
First analysis of how Uber and Lyft have affected roadway congestion in SF - doener
https://www.sfcta.org/emerging-mobility/tncs-and-congestion
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pftburger
To be clear, Uber and Lyft are in cash burn phase, still... Yes, this is
essentially still a free market economy but the prices of rides are largely
subsidised to bring them to a point where they compete with public transport.

That said, public transport is often a last mile problem. How do you get to
and from the node, with a baby, in bad weather etc. Public transport is far
from ideal and TNCs fill the gap willingly.

TNCs fill the gap so easily by piggybacking off the Auto Lobby. If we had
more, denser public transport coupled with reliable safe bike lanes (heck
sometimes the whole sidewalk is missing...) public would be much more
attractive.

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httpz
I'm not sure how credible this is but someone who work at one of the ride
sharing company told me most of the cash burn happens in new markets for rapid
growth and established markets like SF are profitable.

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godzillabrennus
I’ve heard the same.

Though reaching “profitability” is not really a focus for them until automated
vehicles are ready to replace the humans on the road.

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oblio
The question that nobody at these companies wants to answer publicly: what if
fully automated vehicles are still decades away?

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TangoTrotFox
It seems tautological that uber/lyft would increase congestion. The one and
only way it would not be true is if every single person who used the service
had a previous option that they were readily utilizing. Though even there
nonpassenger driving hours would probably cause a net increase in congestion
anyhow. But I think it goes without saying that there are countless people
that end up 'driving' far many more miles thanks to uber/lyft, myself being
one of them.

In other words as you make transport more desirable, available, and affordable
- congestion will increase. The natural retort against this is public
transport, but route/time restrictions as well as other passengers will always
pose a limit on both the desirability and availability of public transport,
though it certainly tends to nail the third criteria at least.

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njarboe
I've heard that at many times 1/3 of cars on the road in SF are looking for
parking. Don't really believe it is that high, but, if true, would be a way
for uber/lyft use to decrease congestion in a meaningful way.

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almost_usual
A MUNI bus ride is 1/10 the cost of an Uber or Lyft and people would rather
spend the extra money to not deal with the SF public. Ride share to work, your
favorite restaurant, bar, and then home. It’s like living in the suburbs in
the city.

I wonder how many people who can’t afford a vehicle but don’t want to deal
with public transit would leave SF if ride sharing was banned outright.

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dahdum
TNCs creating congestion makes sense to me for the same reason, so many of my
trips simply wouldn’t happen if I had to take public transport.

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Retric
Worse they add an extra leg to all trips, not just more trips. At best it’s
last drop off location > pickup location > drop off location. On top of that
many drivers will go to a fourth location to wait for their next passenger.

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product50
Uber is really a heaven sent product for me and my family. We have to pick up
and drop off our daughter at her day care on a daily basis and without Uber, I
am not sure how would we have done it. I hope we can expand studies like this
with the quality of life improvement which services like Uber have been
responsible.

Also, there are other things which have improved too. Such as less drunk
driving, improved safety especially when traveling at nights, predictability
vs. taxis etc.

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liotier
> We have to pick up and drop off our daughter at her day care on a daily
> basis and without Uber

I'm amazed that Uber is considered an affordable commute device. Is that a SV
phenomenon ?

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superfrank
Eh, it depends on how you look at it. If you are comparing Lyft/Uber to public
transit, yeah they lose out by a lot, but I don't think a lot of people are
doing that. I think a lot of people are comparing Lyft/Uber against the cost
of owning a semi-new car in a major city and that's much more comparable.

Here's a super ball park monthly cost breakdown:

\- Car payment: $250

\- Parking: $200

\- Insurance: $85 (~$500 every 6 months)

\- Gas: $50

\- Registration: $40 (~$500+ a year)

\- Saving for maintenance: $50 (assuming $600 a year, which is probably low)

That's super super napkin math, but that's almost $700 a month for a car,
which is basically the same as $30 each work day for a month. On top of that,
you don't have to deal with the hassle of parking in a city, which has to be
worth something.

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product50
No - you are wrong. Dropping off kids has a lot of convenience if you take an
Uber. You don't have to worry about parking and can actually spend time with
your kid, like read them a story, when you drop off via Ubers vs. yourself. In
my estimate, I save at least 15-20min per dropoff when I take Uber vs. when I
do with my car. In the morning that 15-20min extra matter a lot.

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user3359
I don't see how your point makes him wrong. If anything, it seems to reinforce
his point.

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product50
Well you need to read it again.

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ionised
No, he's right. Nothing you said made his point wrong.

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cavisne
“TNC information was based on data originally gathered by researchers at
Northeastern University from the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) of
Uber and Lyft that show the locations of available vehicles to mobile apps,
and then was shared with the Transportation Authority.”

Why would they use such a terrible data source. I had always assumed the cars
in the Uber map are indicative anyway, not the actual location. Uber gives
trip data to cities why not get real data

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austenallred
This is why it blows my mind that scooters are effectively banned in San
Francisco. They’re such a perfect solution for inner-city travel.

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TangoTrotFox
In many ways, I think solutions like this are just kicking the can. Travel in
a place like Bangkok for one day. Red lights look like the start of a
motocross rally. There are even motorbike taxis. And motorcycles deciding the
sidewalk doubles as a bike line is a common sight. But traffic is still
completely brutal. That's also with city wide subway and airtrain transport
options as well.

The problem is simple. People need access to the roadways in a fashion that
grows linearly to low exponentially. But the capacity of the roadway capacity
stays constant with an occasional constant bump. Even if you suddenly toss
every single driver on a scooter, it's just one of those constant time bumps.
You'll eventually bump into the exact same problem of a constant road capacity
against an increasing roadway access demand.

