That Uber or Lyft Trip May Be Worse for the Planet Than Driving Yourself
A new study adds up the external costs that ride-hailing trips generate and finds them to be higher than those taken in a private vehicle.
A ride-hailing vehicle on the freeway in Los Angeles.
Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
A decade ago, Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. charged into cities with a promise: By reducing personal car trips, ride-hailing businesses could both ease traffic and bolster the use of public transit. What happened was the reverse: A host of pre-pandemic research linked the rise of these services to sharp upticks in traffic and waning ridership on buses and trains.
Now a new study puts a price on the external costs that come with switching from a personal vehicle to one from a transportation network company (or TNC): about 35 cents per trip on average. And it finds that even a fully electrified fleet of ride-hailing cars may not fully mitigate the extra toll they exact on society compared to driving yourself.