NewScientist (16 January 2021) takes note of a study concerning Lyft and Uber:
The introduction of ride-sharing companies, including Uber and Lyft, has been associated with a 0.7 per cent increase in car ownership on average in US urban areas.
Jeremy Michalek at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and his colleagues analysed trends in vehicle ownership in 224 urban areas across the US between 2011 and 2017 to investigate how these were influenced if a ride-sharing company – either Uber or Lyft – began operating in the area.
“We would have expected ownership to probably go down, because when people gain access to this alternative travel mode they may be able to get away with not owning a car, or owning fewer cars in their household,” says Michalek.
I’m in line with this guy:
“In a lot of respects, this is not surprising,” says Os Keyes at the University of Washington in Seattle. “If there’s money to be made in having a car, more people are likely to have cars.”
And why get rid of the family car? Using ride-sharing may be perceived as a slightly chancy business, and, post-pandemic, people will be going into offices again – and have to get there. I couldn’t get a rideshare won’t be an acceptable excuse. Using ride share is a way to slow physical degradation of the owner’s car and avoid stress, but it isn’t a reasonable excuse for not having a car. Those who don’t want to own a car should arrange to live near a commuter rail line – and, even then, having that personal transportation is still desirable for most people.
I think Lyft almost has the right of it:
Lyft said: “Lyft has helped remove almost half a million cars from our roads by investing in technology and services that reduce our dependence on personal vehicles. This includes managing the nation’s largest bike share system, integrating public transit information directly into the Lyft app, and partnering with transit agencies across the country to increase mobility within their cities.”
In other words, use the proper metric: increasing the number of passengers per vehicle, thereby reducing the number of vehicle trips made. Car ownership is not a symmetric related metric. Fewer total vehicle trips doesn’t imply fewer vehicles, only different usage patterns.
They just don’t state it clearly.
I’ll also nitpick the study authors: We would have expected ownership to probably go down. No No No. Try Our hypothesis is that car ownership declines when ride sharing becomes available, and our hypothesis was falsified in the geographical region studied. The latter removes expectations, overt and covert, which might corrupt the study’s structure. The former suggests a lack of insight on the part of the researchers. Not that the study is not worthwhile, quite the contrary. Checking “insights” is always important, because not all insights are accurate.
But getting the statement right is equally important.