You need a way of linearly, and indefinitely, increasing traffic capacity, not
one-off constant value work-arounds.

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TheCoelacanth
Amount of potential traffic can't grow without limit. People need space to do
other things. That puts a natural limit on the amount of traffic because
people don't go places just to get there. They go places to do something when
they get there.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
The big underlying factor is population increase, both permanent increases of
the local population and temporary increases from visitors. Though I imagine
there are also other factors even beyond that one that also increase traffic.
It's probably safe to say that increased income results in more activity
involving transport, for instance. I'd agree there's definitely some theoretic
cutoff where it becomes practically physically impossible to squeeze any more
people into an area, but I'm not sure how practical it is to consider that
since you're hitting major dystopia long before you get to that point.

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lewis500
"TNCs had little impact on congestion in the western and southern San
Francisco neighborhoods."

Recently Supervisor Peskin apparently reached a deal to impose a "net fares"
tax on the TNC's. I wonder if they will consider differentiating it by
neighborhood: imposing larger charges downtown. Peskin has also lobbied for
downtown congestion pricing although that is harder to implement, politically
and technologically, than such a tax.

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SllX
> Peskin has also lobbied for downtown congestion pricing although that is
> harder to implement, politically and technologically, than such a tax.

Politically, sure. The idea has been floating around for at least a decade
that I know of, and probably longer.

Technologically? License plate readers on every intersection, let's say, for
the sake of argument, every intersection along Van Ness and South Van Ness
going east, and every intersection along Folsom going Northwest. Maybe put the
northern boundary at about Washington Street and also have readers at off-
ramps. Maybe give people driving along the Embarcadero a free pass though and
set the Eastern boundary there. Every car that enters this section of the City
has their plate read, and you either pay with FasTrack or get a bill in the
mail at the end of the month. If you live in this part of the City, you can
apply for a waiver, oh and since we're reading plates and doing a DMV lookup
for the address, the City could even charge extra if the vehicle is commuting
in from outside the City. Actually, taking that into consideration, you
wouldn't even need to apply for a waiver, any vehicle registered to an address
within this zone simply wouldn't be charged.

In fact, to make this more interesting, if someone calls a Lyft or Uber to an
address within that zone, you could have them collect a surcharge which will
be paid directly to the City.

The technical challenge isn't very hard, actually kind of boring, I think the
bureaucratic challenge is a bit harder once you get through the political
challenge, which is the real hurdle. That is a potentially large source of
revenue for the SFMTA though, between the tolls, the surcharges, and the
additional monthly passes sold.

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slivym
It's worth noting that London has had a congestion zone for 15 years now and
it wasn't particularly difficult technologically back then.

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notacoward
I use Lyft a lot when I travel, but I'm also acutely aware that such services
have their downside. For example, using Lyft the way I do spares me both the
hassle and the liability of a rental car in two unfamiliar and notoriously bad
traffic environments (Silicon Valley and Seattle). How is that possible?
Because that hassle and liability are pushed onto the driver, whose livelihood
would be far more affected by an accident than mine would be. :(

With respect to congestion, there is definitely a problem that so many rides
leave the driver somewhere other than where they'd want to be. Taking rides to
and from dinner is one thing, because those trips balance out pretty well.
Using a TNC as a commute alternative is quite another thing, because everyone
wants to go one way in the morning and the other way in the afternoon, leaving
every car occupied only half the time. Even worse, the effect is most
concentrated in exactly the places people least want to drive themselves
because of the pre-existing congestion. Every bad place gets worse.

I don't know of any solution that others aren't already likely to mention, but
it's definitely a problem looking for a better solution.

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Hansenq
The issue with conclusions of reports like these is that yes, Uber/Lyft
contributed to a congestion increase, but what would that increase have looked
like without Uber/Lyft? How much would congestion have increased by without
Uber/Lyft (due to the strong economy, jobs, etc)?

Would people instead have purchased cars and driven them around instead? Would
we actually have had higher congestion?

Publishing reports like these without controlling for the
economy/jobs/popularity of these cities seems to me to be an unfair attack on
Uber/Lyft, where the real culprit might just be a strong economy.

~~~
burlesona
How exactly would you control for all the rest? Where is there another San
Francisco that doesn’t have Uber that we can go measure?

I think these estimates pass the sniff test at least. Downtown SF has very
little parking relative to demand, so Uber / Lyft are practically the only way
to get there in a car.

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chaboud
"Downtown SF has very little parking relative to demand, so Uber / Lyft are
practically the only way to get there in a car."

So, wait... Your argument is that there is a natural disincentive to go
downtown with a car, unless one uses Uber or Lyft... But you also somehow
doubt that the car traffic that _is_ downtown has been caused by Uber and/or
Lyft?

So is everyone an idiot because they just drive around downtown, give up, and
go home? Or they aren't in on this Uber/Lyft secret that nobody has heard
about?

Or... And I'm just spit-balling here... Maybe you just argued against yourself
very effectively.

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burlesona
My point was actually that the traffic is already relatively self-regulating
due to the lack of parking, most people don’t get there by driving. Sure it’s
plausible that Uber or Lyft increased the traffic, but it’s difficult to
assert that in an alternate universe without Uber or Lyft that more parking
would not have been built (attracting more cars), or that you’d have more
traffic from cruising (people hunting for parking). Development plays a huge
role as well, perhaps Uber has allowed more development than would have been
feasible without it, or perhaps all the new development would have happened
anyway, either way it’s a complex adaptive system that you can’t easily just
say “ah, THIS is the one and only cause.”

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meriimekko
TNC - since when was this acronym used? Call it what it is, not some vague
NASA-like revision.

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crb002
They packed SF like a clown car, of course all commute times went up. Not sure
how it is Uber's fault.

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wool_gather
Who is "they"?

