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Comment by wils1245 | Hacker News Reader

The availability of ridesharing lessens the need for car ownership, which is a huge win for cities because it reduces the need to devote space for the storage of automobiles.

The article ignores this benefit entirely, then makes the contradictory points that a) ridesharing apps actually increase traffic, and b) ridesharing apps siphon riders from public traffic.

All in all it’s written from the perspective of someone who hasn’t had to drive much in a high density urban area, where parking is nearly as much of a headache to figure out as traffic.

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It may reduce parking, but it does cause a net increase of miles driven compared to people driving themselves.

It is also true that as more people rideshare, fewer take public transit, which is more efficient in fuel and the number of people-miles driven.

These points are not in conflict.

Ridesharing and public transit can play complementary roles, in which ridesharing solves the last mile problem for regional transit. It plays this role for many of my friends in the Bay Area, especially with CalTrain.

Also, I feel like we've been in a trap where it's been politically impossible to make decent public transit, because there are so many car owners.

With fewer car owners it might be possible to invest in public transit. For busses to really work in SF the city would have to close entire streets off from normal traffic and install traffic signals coupled with busses.

Public transit would work, if we invested sufficiently. As in completely independent lanes, and no stopping due to traffic.

Car owners should be enthusiastic about public transport and the amount of traffic it removes from roads. What we need to fix is the belief that more roads will ever fix traffic congestion, it only makes it worse.

They should be... But we know we can't convince car owners to give up a lane or just street parking, for better public transit..

A less fragmented federation would go a long way too. The fact that there's no real way to get an all zones month pass or 2-3 city bus pass and how a lot of busses routes stop just short of what would be useful due to some arbitrary city boundary is just absolutely ridiculous.

Public transportation is not more efficient in terms of my time or usability. When I have to transport my four kids somewhere or go grocery shopping, public transport is a nightmare.

Let’s not assume people needing transportation are all single people carrying a backpack with perfect physical abilities. Ever tried to get a stroller down the subway steps in New York? In those relatively few stations that have elevators, they’re all filled with piss and shit. Don’t want my 3 year old walking around amongst that. Even in “enlightened” European cities, subway elevators are often disgusting messes, not to mention more unsafe than having an Uber driver drop you at your front door.

Public transport could be great — but I live in real-ville where it isn’t — except maybe in Zurich — which is an extremely rich small, and compact city — you could put twenty Zurichs in the Los Angeles metro at least. On paper, places like New York have great public transport — but the UX is about 100x harder than using Uber — especially with kids: walking up and down multiple stairs, down long corridors, waiting on station platforms literally next to crazy people, getting on a train, finding a seat — then trying to get back home doing all that in reverse. Compare that to the literal seconds it takes to order an Uber, wait outside your door, hop in, ride in quiet, mostly pathogen-free comfort directly to your destination.

Public transport is “efficient” the same way a prison cafeteria is efficient. I am not against public transport — it serves a valuable purpose as one facet of a comprehensive transportation policy. But to claim it is more efficient is really a matter of opinion — there are a lot of variables that make up what “efficient” means.

> Public transportation is not more efficient in terms of my time or usability

Nope, it's not. But it's less wasteful. It uses less gas per passenger, uses less space per passenger, and is often safer. So what you're arguing is that you want something that is more convenient _for you_ but is more wasteful. That's fine, but you need to be able to pay for it. Right now ridesharing is taking advantage of the fact that in most cities, everyone pays for the upkeep of roads, and drivers pay a bit more because of gas. In essence, roads are socialized across its residents. Residents are being forced to subsidize a more wasteful option, pushing the true cost of transportation up for everyone, and pricing some people (due to congestion) out of the transit system altogether. Until American cities are willing to charge (and enforce) a congestion tax to road users, the best option to keep transportation "costs" low is to limit cars on the road.

> Until American cities are willing to charge (and enforce) a congestion tax to road users

I hear this argument far too rarely. Mostly I see either "free market! Back off commie!" Or "Your nifty ride-sharing is actually a failure, so l can steal your smugness for myself, muahahaha!" (Slight paraphrases )

I have used a good number of metro systems in Europe and Asia and practically never smelled piss or shit, or encountered crazy people.

Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Prague, Paris, Stockholm, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul... not a single negative experience in these cities, and I have seen plenty of people with kids in the metro.

Edit: OK, in Madrid they tried to take my old iPod from my coat pocket once, in a very crowded car. But that was once in a lot of times using that metro and it's not the kind of bad experience for kids that you are referring to.

In Rome I did find some stations somewhat shabby, as in New York. In Los Angeles I had a good experience, but I only took the metro once there so it may have been just luck.

