Transport accounts for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, so there is a clear need to make the sector as sustainable as possible. In our cities, much of these efforts involve the use of public transport, but the popularity of public transport has been affected by the rise in ride-sharing apps, like Uber and Lyft. A recent study from the University of Michigan explores how this has affected the sustainability of urban transportation.

The researchers focused their efforts on Chicago and explored whether people were migrating from public transport to ridesharing. They were particularly interested in the value people assign to their time, with people often saying how much they appreciated the time they saved by using ride sharing, with the average figure of $34 per hour, which is roughly the same as the average hourly wage in the city.

Convenience matters

The findings reinforce that while making transport more sustainable is obviously important, it’s equally important to make sure that it’s convenient or people simply won’t use it.

The researchers analyzed over 200,000 rides taken by users of Uber et al. They then calculated how the cost of each trip compared with making a similar trip using public transport. This allowed them to gauge a monetary value for the time saved by using ride-sharing versus public transport. They also captured things such as congestion, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions to try and garner a holistic perspective.

The results show that charging people for these social harms wouldn’t have a great impact on usage patterns as people place a greater emphasis on convenience.

“If you were to tax riders based on how much harm they cause, it’s not clear they would behave any differently,” the researchers explain.

Making gains

Rather than things like congestion pricing, the research suggests that larger gains could be made elsewhere. For instance, if ride-sharing vehicles could all be electric, this would reduce emissions and air pollution by a huge amount.

This reduction was about the same as the emissions produced by public transport, but this is partly a result of the low utilization of public transport. Indeed, the study found that most ride-sharing usage was for journeys that could have been made by public transport, with transit options typically only seeing utilization rates of around 20%.

Part of the reason for this is that a significant amount of user time is spent both walking to a stop and then waiting for the transit to arrive. In other words, half the time people aren’t actually riding anywhere, which obviously isn’t the case with ride-sharing.

There are clear challenges involved in reducing both, but attempts to do so would seemingly improve usage and reduce the allure of ride-sharing services.