Ride-hailing services drive down bus and rail ridership in urban markets, a new University of Kentucky paper claims.
When Uber and Lyft arrived on the urban scene a decade ago, they claimed to pair well with buses and trains. By shuttling riders to train stations, guaranteeing late-night returns, and plugging in as paratransit, on-demand transportation could encourage travelers to abandon private cars and use public modes, they said. A lot of people believed them.
But now, transit systems are in crisis. Some 31 of 35 major metropolitan areas in the United States lost passengers in 2017, including the cities with largest ridership bases. There are numerous factors at play, but a small mountain of research singles out the rise of Uber and Lyft. A new paper by University of Kentucky scholars piles on: For every year after ride-hailing companies enter an urban market, rail ridership can be expected to fall by 1.3 percent, and bus ridership by 1.7 percent, it shows.
“We are starting to piece together multiple parts to the story,” said Gregory Erhardt, a University of Kentucky civil engineering professor and the lead author of the study. “For a long time it’s been about ride-hailing complementing transit in different ways. That is true to a degree. But it’s a question of whether it’s happening enough.”
CITYLAB
LAURA BLISS JAN 24, 2019