The tech world is prone to freakouts. In 2008, when Apple’s App store was announced, the media heralded the beginning of the App Economy. Hundreds of marketing directors stormed into IT departments screaming, “WE NEED AN APP NOW.” Now, every company with significant brand awareness has an app.
Six years after we were promised the app economy’s transition to maturity, it still hasn’t happened. Sure, people are using their phones more and more, but mostly with the same small set of apps.
Tech triumphalism is a common theme in the media: technology will reportedly fix medicine, education, politics, and climate change. In this vein, Vox published another brave, forward-thinking piece entitled, “Lyft’s new carpooling service is the beginning of the end for public buses.”
The gist of the article is that Lyft’s new on-demand carpooling service blurs the line between taxis and buses because it provides a service that’s 1) slower than taxis but faster than buses, and 2) cheaper than taxis but more expensive than buses. With time and self driving cars (!), Lyft will undercut bus service, so buses will die.
Transit expert Jarrett Walker had this to say:
I had thought @voxdotcom was a news source, but now I see it’s just repackaged techno-hype with zero analysis. http://t.co/QYiaQKZ3pm
— Jarrett Walker (@humantransit) August 9, 2014
Did @lyft pay @voxdotcom for this ignorant and analysis-free anti-transit diatribe? Does it matter? http://t.co/QYiaQKZ3pm @mattyglesias
— Jarrett Walker (@humantransit) August 9, 2014
Here’s a few criticisms of my own that come to mind.
- Transit is still cheaper: For the vast majority of trips, bus and light rail will be far less expensive than any ride-sharing service, even Lyft Line. The efficiency gains from self-driving cars won’t materialize for at least a decade, and, even then, the effects will be mixed.
- Having a regular route is not a disadvantage: Buses follow a fixed route and schedule, which lets you know for certain what your transportation options are, instead of ride-sharing, which has no way to make sure people’s vital transportation needs are met.
- Not everyone has a smartphone: Believe it or not, not everyone has a high-end smartphone with a data plan.
- Ride-sharing services are worse at accommodating surge: Single cars are low-capacity and have a low tolerance for a surge in demand. Uber is notorious for its unpredictable surge pricing scheme.
- Buses are a more efficient use of space: For reference, see this image.
If anything, ride-sharing services will replace traditional taxis, which we’ve already started to see happening.
It’s easy to base arguments off of the premise of technology’s presumed perpetual improvement, but, in reality, tech can’t solve every problem or ‘disrupt’ every industry. Netflix won’t kill cable companies, EveryCarListed won’t kill car dealerships, and Lyft won’t kill public buses.
Photo: Σπύρος Βάθης via Flickr
threestationsquare
Buses are indeed a more efficient use of space, but that in itself is not enough to get people to use them. At an individual level, what reason does someone who can afford LyftLine/UberPool have to take a mixed-traffic bus? If prices keep falling then most people will take LyftLine/UberPool and buses will suffer even more from the resulting traffic. This could be solved with truly uncompromised bus lanes with strong signal priority, but even at present US cities have been unwilling to institute such lanes. In the future it could be even more politically difficult if buses are seen as simply welfare for those who can’t afford LyftLine/UberPool (whereas in the past they also served riders with plenty of money who preferred not to own a car or deal with parking hassles). Congestion pricing (high enough to put LyftLine/UberPool prices out of reach of most riders, which is essentially the role taxi medallions played in the past) is another solution but also politically very difficult.
At the very least this should serve as a wakeup call to those who propose mixed-traffic / very slow transit in the hopes of decreasing average trip length. Transit does not exist in a vacuum and needs to compete politically and economically with private cars, taxis, app-based ridesharing, bicycles, walking, and other alternatives in order to remain relevant. We should focus on transit projects that can provide total trip times competitive with cars (which typically requires grade separation or absolute signal priority). Otherwise we run the risk that nearly everyone will make (or continue to make) the individually rational choice to abandon transit for less efficient modes, with the aggregate result that it becomes much more difficult for anyone to get anywhere in the resulting congestion.
dmonaymonay
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