Submitted by giuliomagnifico t3_11j7a4c in science
Reply to comment by ssnover95x in Study reveals that although private automobiles continue to be the dominant travel mode in American cities, the share of car trips has slightly and steadily decreased since its peak in 2001. In contrast, the share of transit, non-motorized, and taxicab trips has steadily increased by giuliomagnifico
Less vehicles on the road wouldn't slow emergency vehicles.
But these aren't less vehicles on the road. Instead of driving from destination to destination taxi services need to drive to pickup points, Wich adds another trip.
They reduce parking but not the number of vehicles on the road.
A single ride share can move multiple people around during the day so it can definitely still reduce the number of cars on the road, just not by as much as a bus or train.
Does your Uber or taxi driver pick up others when you are using them?
No, but whereas you may have had multiple cars being brought into any one area from people going shopping etc, it's possible a single Uber may shuttle multiple people into one area over time.
Probably matters more for places where you have a lot of traffic from outside the city into the city being replaced by ubers/taxis than driving around within the city, and it's far eclipsed by the efficiency of actual public transportation of course.
Yes, if you have that setting turned on and are in a market in which Uberpool is present.
Less cars compared to everyone driving themselves, but more miles driven by cars because that one car needs to commute between dropoff of one person and the pickup of the next.
In some situations, a big chunk of traffic is people looking for parking. You don’t need to reduce the number of vehicles very much to significantly reduce the amount of traffic.
I think the best example of this is SFPark, where parking prices were (are?) managed to maintain 60-80% parking occupancy. People being able to park easily reduces congestion.
It’s obviously not a perfect example, as you could argue that not knowing the cost of parking is going to also reduce the number of drivers, but the study I read suggested the real benefit was from increasing parking efficiency. Taxis also increase parking efficiency by not really needing parking.
So taxis do kind of reduce the number of vehicles on the road (but obviously not as much as a bus!)
Maybe in city centres like NY or something.
Not for normal people.
It does reduce number of vehicles. A person using taxi or rideshare to get everywhere is a person not using a personal car. At the very least 1 less vehicle is on the roads as a result.
Except now you have to add in the taxi, so it's -1 for the individual car and +1 for the taxi = net 0 / no change.
Except it's not a 1:1 ratio of taxi users and taxi cars. If a taxi covers the commute for 15 people in a day, then it's +1 and -15. It is less vehicles on the road. But.... It's more miles driven because the taxi has to get from fare to fare.
ETA: taxis subsidize the cost of car ownership, they don't reduce congestion.
Succinctly put! The only other item to point out is that between rides/fares, the taxi then drives to the next one while the personal car is parked. So they may actually increase congestion slightly. However, I'm hoping that's minor enough that its not taken into consideration for most of these calculations!
The taxi already existed though, many of them being cars driven to 500,000 miles. With the proliferation and usage of rideshare and taxi the people who would be adding 1 to the total amount of cars on the road are now not, the rideshare/taxi driver, already bought in but can contribute to as many as 100 people no longer needing a personal vehicle. It's a net loss, not a net negation. At the macro level, more cars are being taken off the road by virtue of the driver who already bought in, being able to negate a need for other people to get vehicle to begin with.
Cara on the road == cars on existence.
Cars on the road are cars that are driven at that point in time. Not parked cars
The reality is that many cities are seeing more cars on the road due to ride share services. Ride share doesn't work if there's not some capacity existing to offer service relatively quickly when a user opens the app, so now there are lots of cars driving around looking for their next ride.
https://news.mit.edu/2021/ride-sharing-intensifies-urban-road-congestion-0423
True, but there's an aspect that should be included, which is taking trucks off the roads too. Live in Texas, trucks everywhere and even drive one myself, but they're not fuel efficient in comparison to a passenger car when it comes to just transporting people.
I think the best way to solve that is to start to require additional licensing and taxes to vehicles above a certain weight. Vehicles have gotten heavier to improve the safety of their occupants, but it makes all other road users less safe.
I'm not sure that vehicle type is a particularly big driver of congestion though. Their footprint compared to an SUV is not that different and SUVs are popular for ride share.
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