Uber is on the front lines about changing our daily commute
Growing up in Palm Beach County gave me a lifetime of happy memories. I also recall losing much of my time to sitting in traffic. Too often, I struggled to find parking in downtown West Palm Beach and missed the first quarter of Dolphins games due to congestion on I-95.
I feel fortunate to now work for Uber, giving me a chance to help shape the future of urban mobility — and what this means for cities and the people who live in them. At Uber, we are focused on ways to cut congestion, pollution and parking, as well as improve access to transportation, by using private cars for public good.
The good news is that there is an alternative to a world that looks like a parking lot and moves like a traffic jam. How do cities get there? The answer lies in affordable, reliable alternatives to individual car ownership. Uber has proven that ride-hailing services can reliably serve every corner of a city.
If public transportation doesn’t get you all the way home, Uber will take you that last mile. By complementing mass transit systems, we are able to extend their reach at no extra cost to taxpayers. As the American Public Transit Association found, people who use ride-hailing services are less likely to own a car, and more likely to take public transportation. This is why many transportation agencies are looking to Uber. For example, in Boston we launched a pilot to help improve the quality of paratransit service for the elderly and people with disabilities while also reducing its cost.
Floridians will give up their cars only if they have affordable and reliable alternatives. Policymakers have been talking about carpooling for years—but the idea never really took off, mostly because it was just too hard.
A few years ago, our engineers noticed that Uber had a lot of duplicate rides: people going to the exact same place at the exact same time. This led to the creation of our carpooling product, uberPOOL. In cities with uberPOOL, over 20 percent of passengers are choosing to share their ride. In the first seven months of 2016, uberPOOL reduced the number of miles driven by 312 million. We are already seeing attitudes to individual car ownership begin to change.
A better future is within our grasp — one where Floridians share rides, have equal access to affordable transportation, spend less of their income on cars or commutes, and less time stuck behind the wheel.