Report: Half of Uber, Lyft Trips Replace More Sustainable Options

Researchers at the University of California Davis Institute of Transportation Studies analyzed data collected from ride-hail users in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Los Angeles and Orange counties and found that 47 percent of Uber and Lyft trips replaced a public transit, carpool, walking or cycling trip.

Another almost six percent of the trips were found to be “induced travel” – that is, trips that would not have been made if ride-hail were unavailable.

The data was pre-COVID, collected between 2018 and 2019 via detailed surveys including travel diaries. A little over 62 percent of the surveys were collected from people in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Because the study was conducted to help the California Air Resources Board develop guidance to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ride-hail services, the researchers took a close look at what factors contributed to the choices riders were making, including age, employment status, car ownership, trip distance, use of pooled services, number of travelers, and trip purpose.

While they also looked at demographic information like income, race and ethnicity, they were not able to compare the cost of the trips.

They found that over half off the ride-hail trips in their sample replaced a transit, active, or carpooling trip, or created new vehicle miles traveled, with transit being the most substituted mode overall – around thirty percent. Longer-distance ride-hail trips were less likely to replace walking, biking, or transit trips.

They also found that people who had no access to a vehicle and who use pooled services were more likely to replace a transit trip with ride-hail. The researchers recommend that improving transit services and focusing on ways to connecting ride-hail trips to public transit in low-demand areas would be a useful policy to help mitigate any induced travel from these trips.

The researchers also found that people without cars were among those least likely to cancel a trip if ride-hail were not available, suggesting that those trips were essential ones. The presence of ride-hail provides travel opportunities to non-drivers that they otherwise might not have, so enabling these essential trips is important. To reduce emissions from any extra trips, the researchers recommend policies that encourage pooled trips and rides that serve transit.

When asked to expand on these recommendations, lead author James Giller responded that the right policies can help build partnerships between ride-hail companies and transit agencies, and they can incentivize ride-hail companies to connect trips on their platforms to transit.

“A research report from the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis found that transit agencies that have partnered with ride-hail services have generally found the programs successful. Often, such a program would consist of the ride-hail company providing a first-/last-mile solution to the transit agency. The California Air Resources Board designed the Clean Miles Standard regulation… in part to address [this] issue… Ride-hail companies may obtain optional credits towards fulfilling their greenhouse gas reduction targets for trips that connect to a transit trip.” This provision of the regulation, wrote Giller, will be considered by the California Public Utilities Commission, which is in charge of implementing the Clean Miles Standard regulation.

In terms of encouraging riders to use ride-hail as a feeder to transit, Giller recommends policies that could disincentivize a ride-hail trip that could be made by transit instead, and that improve transit in terms of costs, travel time, comfort, and the like. “In our paper, we recommend improving transit services to be more competitive with ride-hail services by, for example, reducing the number of transfers and the distances people must travel to access transit. Increasing the frequency of transit services could also make the services more attractive.”

Of course, these changes would require greater investment in transit systems, an ongoing conversation at the state level. Additionally, “disincentivizing ride-hail trips could involve the imposition of taxes, or preventing vehicle access to certain parts of a city center,” wrote Giller. “However, such disincentives must not remove mobility opportunities from disadvantaged communities.”

Note the researchers:

At their best, ride-hailing services can connect people to mobility opportunities they may otherwise not have had, ideally while saving emissions and reducing traffic when the vehicle is electric and the ride is shared. When not used sustainably, however, such services can also increase traffic, reduce the use of public transit — an economical and sustainable mode of transportation for a variety of income levels — and increase social inequities.

The study, published by the Transportation Research Record, can be accessed here.