While ride-hailing companies claim they are working to reduce the miles cars put on roads by taking drivers out of their own personal cars, it might be having the opposite effect, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Denver.
The study found that ride-hailing from the likes of Uber and Lyft account for an 83% increase in the miles cars travel for ride-hailing passengers in Denver’s metro area.
CU Denver civil engineering Ph.D. graduate Alejandro Henao signed up as a driver for Uber and Lyft and collected driver data from hundreds of rides throughout the Denver metropolitan area in late 2016.
Henao collected real-time data and surveyed passengers for feedback and demographic information. He learned that a combined 34% of his ride-hailing passengers would have taken transit, walked or bicycled if the service was not available.
"Vehicle miles traveled increased mainly due to two factors: additional empty miles from ride-hailing drivers going around without passengers, and ride-hailing substituting more efficient and sustainable modes such as transit, biking and walking," Henao said.
CMU said there is a decrease in overall transportation efficiency due to more car miles on the road, often traveling without passengers. For every 100 miles carrying passengers, Uber and Lyft drivers travel an additional 69 miles without a passenger.
"Given the lack of data and existing research, this study represents a nice step forward in helping us better understand how ride-hailing impacts the transportation system," said Wes Marshall, associate professor in the Civil Engineering Department at the College of Engineering and Applied Science at CU Denver. "However, cities still need better data to inform policy decisions about the many mobility-disrupting companies, and we have reached a point where we should expect, and probably need to require, more data transparency."
The full research can be found in the journal Transportation.
