Ride-service poll cuts off some data
San Franciscans view ondemand ride-hailing services such as Uber, Lyft and Chariot in a positive light, according to a poll being released Tuesday by the Bay Area Council.
However, the group edited out of its final release some poll results that were unfavorable to the companies, which are among the council’s 315 members. The council, a business-backed nonprofit that advocates on public policy issues, said the edits were not at the behest of the ride-hailing companies.
A majority of the 600 San Francisco voters surveyed — 64 percent — said they had a favorable impression of ridehailing services, which the poll defined as Uber and Lyft cars, plus Chariot, a Ford Motor Co.-owned shuttle company that operates vans along popular commute routes. A similar number (66 percent) said they had a good opinion of Muni, the city’s bus system.
Poll respondents described ride-hailing services as good for the city (68 percent), making it easier to get around (82 percent), reducing dependence on private cars (67 percent) and lessening drunken driving (87 percent). Just over half (53 percent) said the services ease connections with public transit.
But for some hot-button issues, the report and an accompanying press release downplayed or even removed some results.
“Voters support a requirement for ride-hailing compa-
nies to share data with the city, and are divided on restricting the number that can operate,” read a headline in a slide presentation provided to The Chronicle. When The Chronicle asked for more details about how many voters supported the data requirement, the outside firm that performed the survey for the council said it provided the wrong document.
“That text was accidentally left in from an earlier draft version,” Ruth Bernstein, senior principal of EMC Research, wrote in an email. She provided an updated PowerPoint with no mention of data sharing. Instead, the text now reads, “Almost twothirds of voters support more ‘white curb’ space for easier drop-offs” — something that all three companies are eager to see happen.
Uber is locked in a legal battle with San Francisco, which wants the ride-hailing company to disgorge data about its operations so the city can ensure it follows laws and doesn’t increase congestion. Last week, Lyft, which has complied with a subpoena for such data, reached an agreement with City Attorney Dennis Herrera on how the information can be shared.
Rufus Jeffris, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council, said it was uncomfortable with how the data-sharing question was worded, “so we kept those results out.” It also omitted some other findings, such as attitudes on self-driving cars, he said, and may release those in the future. While Lyft, Uber and Chariot reviewed the results, the companies did not ask the group to edit them, he said.
On another controversial topic, the survey showed that almost half of respondents (48 percent) opposed limiting the number of Uber, Lyft and Chariot vehicles on the road. A slightly smaller number (44 percent) said they support such limits. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points, which means those results are virtually tied.
However, a news release on the report spun it differently.
“The poll found there is little support for restricting the number of ride-hailing vehicles on the streets, with 48 percent of voters opposed to limiting their numbers,” the release said, without explaining that almost as many voters had an opposite view. The slide that said — correctly — that voters were “divided on restricting the number that can operate” had that language removed in the final draft.
After The Chronicle asked about it, the council updated its release to say voters had “mixed attitudes” about limiting the number of vehicles.
The survey also showed that ride-hailing is integral for many locals, with 70 percent saying it’s an important part of the city’s transportation system. A third (36 percent) of those surveyed use it at least weekly, and only 15 percent had never used it. About half use public transit frequently. A fifth of those surveyed said they had used ride-hailing more often in the past year.
Overall, those surveyed said regulating tech was a low priority, with only 27 percent saying it was very important to them compared to addressing such issues as homelessness (73 percent), affordable housing (56 percent) and neighborhood crime (50 percent).
EMC Research conducted the web survey of randomly selected voters Jan. 23-31.