Hacker News Reader

Comment by abalone | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr

People use ridesharing mostly to go out to eat and drink (62% of trips).

Riders are actually more likely to own cars. They don't want to drive when they're going out because they don't want to deal with parking or drive drunk. They don't ride the bus because it's too slow, unreliable or unavailable.

If ridesharing didn't exist, two fifths of the time they'd walk, bike or use public transit instead, and a fifth of the trips just wouldn't happen. While ridesharing supports pooling, it also wastes "deadhead" passengerless miles between fares. As a result, ridesharing actually increases total vehicle miles traveled.

View on HN

That all seems like a net positive to me, especially in major urban areas that a very car dependent like Los Angles, Atlanta, Houston...

In LA, driving drunk was just the way of life, and it was a real problem. Now, I don't know anyone who prefers driving over ridesharing given the option. Uber Pool makes getting from the east side to the west side faster that public transit for about $10-15, which is less than 1 drink and 1000x less than a DUI.

It is disingenuous to fault ridesharing for public transit's problems. Of course people are going to opt for the most value. We could raise taxes and invest in improvements that may materialize in 10 years, but that's a hard sell when you have a really good option right now.

I don't think the study is "faulting" anyone. Clearly ridesharing is a very popular and convenient alternative to driving and public transit which are both rife with problems. It is however contributing to traffic and emissions. Those are important facts to establish because previously it was thought that maybe ridesharing is helping with those too, like a dream come true.

It concludes, "substantial policy action may be required to ensure that ride-hailing can effectively be woven into the transportation network while reducing congestion and the emissions of transportation services. Absent of these efforts, congestion and emissions appear likely to grow."[1]

[1] https://itspubs.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/themes/ucdavis/pubs/d...

If we want ridesharing to decrease emissions and traffic, someone should subsidize it as first and last mile transit. That way cars are always at capacity (always picking up or dropping off users) and traffic gets reduced on highways (people will be on transit).

In addition public transit will fill to capacity, allowing them to run more often.

At best that would only help with relatively long distance trips, and the study notes it has already led to and increase in commuter rail use. (Which is offset by greater VMT in other cases.) Also it probably still involves deadhead trips within those last miles.

I'm wondering if there's lots of deadhead trips with existing commuter rail use in existing data. I was guessing that because people typically live close together who go to the same bus stop there would be less deadhead, if people carpooled, as the people who got on the ride would get dropped off at the same time people get picked up.

This looks sort of backwards. If we want to limit car use, we should increase the price of it. Many city centers do so.

$10-15 for a drink? Of liquid gold?

Pretty typical price range for a cocktail in a major (or even not so major) city. Even a beer is, outside of happy hour prices, getting near $10 with tip.

I'm in New Haven which is pretty minor as far as cities go. $10 with tip is par for the course for cocktails here. Beers are a couple bucks cheaper.

For a pitcher?

For a bottle.

Or in a German restaurant, 500ml. 1 liter of beer goes for $16-18

In most 'city' markets, beers tend to be $6, drinks tend to be $10. Add tip and you are at $12. Go to a higher end bar, you are at $15.

$8 for a beer in a lot of places these days, $15+ for a cocktail. Another reason the bar scene in expensive cities is pointless. In small towns, a beer can be as cheap as $2 or free if the beverage vendor rep is passing out samples (ie whole bottles of beer).

Big-box stores for beer by the case and make your own beer.

Access to alcohol is not really the driving motivation to go to a bar

I was thinking the same thing, especially when a bus across town is €1.50 or so. But I also hear stories about high rent and high salaries... I suppose it makes sense if everything there is just very expensive.

$10 for a drink in Los Angeles is absolutely not out of the ordinary. A $10 cocktail is happy-hour price. A $10 glass of wine is going to be basic stuff. $15 for a good cocktail or wine is the going rate.

I also mentioned Atlanta and Houston. Both of those are within 10%. I'm picking these because they are large, urban, car-dependent areas that, at least in my opinion, are more livable with ridesharing than without it.

A quick addition: the numbers will be higher in NYC and SF, but I don't get a lot of value from Uber in either. Uber in SF proper is slow and expensive, and the transit is pretty good. Cabs are better than rideshare in New York, and the transit is also good. Rideshare is nice for for the outskirts of either city, but, anecdotally, it certainly hasn't changed my behaviors in either. Rideshare totally changed the game in LA.

