Don’t Blame Uber for Your City’s Congestion
Uber, Lyft and their competitors aren’t the solution to traffic problems, but they don’t cause them, either.
Not Uber’s fault.
Photographer: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
A growing body of research shows that ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft increase rather than reduce congestion. These services, however, account for such a small share of urban travel that focusing on them as a source of trouble is probably wrong, if easing congestion is the goal. If they’re not the solution, they’re not really the problem, either.
Last week, transportation consultant Bruce Schaller released a report pointing out that 70 percent of Uber and Lyft trips occur in nine large U.S. metropolitan areas, where they account for 90 percent of taxi rides (New York, where traditional taxis are still popular, is the one exception). In these areas, according to Schaller, the transportation network companies (the generic name industry professionals use for the ride-hailing firms) have added 5.7 billion miles of driving annually — and added to congestion because 60 percent of their customers would have used public transportation had these services not been available.