NEWS BLIPS
Companies Like Uber & Lyft Increase Traffic in Major Cities
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through The Seattle Times' website.
According to data from the Seattle Department of Transportation for 2017, people took 20 million rides in Seattle with transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft. The rise of Uber and Lyft in Seattle meant about 94 million additional miles were driven on Seattle-area roads in 2017. There are now more than 28,000 licensed TNC drivers in King County, Washington, according to the division of Records and Licensing, yet not all of them are active.
Seattle Times writer David Gutman speaks with Bruce Schaller, an independent transportation consultant, and relays what he has to say on the subject in his article: “Without public policy intervention, big American cities are likely to be overwhelmed with more automobility, more traffic and less transit,” Schaller wrote, “and drained of the density and diversity which are indispensable to their economic and social well-being.” Uber and Lyft aren’t really causing people to drive less; they’re pulling passengers who otherwise would walk, take the bus or just stay home, reports Schaller’s study of nine major cities. "A primary goal of urban mobility is to provide enough different mobility choices that people can choose to avoid the high cost of car ownership. Lyft and Uber are a big part of this equation," said Andrew Glass Hastings, SDOT’s director of transit and mobility. “We have increasing TNC use, but also increasing transit use as well as increasing bike share and car share use.”
Read more on this topic at The Seattle Times.