It has become fairly common to blame Uber (and ridesharing in general) for increased traffic congestion. I hear it all the time: "If only there weren't so many Ubers on the road, traffic would flow more freely." While there are studies suggesting that "deadheading" miles do have a negative impact and that Uber can draw people away from public transit (that's bad), I think it's important to consider the bigger picture here. So let's try and do that today.
Firstly, let's think about who traffic congestion directly impacts (indirectly it's everyone). If you're a pedestrian, you don't care about traffic congestion. In fact, maybe you gain satisfaction from seeing other people stuck in it. (There's even a German word for this feeling.) Similarly, if you're riding the subway, taking any form of transit on its own right-of-way, or riding a bike, you likely also don't care about traffic congestion. It doesn't directly impact you.
Where you do care about congestion is if you're in something like a bus that is stuck in traffic or if you're driving. In the former case, you're probably thinking, "hey why can't these people take the bus like me. Then we'd have less traffic!" And in the latter case you're probably thinking, "if only there weren't so many Ubers and bike lanes, then I wouldn't be stuck in traffic!" Ironically, this is arguably the biggest segment of people who feel they are being impacted by Ubers.
Secondly, let's think about how Uber vs. driving might impact traffic congestion differently. In both cases, I would think that the majority of use cases involve one person (excluding drivers in the case of Uber) going to their desired destination. So from a raw space per person perspective, they both take up a similar amount of urban space.
The differences are that the Uber likely had some amount of deadhead miles. In other words, it spent time driving around looking for its next passenger. And it likely targeted already busy areas because that's where it was more likely to find someone. Individual drivers don't do this. They go from point A to point B.
However -- and this is a big however -- drivers do require parking once they get to where they're going. Ubers don't. This both takes up more space and oftentimes requires some amount of circling around. This is a significant difference and it begs the question: which is worse? Deadhead miles or all of the parking that cars generally require? I would argue the latter.
Where I'm going with all of this is that I think the criticism of Uber is misdirected. It doesn't get at the real underlying problem. If traffic congestion exists, it is because they are too many cars for a finite amount of road space. This includes the people who choose to drive themselves around. In fact, you could argue that they're the most impactful to cities. The way you solve this is simple: you price congestion and you encourage alternative forms of mobility.
Everything else is just a distraction.
Over the years on this blog, we've spoken a lot about dynamic pricing when it comes to roads and traffic congestion. And in this instance, the principal intents are to price congestion, improve traffic flows, and encourage other modes of transport. It follows the logic that if you're going to tax things, tax the things you want less of.
But what about using dynamic pricing for the opposite purpose -- to induce demand?
Diana Lind recently wrote about this here and talked about how London is exploring using dynamic pricing on its transit system. But rather than increasing prices during periods of high demand, I would imagine that the idea is to reduce prices when demand is lower. Already, it is piloting reduced fares on Fridays when its ridership drops by about 10%.
It's an interesting idea because, if done correctly, it should get more bums into seats on transit. And maybe it's actually a more equitable pricing model.
Let's assume that you're Mayor of your city and that, for whatever reason, you have no need to pander to voters. You're a benevolent dictator. You can do whatever you think is best overall for the city and it will just happen. What would you do? This is more or less the question I asked on Twitter this morning, and I think it's only fair that I answer my own question. So here is a non-exhaustive list of items that came to mind while thinking of Toronto:
Substantially increase the pay of public sector workers throughout the city and bonus them based on measurable outcomes. Forget things like time limits on development applications; instead align incentives. For example, if we're trying to get more shovels in the ground on affordable housing, incentivize people based on building permits issued. I'll never forget what Roger Martin told me while I was at Rotman. When he became Dean of the school, Rotman was a whatever business school that wasn't faring all that competitively in the rankings. One of the problems he discovered was that the school's professors were getting paid far less than those at Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, and so on. So if you were a star, why would you ever want to teach at Rotman? He immediately matched the salaries of those top-tier schools and then, not surprisingly, the top-tier talent arrived. You get what you pay for.
Immediately price roads and congestion, and direct, to the fullest extent possible, the funds toward transit and cycling infrastructure. At the same time, the planning and building of transit would be depoliticized. There would be a reccurring funding stream and a plan that we're continually building out. Minimize protracted debates. Never stop building. There's a lot of talk this mayor election about solving traffic congestion. I have yet to see a plan that will actually work. Accurately pricing congestion likely won't be popular, but I can guarantee you that it will be highly effective.
Ensure that property taxes are sustainably covering the costs of operating the city and then, at a minimum, peg all future increases to CPI.
Make any new housing development less than 12 storeys as-of-right. That would mean, no rezoning process and no site plan approval; just straight to building permit.
Empower the private sector to build affordable housing through incentives and subsidies. Affordable housing isn't feasible to build on its own, which is why nobody is doing it. Inclusionary zoning also won't get us there. Make developers want to build it and they'll do it.
Liberalize licensing and cut red tape to empower small entrepreneurs across the city in various industries. A perfect example in my mind is street food. Toronto is the most diverse city in the world with some of the best restaurants, and yet the only thing you can buy on the street is a stupid hot dog. If we empowered small entrepreneurs to setup shop on our streets, we would easily have the best street food scene in the world. And I am positive that there are countless other latent opportunities in this city that are being held back by dumb and archaic rules.
Make dramatic improvements to our public realm with an eye toward becoming the most beautiful and livable city in the world. Finally pedestrianize Kensington Market, remove the elevated Gardiner Expressway, make it so that we can swim in the Lake, build beautiful public washrooms all across the city that are actually open and aren't gross, and the list goes on. And yes, "beauty" should be requirement so that we don't end up with shit like this.
Focus on art, design, culture, and innovation as central pillars of Toronto's brand. Miami is a good example of what this approach -- along with favourable taxes and nice weather -- can do for a city. I've said this before, but here's just one example: Toronto is in many ways the birthplace of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. Why is nobody talking about this? Why are we not celebrating and leveraging this? It's a missed opportunity. Broadly speaking though, I think just having and doing three things can be effective in promoting new ideas for these pillars: have reasonably affordable housing, be a city that young people want to live in, and remain open and tolerant to immigrants.
Stop thinking of the night-time economy as a nuisance and instead think of it as a powerful economic development tool. I recently responded to this "night economy survey" that the City of Toronto released and the obvious bias is that nighttime things are seen as a terrible nuisance. In other words, "tell us how do we make all of this less annoying for grouchy voters." My response was to extend last call to 4am and to start thinking of it as an opportunity to draw in young people, tourists, and whoever else. This complements my previous point.
This is, again, a completely non-exhaustive list. But if I had to summarize the overall ambition, it would be to make Toronto a truly exceptional and remarkable city. We should never be happy with mediocrity.
What else would you do? Leave a comment below.
Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash