Uber Launches Own Traffic Estimates to Fuel Demand Beyond Cars – TechCrunch



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If the whole map is red and the ride is short, you may prefer to take an Uber. JUMP Bike instead of an UberX. Or at least if you find yourself stuck to a bumper, the warning could make you less likely to get angry in the middle of the race and take it into account.

This week, TechCrunch spotted Uber in overlay of blue, yellow and red traffic bars on your road map before greeting you. In response to the TechCrunch survey, Uber confirmed that traffic estimates have been quietly testing Android users in recent months and that the pilot program has recently expanded to a subset of iOS users. He is already alive for all pilots.

The congestion indicators are based on Uber's traffic information from its historical travel data, which is 10 billion trips plus real-time data from its drivers' phones, rather than Google's estimates that already feed the maps. Uber.

If traffic estimates were to be made, they could make users more tolerant with longer ETAs and less likely to check a competing application, knowing that their driver might take longer to recover because congestion occurs during the journey. they could be more patient in the middle of the blocked streets.

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But, more interestingly, seeing the traffic conditions could help users choose the time to take one of Uber's off-car choices. They could pass in front of the traffic of one of Uber's new electric SUVs or buy a public transport ticket inside Uber thanks to its new partnership with Masabi for access to buses and MTA trains over New York in other cities. Less expensive and less labor intensive for Uber, these options make more sense for drivers, more traffic is important. It is advantageous for the company to orient users to the most satisfying mode of transport, and road information could point them in the right direction.

Through a program called Uber Movement, the company started sharing its traffic data with municipal authorities early last year. The goal was to give planners the proof they need to make their streets more efficient. Uber has long argued that this can help reduce traffic by bringing people into shared rides and eliminating circles in search of parking spaces. But a new study showed that for every kilometer of personal driving, Uber and Lyft eliminated, adding 2.8 miles of professional driving for a 180% increase in total traffic.

Uber is always learning if users find useful traffic estimates before considering deploying them permanently to everyone. At present, they appear only on unshared roads UberX, Black, XL, SUV and Taxi before joining a small percentage of users. But Uber's spokesperson has verified that the company's long-term goal is to be able to tell users that the least expensive option is option X, the fastest being option Z. And now that there are so many cars on the road for so long, it has the signals to predict which streets will be smooth and which will be blocked at a given time.

For years, Uber has qualified as a logistics company and not a carpool company. Most people gave him a wink. Every company in Silicon Valley tries to reinforce its importance by claiming to conquer a higher level of abstraction. But with the advent of personal modes of transportation such as bikes and scooters on demand, Uber is poised to win the title by taking us from point A to point B, according to our preference.

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