Ride sharing is of tremendous value in the Bay Area since BART irresponsibly stops service at 12:30am. People living in the East Bay often go into SF to drink, so getting home after bars close is a lot easier now.

Of course the somewhat ironic thing for people living in the East Bay is that Oakland's social scene has emerged at roughly the same time as ride sharing, so people don't need to go into SF to drink as much as they used to. But ride sharing is still useful for getting to/from Oakland.

I never understood that about BART. Why were its hours never extended? It seems like that'd be a sure thing to pass if it makes even a small impact on driving fatalities. I doubt that the taxi union had sway over this?

BART does not have duplicate tracks, unlike the transit systems in most other major metropolitan areas. The few hours that it stops overnight are required for maintenance. It's basically not an option for BART to run 24/7.

24/7 isn't required. Since last call is at 2am, running until 3am on Sat and Sun would make a huge difference and cost them 5 hrs of maintenance time. That's probably still a problem, but it seems like a solvable one.

BART published a study a few years ago saying the tracks need to be closed 4 hours every night. They said since people riding early in the morning are more likely to be people of color than those riding late at night, that shifting service times later would be "racist" because it would have a disproportionate effect on people of color. Typical 21st-century bureaucratic tactic to stifle discussion.

Yeah, you're right. I definitely take uber at night in the city.

Don’t come to New York. It’s at least that for a cocktail or glass of wine.

More like a hastily made, watered down well drink.

Ever been to a large city?

They should've done this study in a European city with great public transport which also has Uber, like Munich or Berlin.

"Great public transport" means what exactly? Even in Japan which is widely recognized as one of the countries with excellent public transport, trains and buses stop at night (and not too late either), so if you are going out, and coming back after midnight it's either your car or a very expensive taxi. Is Munich/Berlin any different?

Probably. It is common for european subway to be open on weekends. In my city (Warsaw) subway during fri/sat and sat/sun nights goes every 15 minutes. Night buses start every 30 minutes from central station in every direction, with exception of more remote destinations which have bus every hour. However if you live out of the city and commute by train you are probably out of luck between 1am and 5am.

Man I was annoyed with that when I was in Japan. It's horrible, you either stay out until 5 in the morning when they start again or take an insanely expensive taxi.

In contrast, in Copenhagen there are always night busses that leave at least once an hour, and the trains also go to fairly late and start early again. There's always some way to get home, which is immensely helpful when you're out drinking. Now that's what I call great public transport.

Glad to know it exists somewhere!

Munich subways run until about 2 or 3 AM on weekends, with the later ones coming with 20 or 30 minute intervals rather than 10 minutes. After that there are night buses and trams going different directions of the city, that come every half hour. To use myself as an example, before Uber I would wait the 20+ minutes until the night tram came along, or a taxi to my place was 20 Euroes. In the early days of Uber, a ride home was 8 Euroes, so that was bearable, later on it was close to as expensive as taxis, so being frugal, I would just wait for the night tram. But if you go to a friend's place for pre-drinks, and then you go to a club around 11 or midnight, public transport would still work superbly.

The one fifth of trips that wouldn't exist seems like a positive to society in that it is providing a service that is actively making a difference the choices people are making, providing them with value and choice. Additionally, restaurants are happy because they're getting more customers and selling more drinks.

The reduction in drunk driving is also good. I'm not sure that justifies the rest of the traffic increases. I would bet that overall it is a net benefit to society, but I am certainly less enthusiastic about ride-sharing now.

if you imagine that they'll transition to all electric self driving cars, it would only be a net benefit right?

the transactions are still happening, in increasing volume, and the environment won't be more adversely affected

just because there might be congestion isn't a negative

Congestion is certainly a negative externality. At the extreme, traffic can increase to the point where roads can no longer function to facilitate the movement of cars - constant traffic jams and decreased speed relative to walking or biking. Additionally, driving in traffic is unpleasant, increases accidents, reduces the desirability of living in the surrounding area, is smelly and noisy to be around, and increases wear and tear on the road. Increased use of public transportation is one of those weird things that probably benefits drivers as much if not more than the people who actually take it.

Well, if we were actually reasonable about mass transit in the US, you wouldn't see cities like LA giving priority to cars over light rail (with poor excuses like "cars can only wait 50 seconds at an intersection").

