| One big advantage of Google's solution over Uber's is the relative climate change impact of your transportation choice. In reverse order of benefit, based on my amatuer analysis: * For a baseline, let's use one party (generally a person or a couple) with a personal car. Traveling someplace creates P marginal greenhouse gasses (GHG), plus there is the fixed cost of manufacturing the car (but I have no idea how much that is). * Uber and taxis net GHG emissions should be worst and greater than P: Your trip uses P but added to that is the GHG generated when the taxi/Uber car has no passenger and is 'cruising'. Also, I expect taxis/Uber cars are larger on average than personal cars, and thus less fuel efficient, because they need to fit several adults comfortably in the back. If you give up a personal car for Uber/taxis, then you get the manufacturing benefit. * Car share services (e.g., ZipCar) should net less than P emissions, if you give up a personal car when you join. The car is parked when nobody is driving it, so the marginal cost of one trip is P. But it also eliminates the emissions created from manufacturing the car, whatever that is. EDIT: As hayksaakian points out below, this is the same as buying a used car. * Google's RideWidth's net GHG emissions should be much less than P: For every added passenger, one less car is on the road emitting P. * Public transit probably is second best. The marginal GHG emissions of the bus/train carrying your fat a-- on its normal route probably don't amount to much. On the other hand, it probably depends on the average passenger load of the vehicle -- certainly a train/bus with only you on it costs much more per passenger than P, but those fixed costs are spread over many more passengers than Uber/taxis. * Best of all, of course, are biking or walking. Though has anyone calculated the GHG emissions of the human energy cycle, from growing the cattle feed to transport to refrigeration to cooking to human methane emissions? Also not calculated are the effect your use of one service or another has on demand, driving up the number of Uber/taxi/busses, etc. on the road. |