More than 50% of ride-hailing trips taken by surveyed riders in California replaced more sustainable forms of transportation, found a UC Davis study.

Published in Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, the study analyzed data collected among riders in three metropolitan regions — the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Los Angeles and Orange counties — between Nov. 2018 and Nov. 2019. The data set consisted of 7,333 ride-hailing trips by 2,458 respondents.

About 47% of the trips replaced a public transit, carpool, walking or cycling trip. An additional 5.8% of trips represented “induced travel,” meaning the person would not have made the trip were an Uber or Lyft unavailable. This suggests ride-hailing often tends to replace most sustainable transportation modes and leads to additional vehicle miles traveled.

  • Ephera
    2·
    3 months ago

    What’s the other half? People using a ride-sharing service, even though they could take their own car, just for a laugh? People foregoing use of their private jet?

    • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
      2·
      3 months ago

      Or people who don’t have a car, and there’s no public transit, so it’s ride share/ taxi or nothing.

      • Ephera
        2·
        3 months ago

        Well, apparently that’s only 5.8% of trips:

        About 47% of the trips replaced a public transit, carpool, walking or cycling trip. An additional 5.8% of trips represented “induced travel,” meaning the person would not have made the trip were an Uber or Lyft unavailable.

        I guess, maybe the remaining 47.2% are taxi rides which got replaced by Uber/Lyft?