I was in central Paris last week, I saw crazies and people pissing. Reminded me how bad the shadier parts of London was 20 years ago. That was just one of the metro lines though, the other 10 trips on bus, 2 or 3 other metros and a couple of RERs were fine, although metros were always crowded.

I agree with London, Berlin, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong etc.

(The reason we took the metro late at night with 2 young kids and a large suitcase was because uber/taxis is a right pain with kids - trying to get one with 2 car seats)

You have clearly not spent enough time in Berlin.

The greater Zürich is 4M inhabitants, so it's more like 5 Zürich in the Greater LA. Switzerland in general is extremely transit friendly.

The difference is that life here is organized to revolve around transit. When you have to take public transit to places that are not designed around public transit, it's difficult. When all or most of your activities are better served by public transit than they are by car (try parking your car in Zürich), planning your day around transit is a breeze. Train stations in Switzerland are major retail centers. It's rare to not have a supermarket at walking distance.

Plus kids are much more autonomous. You don't have to drive them anywhere when they can safely take a tram by themselves at age 10.

Paris’s metro is a great example of an efficient public transit system. It’s faster, easier, and cheaper than other competing methods.

In the US, we’ve not made the proper investment into said infrastructure (profit and shortsightedness always get in the way), but that’s a problem with our instantiation, not the concept of public transportation.

I agree that for many situations, it’s not practical or appropriate, but in cases where it can be, we should encourage and make it easier to do.

Honest question: how do you rideshare with kids? (Or do you?) I have 3 little ones of my own with two still in car seats and not sure how I would make that work.

> it does cause a net increase of miles driven compared to people driving themselves.

It's possible, but I'd need to see both sides of the equations as well. How many miles are driven looking for parking (I've seen estimates as high as 30%). Do people forego car use because they don't have a car (and the marginal is therefore higher)?

Interesting question, but the article doesn't really go that deep in answering it.

But "lessens the need" is very different from "actually fewer cars", a point the article makes upfront. Until there's data showing otherwise, I can fully believe the premise of the article that Uber has stolen more modeshare from cycling and real mass transit than it has from private vehicle use. That is, there just aren't that many people who either got rid of a private vehicle in order to embrace ridesharing, or are able/willing to leave it at home a significant proportion of the time.

> That is, there just aren't that many people who either got rid of a private vehicle in order to embrace ridesharing, or are able/willing to leave it at home a significant proportion of the time.

I also have this suspicion. I'd like to see some numbers on it. In my experience, most of the people I know who live in San Francisco own cars but frequently take Ubers to avoid dealing with parking at their destination, to go out drinking, etc.

Downtown San Francisco is one of those places where driving your own car and paying for parking can cost more than taking an Uber.

Ridesharing solves one particular use case - some trip where either parking is too expensive, too much of a hassle, or both. It's great for quick trips into town or to the bar or to the airport. For pretty much every other use case, it is either too expensive, too inconvenient, or both. No one is about to sell their car for ridesharing if they need to ferry around their kid for extracurriculars, or go to the Costco and pick up lots of bulky items, or want to go skiing on the weekend; you need more drastic interventions for that, like reducing the availability or convenience of parking.

> I can fully believe the premise of the article that Uber has stolen more modeshare from cycling and real mass transit than it has from private vehicle use

All this shows is that people would rather climb into a stranger's car, pay them and hope for the best than use actual public transport.

Or that SF public transit is just appalling... For me it's only 25% faster than walking.

In European cities this is less of a problem. Maybe ride-sharing will reduce car ownership enough that you can one day invest in public transit.

Another potential data point on this is parking minimums, as that's a signal whether personal vehicle ownership patterns are _actually_ changing.

The parking spots built with a new condo development have an enormous cost which impacts everyone: https://grist.org/cities/parking-rules-raise-your-rent/

So it would be interesting to examine whether these minimums have been eased in cities where ridesharing is popular. If so, that's definitely a win (potentially also for the local mass transit advocacy groups— this is a popular talking point).

Santa Monica recently approved (I believe) new development rules no longer requiring any parking minimums. Yay!

That's awesome. Yeah, a bunch of cities have abandoned or relaxed the minimums, sometimes on a zone basis if you're within X metres of a rapid transit stop.

The initial reports on it look really good: https://www.nickmagrino.com/blog/2018/1/30/when-you-dont-hav...

Those aren't contradictory, if people are taking cars instead of public transit, there will be more congestion. There's potential for improvement, if people took public transportation when possible and only used rideshares infrequently, and owned fewer cars overall, it could be a win. But that's going to take more focus than most cities have put into the problem.

I think the metric they're looking at is total miles driven in a jurisdiction per capita ave.

As others pointed out, otherwise it's sucking people away from public transit and back into cars --which is counter to the design most larger municipalities want to execute.

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