Why Uber and Lyft Should Share More Data With Cities

Sharing data to realize mutual benefits that will reduce costs and optimize revenues for both on-demand and public transportation. JL

Douglas McMillan reports in the Wall Street Journal:

People use ride-hailing services most often to shop on weekends and attend social events at night, while relying on public transportation for daily commutes, the study found. More than half, or 54%, of respondents to a survey of 4,500 consumers in seven U.S. cities said they hailed a ride for a recreational or social trip over a three-month period. Only 21% said they had used ride-hailing services to get to work.

A study calls for greater cooperation between ride-hailing companies like Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. and city transit agencies that oversee trains and buses around the world.
Many people who rely on public transportation are also customers of new forms of shared transit, such as ride-hailing and bike-sharing services, the report, commissioned by the Washington, D.C., nonprofit American Public Transportation Association, found.
People use ride-hailing services most often to shop on weekends and attend social events at night, while relying on public transportation for daily commutes, the study found. More than half, or 54%, of respondents to a survey of 4,500 consumers in seven U.S. cities said they hailed a ride for a recreational or social trip over a three-month period. Only 21% said they had used ride-hailing services to get to work.
The overlap suggests an opportunity for ride-hailing companies to work alongside transit agencies, for example by mapping out areas most in need of buses and trains and making transportation more accessible to people with disabilities.
The authors of the report recommended that ride-hailing companies share more of their data about pickups and drop-offs with public transit agencies, who could use it to better understand the movements of commuters. “A ‘walled garden’ model will not work for ride-sourcing companies and other private operators if they expect to take part in a wider mobility ecosystem,” the authors of the report wrote. “Public transit operators, planners, researchers need this data to understand how people are moving and where intervention may be needed.”
Last year, Uber began providing the city of Boston with anonymized information about rides in the hopes the data will help ease traffic congestion and lead to smarter city planning. In New York and some other places, the company has resisted regulators who want more access to its data.
David Plouffe, chief adviser to Uber, said Uber is willing to provide more anonymized, aggregated data to cities so long as it couldn’t be used to find detailed, personal information about the movements of individual users.
“This is an area of continued exploration for us,” Mr. Plouffe said at a Washington briefing held by APTA for journalists and industry professionals. “What data do we have that would not jeopardize rider privacy?”
Morgan Lyons, an assistant vice president at Dallas Area Rapid Transit, said his agency is working with Uber and Lyft to make commuting easier for the growing population in areas outside Dallas public transit lines. “We know folks in those fast growing areas are looking to Lyft and Uber,” Mr. Lyons said. “We need to work with Lyft and Uber to get them connected to our system.”
For example, he said the city’s GoPass system for buying fares could soon help them facilitate the booking of a ride on Uber or Lyft.
The APTA study identified nearly 10% of respondents as “supersharers”— people who have used a combination of ride-hailing, car-sharing and bike-sharing for at least three trips in a three-month period. These people were less likely to own a car and spent less on transportation than other respondents.
The study’s funding came from the Transit Cooperative Research Program Project J-11, which is sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration.