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Last month, Lyft challenged 100 Chicago residents to abandon their personal vehicles for a whole month. In exchange, they would get $ 550 worth of credit to use for Lyft trips, as well as other mobility services such as and transit. The airline was so pleased with the response – one participant said he was inspired by the sale of his car – that he was expanding the challenge to 35 new cities.
Residents of cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, Washington and others will now have the chance to join the second phase of the "Drive Your Car" Challenge, which begins on October 8th and ends on November 6th. Lyft hopes that 2,000 people will be registered. The requirements would remain the same: participants will (symbolically) lock their car keys in a Lyft brand lockbox for 30 days and, in exchange, Lyft will provide a certain amount of credit (which varies from city to city). l & # 39; other). which can be used for Lyft shared routes, bike rides and car trips, as well as bus and metro passes.
John Zimmer, President of Lyft, said it is not a marketing gadget designed to elevate Lyft's brand or promote its desire to become a multimodal one-stop shop for ridesharing, motorcycles, scooters and public transit. accessory effects. This is rather part of a concerted effort to get Americans out of their comfort zone and persuade them to definitely give up the convenience of owning a personal car, he said at the time. an interview with The edge.
"There is enthusiasm to try it," Zimmer said. "By making it a movement, making it an event, people say to themselves," Let me try this experience. They then realize, "Wow, I'm coming back all this time. I am actually saving money. I am more relaxed. "
Zimmer said he was surprised by the reaction to the Chicago challenge, which encouraged him to develop new markets. "Similar to the surprise we had in the early days of Lyft, when people said," Nobody is going to share a ride in someone else's car, "he said," we all know what This sector has evolved and I think what we see are early signs similar to those where there is a lot of enthusiasm to drop your car. "
For years, Zimmer and his co-founder, Logan Green, have been using their platform to promote great ideas about the future of transportation. They predicted the end of owning a personal car, called for more ridesharing and encouraged US households to sell their second car to save money and reduce congestion. Lyft has recently set as a goal that shared trips (carpooling, bike / scooter / car-sharing, etc.) account for 50% of its business by 2020.
It will be interesting to follow the response to the challenge in these different cities, with different levels of transit and density, to see how much Lyft's theory of the end of personal car ownership is echoed across the country. For example, it is objectively easier to drop a personal car in New York, which has robust public transit (or even malfunctions) than in a city like Atlanta, where most residents own a car. Many of the selected cities have the highest car ownership rates in the country: how are they going to meet this challenge? Although nothing is close to a scientific study, the challenge should nevertheless allow Lyft to study interesting data.
While carpoolers do an excellent job of adding non-car options to get around, they also make congestion problems in big cities worse. A recent study by transportation expert Bruce Schaller found that transportation companies such as Uber and Lyft have added 5.7 billion kilometers of driving in the country's nine largest metropolitan areas. Schaller's report aligns with an October study published by UC Davis. He found that 49 to 61 per cent of horse riding trips in American cities would never have occurred, whether by walking, cycling or public transit.
Zimmer submitted that the traveling transportation industry, represented by Uber and Lyft, represents a fraction of the percentage of vehicle kilometers traveled (VMT). This company is still in its infancy, he said, and therefore can not be held responsible for the rise of bottling in the cities. "It's early, it's super early in this area," Zimmer said, "I would say there are probably cases where it's already reducing VMT, and there may be cases where this is not the case. case.
The challenge of "ditch you car", in addition to Lyft's work on bikes, scooters and transit, is an example of "working to be part of the solution," said Zimmer.
Others claim that this is not the case as soon as Zimmer believes, and the sharing of traffic is already caught in the public consciousness. The momentum that propels the growth of local businesses is a powerful combination of intense competition, venture capital financing and a paradigm shift in technology. Unless the cities act, these cars will continue to clog. Zimmer says Lyft is dedicated to working with cities to find solutions. But there will be times when cities take extreme measures – such as the New York City vote to limit the number of new transport vehicles for a year – that go against Lyft's activities. If the problem continues to worsen, Lyft may be facing its own challenge.
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