Quite a bit of LA could also do with dedicated HOT lanes for buses, bikers and those accessing local destinations (eg: within 4 blocks), combined with signal priority for buses you could easily see a bus beating driving by 5 to 10min, but LA's car culture is toxic to reasonable ideas.

That can certainly have an effect. At the end of the day, a lot of people in LA prefer serene private transport in an environment under their control that runs on their own schedule over public transport. I commuted via bike and public transit for 3 years more or less every day. I work remotely now, but I'd be reluctant to use it regularly even if it was faster and free.

> The one fifth of trips that wouldn't exist seems like a positive to society...

But it does still mean more traffic.

It may not mean the traffic we actually care about. If vehicle miles increase at 3am, when no road is at capacity, there is virtually no externality or negative impact buses.

If people are mainly using Uber/Lyft for those mid-late evening barhopping trips, then the same logic basically applies -- those aren't the times when roads are near capacity.

It would mainly be a problem if they're using it near rush hours, where it would in fact increase the vehicles/person o on the road.

Capacity isn't the only issue of transportation. There are plenty of negative externalities besides this, like emissions, pollution, noise. Reducing VMT and converting it to transit use would be beneficial at any time of day.

On the other hand, off-peak capacity on transit is often near free. The line is built anyway, or the services have to be provided anyway, or the shifts are 8 hours anyway, so providing extra off-peak trips is often not a big strain.

If the displaced trips are done by people who usually don't take transit, it means they'll pay more expensive fares (single tickets), which could even be cost-neutral wrt to subsidies. At the same time, those trips can get drivers used to the idea of taking transit, possibly encouraging them to take more transit in the future.

>> because they don't want to deal with parking or drive drunk.

That's what my friends use it for.

It's a shame, because in the smaller midwestern towns, we don't really have Uber yet so it can't be used. Drunk driving here isn't even given a second thought.

Most bars have the names of taxi services to call if you're over the limit. To still drive because that's inconvenient is quite literally criminal.

In many smaller towns, and even larger cities where taxies are not common, this isn't an option. When I lived in Mesa years ago I'd call cab services multiple times and they'd just never show up. Many smaller towns just don't have taxi services.

It's espescially cruel when you consider that rural/small towns are usually the ones least set up for pedestrian traffic. Not only are there no taxis/uber/buses , there are no sidewalks, street lights, few traffic signals, etc.

Even worse, if you do walk after the bars close, you are more likely to get stopped by the police simply because you are out walking. Living a mile outside the city, you can get stopped because you are walking on the side of the major road. You are supposed to take the slower route through the countryside.

This only seems like an issue if your in what I'd call a bad area. The definition of this seems to be "bored, overstaffed cops policing minor incidents & creating crime", which you see often in the more affluent *burbs here on the West Coast.

IMO that is why areas like Lake Oswego, Shoreline, etc are slum as far as I'm concerned. I would never want to live in a place where my power goes out every other month, my house costs $800k+, and the police and local gov't are trying to fuck me at every turn. Why pay a premium for a shit community?

I'm basically describing Indiana outside of town. It is actually more likely in well-to-do areas since they assume folks will drive.

Smaller towns used to be more dense, but with the advent of car culture more than half the land in most smaller towns became dedicated to parking, more than doubling how far you have to walk, bike or drive through town.

In those towns there aren't enough taxies for everyone out -- if they exist at all.

In the UK drunk driving is a big social no-no, however this has led to country pubs really struggling and many going out of business. If uber or some similar easy to use taxi was available where I lived I'd be quite happy to pay to go to them

Instead it means more and more people drink at home, rather than out, actually leading to increased alcohol consumption!

Automated taxis will make such a change to the fabric of life in the country, I can't wait.

There's a bar not too far from me that's still a 10 minute drive from the nearest city which has someone shuttle patrons to and from the bar and their homes. I wonder if something like that could work for country pubs.

In Ireland, country pubs will sometimes have an hourly shuttle van that gives patrons a ride home. Then Sunday morning, they have to hitchhike back to the pub to pick up their car.

I was reading about the history of Paris cafes, and apparently this has contributed to the demise of many cafes there as well (in particular the ones that relied on alcohol sales and didn't adjust to serve good coffee, among other more modern clientele tastes)

Really? But Paris has such fantastic mass transit?

