San
Diego. I sold my car awhile back in order to keep working on a now defunct
startup. Since then I have worked for other startups and still had a small
income so it wasn't easy for me to get a car. I just take Uber everywhere
(cheaper than Lyft).

I can't afford to live downtown. Honestly if I were to "get a life" things are
so spread out in socal and most everyone has a car.. I would almost have to
buy a car if I were to somehow miraculously acquire a social life. But since I
have no life and work from home, things have been significantly less stressful
on a daily basis not having to drive. So it's kind of like I don't want to
have reasons to start driving all over the place again because of the stress
and risk. Since I only go out once or twice a week now the car trips seem like
the primary risk in my life and I'm not eager to start braving traffic on a
daily basis.

------
vr2018
It won't be long until the majority of people will never need to leave their
apartments. Amazon will deliver their meal subscription by drone each day
(subscribe and save!), we will be able to work from home, and vacation using
VR. Cars will be a thing of the past very, very soon. This will be better for
the environment, and reduce congestion for any of the unlucky workers who are
still required to be on the streets, i.e. garbage collectors, pizza delivery
drivers, etc.

I plan to support any politician in the future who is brave enough to enforce
this arrangement via legislation. We have been consuming too much for too
long, and we as a species are finally close to having the technology and will
to limit our impact but not negatively impact our overall living standard.

~~~
toomanybeersies
> and vacation using VR

And I can visit China by visiting Chinatown.

------
toomanybeersies
The main downside to not owning a car is that it's really hard to get anywhere
outside the city or urban areas. If you enjoy the outdoors, it's a huge
disadvantage.

I don't currently own a car as I recently moved countries, and I'm basically
confined to urban areas. Sure, I could hire a car, but that does start to get
expensive quickly, especially if you have to pay the obscene premiums they
charge for being under 25 years old.

It's at least $150 to rent a car for the weekend, and then there's the hassle
of trying to pick it up and drop it off. A reasonably good condition, reliable
car, would cost me $2000, plus maybe $1000 per year for registration,
insurance (third party only), and repairs.

------
jellicle
Lyft and Uber actively encourage and assist drivers to purchase, rent or lease
vehicles in order to drive for them. How many cars have they put on the road?

Ride-hailing services have massively increased car traffic in major cities:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-
congest...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/nyregion/uber-car-congestion-
pricing-nyc.html)

------
bungie4
Living in a small northern Ontario town, I wish we had Lyft or Uber here.
Instead, just taxi's (or family) and public transport.

Our public transport is based on a center hub topology with the hub being
downtown. So if my kid wants to take the bus to work, about kilometer away, it
takes 45 minutes half of which is in the wrong direction and involves at least
one transfer. Oddly, it takes even longer to get home.

Our public transport is a joke.

~~~
fyfy18
If it’s only a kilometre why not walk? That’s 15 minutes for the average
person.

~~~
bob_theslob646
Would you want to walk in below freezing weather?

~~~
cozzyd
Assuming you have proper gear, it's much nicer than walking in 100+ degree
weather

------
qudat
I live in Ann Arbor, which is a small college town that has a pretty good bus
system considering we are in the midwest and so close to Detroit. I recently
sold my car which was huge boost to my quality of life. Having said that, I
had to pay relatively a lot for my house to have the luxury of being within 2
miles of downtown where I work.

Even in this small town, automobile transportation can be extremely difficult.
The UoM hospital parking is an absolute nightmare. Even getting the premium
parking pass (~$250/mo) does not guarantee an employee a spot in any lot, let
alone the one closest to their destination. Patients end up circling the lots
for upwards of 90 minutes looking for a spot -- a common reason for showing up
to an appointment late.

There really is no other solution besides better public transportation here.
Hopefully that will be the driving factor to increase bike lanes, bus lines,
and incentivize people to only commute via automobile when absolutely
necessary.

