Uber, Transit and Cities
For optimists the matter is clear: Technology and culture are trending towards self driving (autonomous cars) which are dispatched by Uber or similar companies and not individually owned. As a result cities will be able to free up to 50% of their footprints devoted to all kinds of car services and parking (most cities devote decidedly less space to parking), car crashes will plummet and cities will become sanctuaries for pedestrians and bicyclists who can enjoy all the freed up space in the form of plazas and parks. Congestion will be a thing of the past because the existing lanes will have drastically increased capacity when they are used by platoons of driverless cars instead of individual erratic drivers. Air pollution and noise will be also much lower since these new vehicles will run electric. Transit will run more cost effective because it can be freed from the inefficient last mile trips that will be covered by on demand driverless van transit. In short, the future is bright and almost all urban transportation systems will be solved.
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Even before any of these features have been even properly tested, let alone realized critics are poking holes into the dream.
The criticism is based on current experiences with the car sharing services of Uber and Lyft operated by actual drivers in a conventional vehicle or sobering news from some recent crashes and failures of the experimental AVs to navigate actual streets.
Critical commentary accuses Uber and Lyft of creating just the opposite of the promises, namely creating congestion instead of freeing up precious road space (San Francisco Examiner), diminishing transit instead of being a useful adjunct (Jarrett Walker), even adding racial discrimination instead of equal opportunity (CityLab) and being a job killer instead of a a giant job creator in new gig economy (CNN Money).
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What to make of this? Are the negative outcomes reported by the critics simply transition problems or do they point to bigger systemic issues that the dreamers of a beautiful new transportation world are conveniently overlooking?
There is not enough empirical evidence or research to provide a data-based answer or to decide who is right. Experience with utopia forecasts of the past is that things never quite happen as imagined, that history never moves in a straight line as outgoing President Obama recently observed.
Importantly, planners and politicians have to realize that good outcomes rarely simply fall into a society's lap just because technology is there or just because things have become possible. As progressive open-minded states and cities have realized, to achieve a desirable future one has to take risk, allow experiments and be ready to accept failure. Most importantly, one has to shape the future through policies so it is more likely to become what one would like.
San Francisco, like most other US cities, certainly allowed the Uber experiment. The innovative ride hailing business promised more efficiency than the conventional taxi for drivers, riders and the city road network. The theory sounded plausible. An app with an effective algorithm can match demand and supply swifter and better than dispatchers for transitional taxi cabs, especially when the prevailing pattern for a cabby was to drive around until a ride emerges. The Uber driver would simply sit in his or her apartment until the smart phone would light up.
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But the theory was met by a reality in which it is estimated that some 45,000 drivers are providing rides for Uber or Lyft in San Francisco compared to only 1,800 traditional taxi medallions. Sure, those armies of drivers are not all at once out there and the number is speculative; many provide the ride service only part-time or once in a while, while traditional taxi medallions can mean that several drivers move a vehicle 24 hrs a day. Still, it stands to reason that many of those new Uber and Lyft drivers resort to the same old taxi driver technique of cruising for rides, only that they don't respond to someone raising the arm but to calls coming in. But if they are in the right spot at the right time, their chance of a match is increased as well. Certainly the SF transit agency thinks that those ride services are gumming up the streets. The agency has filed a complaint in which a number of observations such as this are shared regarding the commission's distinction between traditional taxis and limousines (TCP) and the new ride services (TNC)
the Commission assumed that all TNC drivers own vehicles purchased for personal use, and that the commercial use of those vehicles is always secondary to their personal use. Although that may have been a valid assumption when the Commission issued Decision 13-09-045 in 2013, the TNC industry has changed dramatically since then, and when AB 2763 takes effect in January, 2017, the definition of a “personal vehicle” which TNC drivers may operate will include a vehicle that is rented or leased solely for the purpose of providing for-hire transportation. In fact, TNCs are already offering this option to its drivers. For example, Uber provides vehicle rentals and leasing options for its drivers. 5 Lyft now offers an Express Drive Rental Car Program which provides access to rental cars for its drivers.... In 2016, San Francisco was rated as having the third worst traffic congestion in the nation. Much of the increase San Francisco has experienced in vehicular traffic can be attributed to the huge increase in the number of TNC vehicles operating on city streets.Congestion isn't the only thing Uber and Lyft are accused of. Transit guru Jarrett Walker also accuses those ride hailing companies of diminishing transit by running their services under cost. On Aug 28 he wrote on his blog:
(Comments on Rulemaking on Regulations Relating to Passenger Carriers, Ridesharing, And New Online-Enabled Transportation Services).
Uber is starting to do absurdly deep discounts that look a lot like predatory pricing. 20 rides for $20????. Such a price would undercut transit, thereby causing massively increased traffic with all the resulting ills. It’s obviously unsustainable for Uber, but if it goes on long enough to damage transit systems, that will be a huge negative impact on our cities. I hope someone is looking at whether this is legal.
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Uber and Lyft are not the only proliferation of innovative ride options outside the traditional trifecta of private car, taxi, and transit that could cost congestion, pollution or cut down on transit's viability. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the relatively new service Chariot, which uses vans to shuttle employees, asks riders to create their own commuter routes online. When enough riders sign up for a route Chariot puts it into operation, charging just $3 a ride compared to a Muni transit trip at $2.25.
All three arguments, congestion, job killing and undercutting transit have some merit even in the future of automated vehicles on all odes. While one can argue that the issue of excess Uber drivers circling around the block in search of rides may go away when those vehicles become fully automated, it isn't an entirely convincing argument since competing for rides would remain as a profit motive and even empty driverless cars could circle for rides. Certainly, automated vehicles would shed their drivers which, in turn, leads to the job killer accusation, Chariot type rides would become even more prolific when the cost of operators is eliminated. Although theoretically, the cost reduction would apply to fixed route transit buses as well, transit agencies are beholden to unions and will have a much harder time implementing automated buses, making Jarrett's accusation that the private ride share services could kill transit more plausible.
On the other hand, Jarrett also argues that in most larger urban conglomerations there isn't enough space to conduct all trips via automated cars or jitneys. A question of pure geometry, Walker says correctly. And I would add, there is also the issue of resilience and reliability. Uber-type demand based services just collapse in extraordinary circumstances. When over half a million folks converged on DC for two consecutive days at the inauguration and the day after the DC Metro subway system brought many of them in and hauled them off without any major hick-ups. Anybody who picked the Uber option would have received the message that "Uber service is temporarily not available in your area" if the smart phone was working at all which it was likely not due to lack of bandwidth for so many people. Let alone that internet-based service would fail anytime the internet is down, which makes it a not very resilient way of providing transportation, especially in an emergency.
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Finally, there is the issue of induced demand. Technological advance in many fields has shown that added efficiency did not lead to the anticipated savings. The washing machine and the dishwasher saved time alright, but much of the gain was eaten up by a much more extensive use of these devices (more pieces of clothing get washed much more often than in the times of hand washing). In a similar way the efficiencies of fleet based automated cars such as extra road capacity or freed up parking spaces could easily be absorbed by folks using car trips even more often than now or over longer distances. That would lead to catastrophic developments such more sprawl and homes even further from work, more spontaneous trips and, as Walker says, the demise of transit. In other words, we could wind up reverting to the car centric city we are trying to leave behind, have more congestion than today and be even more wasteful with space and resources than before.
It is really up to States and cities to make a choice by devising prudent policies and regulations before it is too late. There isn't much time left before the train will have left the station, and yes, the pun is intended.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
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