[atlasunshrugged]

I think a lot of this gets solved if the city cracks down on crime and cleans up public transport. I've lived in downtown SF (5th and Mission) as well as across the Bay Area and avoided public transport other than Caltrain (even then, the SF station was not great) because of so much vagrancy, people doing drugs on the bus and metro, and just being worried about personal safety. I personally still didn't buy a car and just walked or took a Lyft/Uber most places in the end but I can see why many refuse to give up cars until public transport is safe enough for the average person who can afford an alternative.

[HPsquared]

Taxis are just awful for traffic: every journey they drive twice as far as a private car (need to drive to the customer first, then take them to destination) and they spend all day driving around, idling etc. Granted if they are actively driving around, they don't take parking spaces. But they increase congestion instead.

[sokoloff]

Surely the average deadhead to pickup leg is shorter than the occupied leg, right? If I think of my typical Uber experience, I’m often 3-6 minutes from being picked up and I think I’m usually in the Uber for 15-30 minutes (with occasional longer outliers and almost never a shorter outlier).

[atlasunshrugged]

I agree, but I wonder what the counterfactual climate impact is for someone who takes a few taxi rides a week but without them would have to buy a car instead (which of course also then needs physical space for parking)