Uber and Lyft, Redux

A few months ago, I shared a series of tweets from Angie Schmitt, staff writer for Streetsblog USA, about Uber and Lyft. At the time, she was commenting on their effect on transit ridership.

Today there's news that cities that have allowed these so-called "ride-sharing" companies experienced a significant increase in the number of serious and fatal accidents, and you may have heard the recent headlines about rapes and assaults by men pretending to be ride-share drivers (or who sometimes are ride-share drivers).

Angie has more to say.

My guess is with Uber and Lyft, a bunch of REALLY bad stuff is going to come to light though investigative reporting, other channels. We're just going to end up back where we started with something that looks a lot like taxi regulations. Because they were put in place for good reasons. Part of the reason the REALLY bad stuff hasn't come to light yet is because Uber and Lyft have all the data and they certainly aren't sharing anything that makes them look bad.

A bunch of Silicon Valley millionaires/billionaires cashed in on subverting democratically enacted safety regulations (taxi regulations). And a bunch of people got killed as a result.

Silicon Valley is more depressing than Wall Street. These companies like Uber and Lyft become "too big to fail" without even making any money ever. Whatever half-baked they decide to throw limitless cash behind we're just stuck with.

Uber and Lyft tossed all our safety and labor regulations in the trash, basically. And they STILL can't turn a profit. These Silicon Valley guys are supposed to be these geniuses? It's a nightmare.

On the driver/interpersonal safety issue:

The thing is, Uber and Lyft haven't really done much of anything to assure stuff like this [driving off with the door open so the passenger falls out] wouldn't happen. Our trust that they would is based on their ubiquity.

When you get in a car with someone, you are putting your life in their hands. A five-star rating is enough to make you feel safe buying a used book from someone. But maybe it's not such a great system for drivers?

I bet if some reporter started soliciting scary stuff that people have experienced on Uber and Lyft, it would quickly get to be a pretty overwhelming project.

As urbanist Yonah Freemark summarized,

Study finds Uber and Lyft are causing an increase in miles traveled, gas consumption, congestion, and crashes. Ride-hailing services are substituting for transit in cities with higher transit use.