GCC: CU Denver study finds ride-hailing increases vehicle miles traveled

Ride-hailing accounts for approximately an 83.5% increase in the miles cars travel for ride-hailing passengers in Denver’s metro area, according to a study published this week in the journal Transportation by researchers at the University of Colorado Denver.

• For this study, the conservative (lower end) percentage of deadheading miles from ride-hailing is 40.8%. The average vehicle occupancy is 1.4 passengers per ride, while the distance weighted vehicle occupancy is 1.3 without accounting for deadheading and 0.8 when accounting deadheading. When accounting for mode replacement and issues such as driver deadheading, we estimate that ride-hailing leads to approximately 83.5% more VMT than would have been driven had ride-hailing not existed. Although our data collection focused on the Denver region, these results provide insight into the impacts of ride-hailing.
  
  —Henao and Marshall

Lead author and CU Denver civil engineering Ph.D. graduate Alejandro Henao signed up as a driver for Uber and Lyft. He collected exclusive driver data providing hundreds of rides throughout the Denver metropolitan area in fall 2016.

The researcher-driver collected real-time data and surveyed passengers for feedback and demographic information. By surveying passengers, Henao learned that a combined 34% of his ride-hailing passengers would have taken transit, walked, or bicycled if ride-hailing hadn’t existed.

[list]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.

—Alejandro Henao[/list]

There is 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, conservatively. . . .

In this study, passenger demographics were better distributed across Denver’s income and education demographics compared to research conducted in other cities; however, the city’s disadvantaged populations are underrepresented. Further research is needed to study the equity impacts of ride-haling services, Marshall said.

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GetOffYourGas said:

Not surprising at all. Does this not completely nullify the supposed benefit of Uber when it first came out? I thought the intent was to provide transportation to passengers when you were going to be travelling anyway, and not to become a one-man taxi service.

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RegGuheert said:

GetOffYourGas said:

Not surprising at all. Does this not completely nullify the supposed benefit of Uber when it first came out? I thought the intent was to provide transportation to passengers when you were going to be travelling anyway, and not to become a one-man taxi service.

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IMO the intent behind Uber was to replace full-time, licensed taxi drivers with benefits with unlicensed contractors with no benefits.

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The average taxi cab driver made $25,020 in 2011, according to the BLS. This salary is a combination of payments for fares and tips from passengers. Cab drivers do not have very generous work benefits compared to other fields.

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"It starts with understanding that the world is going to go self-driving and autonomous," he told Business Insider in an interview.

"So if that's happening, what would happen if we weren't a part of that future? If we weren't part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way," he said.

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Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car—And How It Will Reshape Our World

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"Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century"; Mitchell, William J; Borroni-Bird, Christopher E.; and Burns, Lawrence D.; 2010. Describes how urban cars can be transformed by a combination of four ideas: transforming the DNA (i.e. design principles) of autos, via electric drive and wireless communications; The Mobility Internet, data sharing between vehicles, parking spaces, roads etc. to minimize congestion and travel time; integration of EVs with a Smart, clean grid; real-time controls for urban mobility and energy systems, i.e. dynamic pricing for electricity, roads, parking, and shared vehicles. Burns was VP of R&D at GM from 1998-2009, Borroni-Bird was Director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts, also at GM; Mitchell is a professor at MIT, and head of the Smart Cities Group there.

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Meet The Father Of The Auto 'Skateboard' Chassis Used By Tesla: Chris Borroni-Bird

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Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead (The MIT Press]

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