------
lr4444lr
Wait until these kids start families of their own and can't afford the space
they need in a city with great public transit.

~~~
steego
> Wait until these kids start families of their own

Maybe they won't. I've talked about this with my wife, and I think we both
concluded that cost of living played a subconscious role in my wife deciding
not to have kids.

There were other reasons, but that certainly soured the prospect. If I was to
poll my coworkers (many of us older with no kids), I'm guessing they'd cite
that as a contributing factor.

------
ajb
Correlation != Causation. I moved to a city and sold my car, and shortly after
used ride sharing for the first time. But I don't use it much and it certainly
didn't cause me to sell it. I wouldn't be surprised of that's just how many of
their customers recently moved to a city.

~~~
shafyy
But then you wouldn't answer the question with "Yes" in their survey, would
you?

~~~
ajb
That depends what the question was. If they'd asked outright whether I
specifically sold the car for that reason, they no, I wouldn't. But to be
honest, I suspect the survey of being designed by their PR dept to generate
this result, and I can imagine questions I might have answered 'yes' to that
could then be interpreted in this way.

~~~
shafyy
Definitely. I tried to find the report to see if they have appended the
questionnaire, but it returns a 404: [https://take.lyft.com/economic-
impact/Lyft-Drives-Economy.pd...](https://take.lyft.com/economic-impact/Lyft-
Drives-Economy.pdf)

------
kayoone
Meanwhile in Berlin, i just paid 14 EUR on uberCab to get to work last week
because i had an important meeting and was late. For a 5km trip that took 10
minutes. Since uber is not allowed here and the normal stuff is so expensive,
this whole market does not even exist here.

------
shafyy
This seems like a huge impact. Not sure how they came up with that number (I'm
guessing customer surveys, so it's probably not that accurate). How does this
change the debate that ride-sharing congests up cities?

~~~
Retric
Any ride sharing trip is going to be Driver Start > Pickup > Drop-off which is
by necessity longer than pickup > drop-off.

The only possible benefit is if people take public transit more or take fewer
trips, which is not something you can see from ride sharing numbers.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Any ride sharing trip is going to be Driver Start > Pickup > Drop-off which
> is by necessity longer than pickup > drop-of_

You forgot "circling for twenty minutes searching for parking." Include the
parking footprint of private cars and I think ridesharing comes out ahead.

~~~
Retric
That's only relevant in places limited to street level parking.

The general case is driving to a parking lot/garage which could make the trip
shorter or longer depending on where it's located relative to your
destination. You might spend more time driving in a garage, but that does not
impact street level congestion compared to all those extra Miles drivers add
going to pick you up.

As to density, cars parked in a garage take up vastly less land than than
moving cars on a road as they stack vertically and need less space around each
other.

~~~
shafyy
Do you have any data on street level vs fixed garage parking? Owning fewer
vehicles also frees up space on street level...

~~~
Retric
It depends on the city. However, for places like NYC unassigned street level
parking is a tiny fraction of overall parking.

------
krinchan
It'd be interesting to see the number of households that dropped from two cars
to one because they didn't really need the second car often enough. It's just
more cost effective for us to use Lyft as a second car when needed, since it's
maybe for 6 trips a month.

However, before Uber/Lyft, having two cars was worth it because public transit
where we live is trash if it isn't rail station to rail station. The buses run
on 45 to 60 minute intervals and are always late.

------
electricslpnsld
How sustainable is Lyft's pricing in comparison to Uber? I've been getting
absolutely dirt cheap Uber Pool fares in the Bay Area. From my apartment to
work the fare is often less than two dollars (which is around what BART would
cost me), and I've even had fares less than dollar. I would be amazed if this
is making anyone a profit, but if the price even doubled I would be way less
likely to use Uber/Lyft on a whim.

~~~
indubitable
Uber, and I imagine Lyft, are banking on automation. So what is
sustainability? Self driving vehicles, at scale, could profitably provide
service for a lower cost per mile than a person who owns their own vehicle.
And that industry is going to have incredibly rapid growth likely culminating
in a monopoly that could yield the largest company in existence. We drive in
the ballpark of ~300billion miles per month [1]. Consider the worldwide
market. A profit of even just a few cents a mile starts to look very insane
very fast.

[1] -
[https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring...](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/tvt.cfm)

