by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 6:28 PM ET, Tue October 17, 2017
Uber and Lyft have truly revolutionized the way people get around.
The two ride-sharing services have certainly made it easier to avoid drunk driving after a long night out. They've also made visits to congested locations almost hassle-free, eliminating the need to bring your own car and worry about parking.
But according to a new report from the University of California, Davis, the two companies may also be negatively impacting urban environments in which they operate.
The new multi-city study entitled "Disruptive Transportation: The Adoption, Utilization, and Impacts of Ride-Hailing in the United States," found that ride-hailing services may be leading to a decline in public transportation use and at the same time, adding more cars to the road, instead of reducing the number of vehicles on city streets.
"We found that a large portion of travelers are substituting ride-hailing in place of public transit, biking, and walking trips," study co-author Regina Clewlow wrote in Planetizen. "These trips, which are being substituted for or generated by ride-hailing, are most likely adding vehicles to the road in major metropolitan areas."
Produced by the University of California, Davis' Institute of Transportation Studies-one of five national transportation research centers funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation-the study is the first of its kind. It provides representative data from major cities across America on ride-hailing and its impact on travel decisions.
More than 4,000 online surveys distributed between 2014 and 2016 to Americans in Boston, Chicago, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC helped shaped the data. The respondents included urbanites and suburbanites.
Among the report's takeaways:
- After using ride-hailing, the average net change in transit use is a 6% reduction among Americans in major cities.
- Ride-hailing attracts Americans away from bus services and light rail services.
- 49% to 61% of ride-hailing trips would not have been made at all, by walking, biking, or transit.
- Among non-transit users, there are no differences in vehicle ownership rates between ride-hailing users and traditionally car-centric households.
- The majority of ride-hailing users (91%) have not made any changes with regards to whether or not they own a vehicle.
- Those who have reduced the number of cars they own and the average number of miles they drive personally have substituted those trips with increased ride-hailing use.
Merely switching from riding in your own car to an Uber or Lyft does little to reduce the overall number of vehicles on the road or the number of vehicle miles driven, which ultimately has an impact on carbon emissions.
"It doesn't matter who owns the vehicle," Clewlow told Wired. "It matters how many miles are driven on the road. So me swapping out a trip that I would have driven myself for a trip that I'm riding in is still the same number of miles."
On a positive note, the report found that ride-hailing serves as a complementary mode for commuter rail services, leading to a three percent net increase in use.
Ultimately, Clewlow pointed out that ride-hailing services are clearly shaping the way that people move in major cities. Their rapid rise in popularity combined with the relatively slow pace of regulation and lack of available data regarding how, why and when people use the services, has made it challenging for city planners or transportation researchers to provide any insight or plan for the future.
The new report provides some bit of clarity on this front, but Clewlow and others note that far more study is needed.
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