Quote:
Originally Posted by left of center
Why charge Uber and Lyfts more? Because of technology, they are literally the most efficient personal transport options in the city. Once a drop off is made, within seconds they have a pickup which an algorithm has determined to require the least amount of driving to reach. They utilize 95% of the time on the road ferrying people to and from where they need to go.
Taxis on the other hand, can't hope to achieve that kind of efficiency. If they have a passenger 50% of the time they are on the road that would be considered a good statistic. They might drive for many minutes looking for a passenger, circling blocks or causing traffic by standing in busy areas like Union Station, Millennium Park or Michigan Ave waiting for a passenger to hail them.
The only vehicles I would think could justifiably be charged a congestion fee would be private vehicles carrying only a single individual to and from the central area, and only during rush periods. Carpoolers, taxis and Ubers/Lyfts should be exempt. Although with all that being said, I don't think Chicago is at the point where this would need to be implemented just yet.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
Meh, it’s only a matter of time when Central Chicago traffic will be as bad as Manhattan’s. As I’ve argued before, Chicago’s core only recently has become viewed as a place to live as opposed to a place to work and shop.
Plus there are a bunch of knuckleheads here who insist on driving everywhere, just to add to the mix.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by marothisu
What's your point? I've lived in Manhattan for the last year and previously was travelling for work and was in Manhattan for 4 to 5 says a week for almost every week for 2.5 years before moving here. I have been taking cabs and uber way more than I should be in the last 3.5 years in NYC. The traffic here blows on the side streets for much greater distances. Chicago may have areas of a mile where it sucks while in Manhattan I've been in traffic jams in the city, not freeways, that lasted for 3 or 4 miles. Never had this in Chicago for non special events. This is a good thing for Chicago. Yes, Chicago is adding more density, and yes traffic is getting worse but it's a long ways before its like Manhattan. The issue with Manhattan is that it has high levels of density for miles on end - and while car ownership is not that high, the daytime population is huge and there's a lot of non Manhattanites that rely on cabs and what not, and residents too.
For Chicago though, this is a good thing. It's one thing you don't want to "beat" Manhattan in. Hopefully as Chicago adds more big density, it'll see a drop in car ownership, but this is also why walkability is important for this type of thing and why in these high density areas that hopefully retail/commercial/etc spaces get built and get taken up by business. Let's hope that the traffic never gets like Manhattans on the regular streets though. I'm excluding Kennedy expressway from this  (though I've had many times on BQE that was just as bad - but - this is another story). |
Quote:
Originally Posted by PKDickman
A recent UC Davis study says;
"Directionally, this new evidence of mode substitution suggests that ride-hailing is likely adding vehicle miles traveled to transportation systems in major cities. The 49% to 61% of ride-hailing trips that would have not been made at all, or by walking, biking, or transit, are adding vehicles to the road. In addition, depending the volume of deadheading miles associated with ride-hailing trips (miles traveled without a passenger, which have previously estimated to be 20% to 50%), the VMT associated with a ride-hailing trip is potentially higher than a trip taken in a personal vehicle."
I'm not sure where you came up with 95%, but it is not borne out by studies.
Given the tidal nature of travel to and from the CBD, it is unreasonable to think that some magic algorithm has solved the problem of perpetual motion.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JK47
Yet according to the NYT in order for wait times to remain reasonable at any given moment in time 40% to 70% of the rideshare vehicles in operation waiting for riders to be assigned. Having tens of thousands of cars prowling around for riders isn't ideal nor is it particularly safe or efficient considering their disruptive driving patterns. A lot of friction is the result of the fact that ridershare drivers act like rank amateurs.
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I think the rationale for charging Uber/Lyft MORE is that their cost of entry was essentially zero, while taxis had to buy medallions. Nobody has yet addressed that simple "fairness factor," which really should be addressed simply because otherwise we end up with the government rewarding scofflaws which is not a sustainable model of governance. So you either require Uber/Lyft drivers to buy medallions or you charge them more in other ways to at least somewhat offset the absolute crap treatment of taxi drivers by allowing people to do an end-run around existing laws. Requiring Lyft/Uber drivers to buy medallions isn't a realistic goal, but saying that you *either* have a medallion that exempts you from certain other taxes, *or* you pay extra fees to offer essentially the same service. You can argue all day that if taxis had come up with their own Uber/Lyft style service they wouldn't have ended up where they are, but at the end of the day you have thousands of drivers who played by the rules and are being punished for that through loss of equity in their medallions. You can't, as a government, reward scofflaws because at the end of the day you're rewarding criminal behavior ("criminal" might be too strong a word, but it's essentially something along those lines that Uber/Lyft drivers were doing).
So, yes, charge anyone without a medallion congestion fees. They can avoid those fees by buying a medallion, or they can pay-as-they-go without a medallion. It strikes me as a good balance between addressing the scofflaw factor while still allowing this new, modern transportation model while also getting a new revenue stream that can be assigned to public transit or any number of other transportation-related needs.
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