Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Uber Is Taking Millions Of Manhattan Rides Away From Taxis; But the Taxi Sector Remains Strong

In response to a Freedom of Information Law request that FiveThirtyEight  made in July, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission last month sent the analytics news web site the Uber pickup data from January to June of this year.

After breaking the data down, they concluded that "throughout Manhattan, riders have shifted from taxis to Ubers millions of times, perhaps attracted to features Uber promotes as advantages: newer cars, no need to hail, driver ratings and no tipping." These features, though, don’t appear to have pulled Manhattanites from their private cars, subways, buses or bikes: The total number of taxi and Uber rides didn’t grow.


It appears that the overwhelming majority in Manahattan still prefer to stick their hands up in the air to hail vehicle transportation, In other words. Uber is somewhat of an inferior service to just raising your hand, and benefits from the government created oligopoly in the taxi service, which prevents an expansion of the traditional taxi supply.

For high traffic areas wher, without government prohibition taxis would be cruising aplenty, Uber wouldn't have a chance. 


  -RW

1 comment:

  1. Great observation. The best solution is a complete separation of government and transportation.

    ReplyDelete