Uber was supposed to help traffic. It didn’t. Robotaxis will be even worse

The correct way to fix traffic is to stop designing the world around cars to the exclusion of absolutely everything the fuck else including humans.

And bike lanes, bike sharing etc.

...including working on security measures to ensure that people feel safe using them

Self-driving callable buses might not be a horrible thing. You open up an app that says I need a ride It tells you where within a mile to walk and send something on its way to drop by and pick you up.

The actual study modeled a 40% reduction in number of taxis on the road when hailing was made more efficient, with carpooling passengers, and a re-purposing of parking space:

In the 2010s, the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where one of us serves as the director, was at the forefront of using Big Data to study how ride-hailing and ride-sharing could make our streets cleaner and more efficient. The findings appeared to be astonishing: With minimal delays to passengers, we could match riders and reduce the size of New York City taxi fleets by 40%. More people could get around in fewer cars for less money. We could reduce car ownership, and free up curbs and parking lots for new uses.

But it turns out that just like with widening highways, human behavior responds to the increased efficiency by stepping up the demand to reach the previous equilibrium again.

Because mainstream media said so!

Tbf uber pool DID help in theory alleviate a bit of traffic but americans are allergic to sharing rides. And even then buses are several times more efficient.

I imagine that the fact that you call cars with an app instead of waiting for an empty taxi to pass by is more efficient, and you can have less cars for the same number of passengers. Basically having less empty taxis on the road.

I know it's a stretch, but this is the only way I can see Uber reducing traffic.

Uber does have a carpool option. But I'm not sure how often it gets used.

I don't understand how anyone ever thought they could reduce traffic. Even if they only served people who would otherwise have driven, a cab replacing an A to B and a C to D journey has to do three journeys to replace those two (A to B, B to C, and C to D). It was always going to increase traffic.

The text of the article explains that it's based on reducing the number of taxis (or cars for hire generally) on the road, reducing parking spots, and increasing carpooling:

In the 2010s, the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where one of us serves as the director, was at the forefront of using Big Data to study how ride-hailing and ride-sharing could make our streets cleaner and more efficient. The findings appeared to be astonishing: With minimal delays to passengers, we could match riders and reduce the size of New York City taxi fleets by 40%. More people could get around in fewer cars for less money. We could reduce car ownership, and free up curbs and parking lots for new uses.

This utopian vision was not only compelling but within reach. After publishing our results, we started the first collaboration between MIT and Uber to research a then-new product: Uber Pool (now rebranded UberX Share), a service that allows riders to share cars when heading to similar destinations for a lower cost.

It goes on to explain that it's a problem of induced demand (same phenomenon that causes highway expansion not to actually help with congestion in the long term):

Alas, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Our research was technically right, but we had not taken into account changes in human behavior. Cars are more convenient and comfortable than walking, buses and subways — and that is why they are so popular. Make them even cheaper through ride-sharing and people are coaxed away from those other forms of transit.

This dynamic became clear in the data a few years later: On average, ride-hailing trips generated far more traffic and 69% more carbon dioxide than the trips they displaced.

We were proud of our contribution to ride-sharing but dismayed to see the results of a 2018 study that found that Uber Pool was so cheap it increased overall city travel: For every mile of personal driving it removed, it added 2.6 miles of people who otherwise would have taken another mode of transportation.

Idea is that instead of 4 cars containing 1 person in each of them you get 1 car with 4 people in it. No idea how well it works in practice though, I assume most people who already drive will want to keep driving alone even if it is more expensive.

Not only that, it also takes passengers away from public transit because door to door is more convenient than waiting for a bus or changing lines in between.

You've never heard about capitalism? Zero labor cost means it's cheaper to have 100 taxis in your fleet when you would normally have 10.

If anything, I see it becoming the board game Othello to a degree, the big companies flood every inch of road with their cars instead of the other guys. I'd even see them using groups of their robo cars to create intentional traffic for their competitors, only to then communicate back to their own fleet where the only viable route through town is. This way it's like a tooth eat and if you want to get across town, you know it will take you 15 mins with Y brand and an hour plus with A brand.

Wake up and smell the death march called endless corporate growth.

It's almost like people don't enjoy sharing rides with crackheads that don't really reach their destination...

Need to undo this 1950s era of urban planning and transportation

I was a kid when I saw it, but wasn’t that one of the end messages of the movie, Roger Rabbit?

Here ya go https://archive.md/dJLiu

The original concept of Uber was ride-sharing, where it would match up riders going to a similar destination, like the airport. But I haven't seen that option pop up in quite a while.

Yeah that's a silly statement, guarantee there was little altruism when they, like most, started their business.

In their beginning, Uber was a special purpose vehicle for Big Tech (=their investors) to perform political changes in all kinds of foreign countries, making them compliant, using methods that the others couldn't use openly.

Could you talk more about this / link things to read about it?

Oh god thank you for that depressing image

On the one hand, you are right. On the other hand, will the consumers of robotaxis want to use small cars or will they push for full size ones?