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SAN FRANCISCO – Uber, Lyft and services like these have contributed to half of the traffic growth in San Francisco in six years, according to a report released Tuesday – but transport experts believe the situation is much more complicated.
Between 2010 and 2016, traffic has increased dramatically: average speeds in San Francisco have slowed by about 26%, the number of hours spent crawling at these reduced speeds has increased by about 40,000 hours and total kilometers traveled increased by 630,000, according to a report by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA).
However, even if anecdotally, some have thought that Uber, Lyft and other similar mobile services could partially explain this traffic, companies are reluctant to share their data with cities and other public bodies, said Joe Castiglione, Transportation Authority. Assistant Director of Technology, Data and Analysis and author of the report. There was therefore no way to quantify the impact of these new services. (In California, the Public Utilities Commission collects data from Uber and Lyft as well as mobile phone services, but has so far refused to share them, he said.)
Thus, Castiglione, along with researchers from the University of Kentucky, used data that computer scientists at Northeastern University, based in Boston, were able to gather from Uber and Lyft, including specific data in San Francisco. They combined it with the commercial data of INRIX, a company specializing in large data sets and producing an annual global congestion report, as well as data collected from changes to bike lanes and public transit, as well as population and employment data.
And what they found was not so surprising, Castiglione said: Mobile services have contributed to the growth of traffic jams. What was surprising, he said, is how much. According to the report, mobile phone services accounted for 55% of the decrease in speed, 51% for the growth of time spent in traffic jams and 47% for the increase in the number of kilometers traveled during the year. six years.
But not all parts of the city have been affected in the same way. According to the report, travel services from the city center had a much greater impact on the city center than on the west and south. They contributed more to nightly traffic jams than daily commuting.
"This is the first case where a person could actually assign a number," he said. "And, because it was such an important part, we subjected it to scrutiny."
Lyft and Uber both rejected the finding, saying researchers had ignored other factors, such as growth in tourism and deliveries, or how rising incomes were changing travel and consumption patterns. people. There was no reliable data on new delivery services, such as UberEats, said Castiglione, but the report reflects the growth of tourism and commercial vehicles.
The transport experts, however, took the side of Uber and Lyft. Elliot Martin, a research and development engineer at the Berkeley University Center for Research on Sustainable Transportation, said Elliot Martin. And while the study takes into account the growth in population and employment in the other half of the worsening of traffic, Martin said that these two variables alone could oversimplify the equation.
"It is difficult to unravel all of these impacts together," he said. "You are talking about a period of time when there were huge changes going on in the city."
It's also not productive to play the "blame game," said Gerry Tierney, associate director of architecture and design firm Perkins + Will. If transportation services such as Uber and Lyft did not provide a better experience than traditional forms of transit, people would not pay, he said.
"These services respond to real demand," he said.
And, for their part, Uber and Lyft said they hoped to be part of the solutions that SFCTA wants to use. Traffic jams are not good for either company, their representatives said. And both have put in place new services, some of which have only recently been deployed, to reduce people's dependence on cars.
Earlier this year, Uber launched its ExpressPool service, which uses a fixed route and forces citizens to walk a few blocks from designated meeting points to more efficiently transport people around the city. In addition, both companies have purchased bike sharing services that they believe will help reduce car travel.
Uber representatives said the company was already working with San Francisco to generate dedicated transit funding and that it was ready to help the city with other solutions to reduce traffic , such as the creation of lanes reserved for public transit, the increase in the adoption of the bicycle and the limitation of travel vehicles. Representatives of Lyft suggested introducing congestion pricing and building more housing near public transit to reduce traffic.
"Our mission statement … is essentially about giving people the opportunity to go wherever they go in a safe and reliable way," said Lauren Alexander, Lyft spokeswoman. "We understand that there are problems, and we absolutely want to be part of the solution."
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