As the Washington Metro system remains in poor shape despite months of trains delayed for maintenance in 2017, the Washington Post is attempting to demonize ride-sharing companies for increasing congestion. DC ride hailing has quadrupled in the last three year, which is “probably” increasing vehicle trips and, by implication, traffic congestion. Note that the paper offers no real evidence that this is true.
What is true is that taxi ridership is down by 31 percent and Metro ridership is down 11 percent since 2015. Does that necessarily translate into more congestion? Certainly, substituting an Uber vehicle for a taxi adds nothing to congestion. And substituting a Lyft vehicle for a transit ride adds to congestion only if the trip takes place during congested periods of the day.
The frequent claims that ride hailing is increasing congestion come from a Boston study that found that 40 percent of ride hailers might otherwise have taken transit. The study also found that most ride hailing takes place after 7 pm, but that 40 percent of weekday ride hailing takes place during rush hours. Forty percent of 40 percent is 16 percent, which means that ride hailing does add some vehicles to the road during rush hour, but not as many as suggested by various media reports.
Naturally, the mayor of Washington DC has a solution to Metro’s woes: tax the competition. Uber and Lyft already pay a 1 percent tax to the city, but she wants to increase it to provide more funding to run Metro’s highly inefficient operation.
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Metro’s greatest enemy may also be those unions. When smoke in subway tunnels asphyxiated a rider in 2010, Metro discovered that a maintenance worker had been falsifying reports that tunnel fans were well maintained. When Metro fired the worker, the same union that created the sock puppet successfully sued to have the worker reinstated, claiming that the real problem was that Metro managers were not doing their job of monitoring the workers. But it’s hard to manage workers when you aren’t allowed to discipline them when they don’t do their jobs and lie about it.
So Metro’s problems are much bigger than Uber and Lyft. At the same time, if Uber and Lyft can provide services more cost effectively than Metro (meaning they don’t require billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies), that isn’t justification to tax them to prop up Metro for a little longer.
Ultimately, if ride hailing can replace the 40- to 60-foot buses that often wander around empty, it might actually reduce congestion. One bus that stops every couple of blocks to drop off or pick up riders may contribute more to congestion than a dozen cars. Since the urban transit buses carry, on average, just 10 riders, it is easily possible that they are making congestion worse, not better. The same is true for light rail, streetcars, and many commuter-rail lines, though not heavy rail. In any case, it seems likely that ride hailing will be an important component of urban transportation in the future while transit will not.
Washington is the way it is thanks in part to one massive plan by a French architect. Who wanted to recreate Paris in the new fledgling nation. Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, who befriended General Washington during the Revolutionary War and asked to be allowed to design the capital. Many of modern Washington’s most striking features are his: the broad, radial avenues; the traffic circles; the sweeping public lawns and ceremonial spaces.
Washington is commonly viewed as the most intelligently beautiful—the most European, of American cities. Observation, it’s a mess. expansive avenues were easily adapted to automobiles, and the low, widely separated buildings (whose height is limited by law) stretch distance between destinations. There are many pleasant places to go for a walk, but the city is difficult to get around on foot: the wide avenues are hard to cross, the traffic circles are like obstacle courses, and the grandiloquent empty spaces thwart pedestrians. And even if you walk, there’s little to walk to, no grocery, no Chinese food joint, no dry cleaners, no daycare, that’s all in the outskirts.
Ride sharing is neither Villain nor Hero. It’s simply a response to a stimuli. Before FDR and the explosive growth of the federal government and it’s workforce, Washington DC used to be a sleepy little podunk town where few things ever caught the public attention. It wasn’t til after the 1930’s that the city turned to the Leviathan that consumed the much of the daily news in both scandals, coming attactions and those that wish to “Show off their wares”
A bus has the same impact on congestion as 3-1/2 passenger cars, including taxis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_car_equivalent
Henry,
You misinterpret your source. A bus, tractor, or truck is considered 3.5 cars . . . if it is moving with normal traffic. That number only factors in the length and performance of the vehicle, not its mission. If those trucks and buses have to stop regularly – like garbage trucks and transit buses – then the impact on congestion is obviously far greater. I haven’t seen any analysis, but the author’s estimate seems conservative.
Except that to avoid delaying cars most bus stops require the bus to pull out of traffic to stop, thereby contributing nothing to congestion. If the bus has no passengers then it won’t stop, having little impact on congestion. If a bus has a lot of passengers and stops in the travel lane it might negatively impact cars, but since a full bus takes a lot of cars off the road congestion it less. Saying buses add to congestion is one of the sillier things I have seen on this site.
Yes, Metro is very inefficient. According to NTD, the cost of providing one rail trip is $4.02, far less than the cost of providing one Uber trip. Metro rail in Washington carries 78.6 passengers per revenue hour, and one Uber car would be lucky to carry 5 passengers in one hour.
You know, I’m kind of surprised I haven’t seen more on the upcoming Nashville transit referendum. How Nashville will be committing suicide if it votes for it, light rail in Nashville is the second coming of satan, etc.