Traffic schooling

Congestion is getting worse in San Francisco, and finally city officials have someone to blame: Uber and Lyft.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority released a new study that found ride-hailing companies are responsible for about half of the increase in the city’s traffic congestion from 2010 to 2016, the six years the authority studied.

“Vehicle hours of delay on the major roadways increased by 40,000 hours on a typical weekday,” the authority wrote in the study. “When compared to employment and population growth and network capacity shifts (such as for a bus or bicycle lane), transportation network companies accounted for approximately 50 percent of the change in congestion.”

A recovering economy, lots of new jobs, and increases in the city’s population all contributed to more traffic congestion over this six-year period, the study found.

But ride-hailing has had the biggest impact of all.

The transportation network companies are responsible for about half of the decline in average speed during most times of day.

They increase congestion throughout the city, but especially in the parts of town that were already busiest.

They’re increasingly crowding out transportation options that have much lighter impacts on traffic.

“According to recent studies, between 43 percent and 61 percent of (transportation network company) trips substitute for transit, walk, or bike travel or would not have been made at all,” the authority wrote in the study.

Of course, Uber and Lyft have contested the study’s methodology and its conclusions.

But the smarter solution would be for them to start negotiating with the city now.

Consumers love ride hailing for its convenience and reliability, but the backlash is growing.

Concerns about the way the companies treat their drivers are growing. Congestion pricing, once considered a joke in the Bay Area, has emerged as a serious possibility. A San Francisco tax on ride-hailing trips is scheduled for the November 2019 ballot. If evidence about ride-hailing’s impacts continue to pile up, it may be only the first industry tax of many.

If Uber and Lyft want to protect their businesses, the companies would be wise to cooperate with local officials on real ways to mitigate the impact of their activities instead of offering knee-jerk resistance to requests for data and regulations.

The alternative might be far more restrictions than they expect — and far sooner than they’re expecting them.