~~~
hueving
Sustainability is having a business that doesn't depend on a rapid rollout of
a technology that doesn't work in weather that most people won't trust for
years and that isn't even legal yet.

~~~
indubitable
\- By the time the technology is at the 99.999% level, the game will already
be over.

\- Things are legal by default. If self driving vehicles are not explicitly
made illegal by a state, they are legal.

\- Peoples' trust changes rapidly. I think as a culture we've become much more
scared of technology and change, but the change from horses to internal
combustion engines and brakes was many magnitudes 'scarier' than having AI
manage navigation.

------
hamstercat
I have my driver license, but I'm not buying a car anytime soon. I may at some
point, but for now public transportation + renting a car when I really need
one + Lyft/Uber/Taxi is a lot more cost-effective. On top of that, I'm sure
I'd walk less because I'd find myself driving to places I walk to right now.
So all in all for my context I'm quite happy without owning a car.

------
sidlls
I stopped using a personal auto last year in favor of biking everywhere. When
I'm injured or expecting to have to coordinate using the family car after work
I'll catch a Lyft, but the availability of ride sharing had zero impact on my
decision to give up a personal auto. I wonder if their metrics are counting
folks like me in that quarter million (inadvertently or not).

------
sien
Beyond what Lyft says, it's plausible if you look at total vehicle says in the
US.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA)

Mind you, it's also very plausible it's not really true.

------
twobyfour
And how many of its drivers bought a car just to drive for Uber/Lyft?

------
LeicaLatte
Lyft for me. Amazon Prime for everything else including groceries and milk.
For everything else I just walk. Serves me fine even in a state like Texas
where local transit is absolute shit.

------
rootusrootus
I've done the math, for sure. It would cost me $1000 per month to use Lyft or
Uber for my commute. That's almost exactly twice what my running costs are for
owning my commuter car.

------
horsecaptin
What about all the times a car owner takes a Lyft instead of taking a taxi?
Does that mean they ditched their car or does it mean that they were in a
place where they needed a taxi?

------
bbd
in emergency situations like hurricane or earthquake, the current ridesharing
system might provide very limited mobility when you need the most. Keep your
options open at any time might be priceless sometimes.

~~~
twobyfour
Or you get in a car and sit in traffic until you run out of gas and then
you're stranded on a highway in the middle of nowhere during a hurricane, as
happened to so many people in Houston this past fall.

Few of our cities are actually evacuable in an emergency.

------
frandroid
> It served 23 million different passengers, itself a 92 percent YoY increase

Wow.

------
ekianjo
Does that result in less accidents/fatalities at this scale?

------
pricetag
Hah, sorry to self plug[0] but I feel it’s relevant. I just wrote about this
the other day, except I was using Uber instead. It turns out that for my
personal situation it’s not worth it to go with a ridesharing service. Right
now I’m spending $4,560 a year on Uber. Does anyone have bicycle
recommendations for under $400?

[0] [https://pricetaganalysis.com/2018/01/15/how-much-money-i-
spe...](https://pricetaganalysis.com/2018/01/15/how-much-money-i-spent-
commuting-with-uber/)

~~~
fiftyacorn
Id probably get secondhand

How far are you cycling? It might be worth upping the price too and going
electric

~~~
pricetag
Yeah used is probably my best bet. It’s only 7 miles a day roundtrip.

~~~
fiftyacorn
7 is a perfect distance - what sort of roads? Id tend towards a commuting road
bike with panniers, and mudguards/fenders.

~~~
pricetag
It’s a well paved road. Think suburban mainstreet. Thanks for your help!

