Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. If you have something you feel we should read or include in a future list, please email us at [email protected].
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- • Brunel’s drawings of Thames Tunnel up for auction (IanVisits)
- • London panoramas of the Eighteenth Century (Public Domain Review)
- • Uber, Lyft reduce transit use and increase vehicle miles in US (SFGate)
- • How Philadelphia can turn its Regional Rail into frequent rapid transit (Plan Philly)
- • How Boston can turn its commuter rail into frequent rapid transit (Banker and Tradesman)
- • Boston’s shadow transit agency (Commonwealth Mag)
- • Who pays for parking: the hidden subsidies (Strong Towns)
- • Before Mr Pink was Capt Scarlet, and it’s the latter’s birthday (1LondonBlog)
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Would it be a good idea to put a link to the “Uber/Lyft increase road use” piece onto the Uber discussion board?
[I thought about it, but this link is about the transport effects of transport network companies, not on the situation that Uber faces in London with TfL. Hence it’s a different topic. LBM]
The findings in the US about Uber/Lyft are completely at odds with the surveys on shared car use in London. Maybe it is something to do with the generally poor quality of public transport, especially rail based, in most US cities.
It seems rather obvious that people who use Uber instead of driving are not going to reduce the total distances travelled in a vehicle. And why would one expect use of Uber to increase use of public transport? Are you going to get an Uber to a tube station and then take the tube or just go all the way in the car?
It’s not just the day by day decisions. The existence of a taxi service, Uber or other, which you are happy with, to deal with the occasional journey where public transport is less appropriate, might cause you to give up owning a car at all, and thus use “normal” public transport for all the rest of your journeys.
And that, indeed, is exactly what has happened in London in a measurable way. While not precisely the same, every extra car club car on London’s roads has resulted in about 12 people disposing of a car and a somewhat smaller number saying that they have deferred purchase.
Quinlet et al….this raises a question,though,doesn’t it?
Given that an average car spends,we are told,95% of its time parked,and neither emitting fumes nor causing congestion (in the accepted sense) does an Uber car,trundling around between jobs as it does,actually cause more of both?
I think,but am happy to be corrected,that people who join a car club are more likely to give up/forego having a car of their own,than those who are aware of Uber…
A single Uber car obviously causes more pollution and congestion than a single private car, even without trundling, because it is more intensively used. But the proper comparison should be between one Uber car and x private cars which would be necessary to fulfil the same needs. Calculating the value of x is left as an exercise for the reader.