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Comment by gregwtmtno | Hacker News Reader

What I find interesting is that Uber doesn't seem to be having an effect on private car use.

From the article, in the busiest part of New York, "Uber gained 3.10 million pickups, while taxis lost 3.09 million."

I read this to say that almost every Uber ride would have been a taxi ride if Uber did not exist. It doesn't seem to be replacing private car use at all. If it were, we'd see Uber rides increasing faster than taxis ride are decreasing.

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I don't really find that especially surprising but I wouldn't necessarily generalize it beyond Manhattan. Manhattan had an imperfect but certainly widely used taxi system--culture even--before Uber came along. The Uber experience may well be preferable to the taxi experience but the difference is probably not such that a lot of people who were driving private cars to avoid cabs now suddenly stop driving. And a lot of people who live in Manhattan don't even own cars in any case.

I would have expected some impact on traditional black car service but that may be such a small slice of the total that it doesn't show up in the numbers.

I wish there were some data on that. My guess would be that uber & lyft are crushing the traditional black car services.

One would think. On the other hand I wonder how much black car use is through contracts with employers.

You are forgetting to account for the other ride sharing services, which most likely have gained more than 10,000 pickups as a whole.

Private car ownership is already superfluous in NYC thanks to the MTA. I'd expect a bigger difference in cities with inadequate public transit infrastructure.

how much private car usage is there, actually, in Manhattan?

Nobody drives; there is too much traffic

The ; makes this statement sarcastic. Too many driving.

Perfect! RIP Yogi Berra.

Low as a percentage but still significant. According to this (http://www.nycedc.com/blog-entry/new-yorkers-and-cars) only 23% of Manhattanites own a car. Of course, that's still a lot of cars and also doesn't account for commuters driving into the city.

If you own an apartment in Manhattan and a house somewhere else, and have a car at the somewhere else (which is very common), would that count as a Manhattanite owning a car?

Quite a lot, actually. Certainly relative to almost all other areas of the country the rate of car ownership is low, but the streets are so packed with parked cars that many vehicle owners are willing to pay for private storage with monthly rental rates that are typically between $450 and $600.

My impression, though, is that most car owners are not using their cars for intra-Manhattan travel, which is what Uber is doing a lot of. Rather they're using their cars to travel to NJ, upstate NY, Long Island, or other areas where taking an Uber isn't practical.

that's because taxis are already really good relative to private car ownership in new york city. owning a car is a miserable experience and taking a taxi was already not that bad

I think the issue is that private car use is vastly dwarfed by the numbers for taxis so you would need an analysis of the private car use as well.

Private car usage could be accounted for in the 100,000 more uber has than taxis there.

> It doesn't seem to be replacing private car use at all

Until Uber launches calendar integration there will be an advantage to having a private driver reliably waiting outside and knowing where to go next. Many peoples' drivers also double as ersatz admins.

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