Not really. The trains stop running at an hour well before people stop going out. I was just in Paris in May going out with a bunch of Parisians and we all had to Uber back. They love Uber there -- once the trains stop, that's how you get home.

Interesting, I was there a few months ago and was super impressed, guess I wasn't enough of a night owl :)

Definitely a let down compared to NYC where I live, where the trains don't ever stop. 24 hour trains are pretty rare; no other city in the US has them, nor do most European cities. London, for example, has the tube shut down every night except for Friday and Saturday, and even then most lines don't remain open.

Does anyone know the impact of ride-sharing on restaurants, entertainment venues, shopping, and other activities not close to rapid transit or bus stations?

They don't ride the bus because it's too slow, unreliable or unavailable.

Yes - Uber showed up the inadequacy of public transit in the US just as much as they disrupted the taxi industry. Transit seems designed only for consumers who can't afford any other option. If public services want people to choose to ride the bus over taking a car, they need to substantially increase the quality of the riding experience.

Part of the issue with buses is the maps. Trains usually have nice schematic style maps but there seems to be a law mandating that bus maps be illegible tangles of purple lines with little hard to read numbers and a table of what those numbers mean on a different page.

Is that because buses stop more frequently, and so don't lend their routes to geographically simplified schematics as well as trains?

What do you think would be the perfect bus route map design? I'm really interested in this!

Personally I think the biggest problem with bus maps is that when you get on a bus, you can't find one. The inside is plastered with advertisements and "public service announcements" telling you to go to the opera and not drink soda. Instead if could look at the wall (or grab a pamphlet) and see where I need to get off for my transfer, that would already be a huge improvement.

It may increase the "total miles traveled" but doesn't it also increase occupancy density in the cars, thus reducing the fuel/pollution consumption?

I'm tired of shitty data coming out of Uber and Lyft: I want to know about fuel consumption and the impact on auto insurance rates/accident frequency.

Given the known population of drivers, what is their average insurance rate, fuel consumption etc vs the general pop whom are driving their own cars/fuel/insurance?

I recall I had a heavy month on city car share where I spent $800 in one month for that service. Fuck that. I cancelled my account after that.

There is extraordinarily valuable data these companies (and insurance companies) have they don't share. The fact that they hoard this data to protect their profits should be criminal as this data should be a Utility...

> It may increase the "total miles traveled" but doesn't it also increase occupancy density in the cars

If it did then it wouldn't increase total VMT. Again there are "deadhead" miles in those cars without any passengers at all, a fifth of those trips wouldn't have happened in the first place, and two fifths would have used alternatives that don't contribute to VMT. (According to the study.)

The fifth of those trips that don't happen sounds bad to me. Does this mean that, for example, people are not going to get groceries because they can't carry all of that on a bicycle or a bus?

From the article, "Ride-hailing users have higher personal vehicle ownership rates than those who use “transit only”: 52% versus 46%." This point seems like a non-point. First, that's not a very big gap. Also, Do richer people pollute less or congest less than poorer people? I don't think so, so having the car in the garage is better than having it on the road, and no different than not having it at all.

Probably more like people wouldn’t go out to a cross-town bar or restaurant if they couldn’t take a taxi or lyft/uber to get there. For example, if mass transit is prohibitive (two buses at 1 am) and they don’t want to drive drunk.

Easy access to quick transportation is a general economic benefit for everyone. That’s not support for uber or lyft specifically, but if people can easily get around town, they’re more likely to make extra trips to bars, restaurants, shows, etc. where they may have otherwise considered just staying home.

Nobody in Los Angeles is ever taking a taxi.

The reality, in LA, is that if you're not going via Uber/Lyft, you're driving drunk. Not going is not even on the table. This is FOMO capital of the world.

Define FOMO?

Fear of missing out?

> Does this mean that, for example, people are not going to get groceries

Unlikely. Most trips are to bars, parties and restaurants.

The point about car ownership is really just refuting the belief that ridesharing leads to an immediate decrease in car ownership. Overall the study tries to focus on VMT as the more important metric, since you could sell your car and switch to ridesharing and still end up with greater VMT.

Recently one of my daily routes actually takes longer by lyft line than by public transit, if the lyft line has two intermediate pickups and drops. I feel like once it reaches peak car pooling sustainable fiscal efficiency it no longer becomes superior or conpetitive against public transit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com