Uber’s city planning expert Andrew Salzberg wants you to consider alternatives to your personal car.
Like many Southern Californians, my commute is no walk in the park. If I leave my house even two minutes later than usual, a cool 30 minutes could be tacked onto my drive.
Unless you live and work in downtown San Diego or are connected to CalTrans’ trolley line, public transportation isn’t an option either. According to Google Maps, my 26-mile commute home from work on public transit—via a train, two buses, and a walk—would take well over two hours.
There are plenty of populous cities in the U.S. that have more functional public transit options and better city planning. Over 55 percent of the population of New York City uses its public transport, with nearly 60 percent of people on the subway and buses commuting to and from work.
But at the end of the day, over 80 percent of travelers in the U.S. drive their cars to end destinations. Carpooling, too, is down 10 percent since the 1980s. And public transportation is usually only feasible in highly populated and urbanized areas. What about everyone else?
Enter real-time ride sharing. From the big companies like Uber and Lyft to smaller, locally-based options, ride sharing has made it easier for just about everyone to travel short distances.
Uber helped my husband get to work after he locked his keys in the house. The ride sharing service helped my colleague get home with the five bags of groceries she purchased but could not carry on the long walk home from the store.
It enables the elderly and disabled to remain independent. Ride sharing companies, in general, assist countless people leaving the bar after last call to make smarter decisions to get home safe and sound.
Ride sharing has proven there is an alternative way to get from point A to point B and back.
But companies like Uber don’t want to just provide another option to some of your driving routines: the company wants to supply you with real and beneficial alternatives to owning and using a personal vehicle, and even provide input on city planning for the future.
There is a litany of supportive options that enable people to walk away from car ownership: think car-sharing through Zipcar or CityCarShare. The benefits of doing so—as you’ll see later—are vast.
So how does Uber fit into this vision of a reliable and revolutionary transportation future? The company is providing input at the city planning level to help regions build the best public transportation possible, leading to companies like Uber filling the gaps.
“Once you break the link to bringing your car with you everywhere you go, people open up to better decision making and more transportation options.”
Behind this vision is Andrew Salzberg, the Head of Transportation Policy and Research at Uber since January of 2016. A graduate of the urban planning master’s program at Harvard, Salzberg worked at the World Bank as an urban transport specialist before joining Uber in 2013.
“I worked on urban transportation projects in emerging markets,” he said. “I got to experience firsthand how investments in transportation can have a long-term impact on cities.
“I’ve been interested in how cities worked since I was a kid,” he continued. “My family never had a car: my father is Dutch, and the Netherlands is known for having bikes everywhere.”
Salzberg and Uber are committed to helping cities get cars off the road through improved transportation infrastructure and city planning expertise.
“If you’re in a city that’s congested and you need your car to pick up your kids after school or make a grocery store run, that means you have to drive in the morning and commute home,” he said. “You’re tied into making your entire day’s worth of transport based on one trip you may need your car for.
“But once you have a backdrop like Uber, everything changes. You can take public transit in the morning, and then you can get a ride home at night, or get the kids after school.
“Once you break the link to bringing your car with you everywhere you go, people open up to better decision making and more transportation options.”
Considering the Alternative
Road congestion and long commutes are standard for so many in the U.S. that it’s hard to believe anything could change it. But if city planning could shift overnight, and public transit was suddenly that much easier to access for the majority of Americans, why should they break the link with their personal cars?
There are obvious reasons to having fewer cars on the road: less time spcient in traffic and a healthier environment due to fewer emissions are just the tip of the iceberg. Factor in a world without parking lots and just imagine the beneficial use of those spaces.
Convenience plays into this too: wouldn’t you rather read the newspaper or a good book, get caught up on your emails instead of sitting in traffic watching the clock count down to when you were supposed to be at work? This is how I would travel if I had a reliable—and quick—public transit option.
With fewer vehicles on the road, federal investment into infrastructure shifts as well.
“Most cars only have one person in them. But if a city like Toronto, for example, could increase the average number of people in cars from its current 1.1 to 1.2, the city could see a $9 billion saving in infrastructure costs,” Salzberg shared.
“That means $9 billion could be reallocated to another cause like education or healthcare.”
Building a Foundation
The “why” is easy to understand. The “how” is far more complex.
The United States has been car obsessed since Ford introduced the Model T. It’s not going to be easy to convince the population to step away from their vehicles willingly. It’s not going to happen overnight, but Uber is setting the foundation now for cities to reach peak public transportation availability through city planning now.
Partnerships
The key to helping cities transform is partnerships with the right people and organizations. Uber’s operational alliances connect the ride sharing company with transportation agencies.
The governor of Massachusetts recently announced an expansion of a pilot program where Uber is an alternative to the city’s paratransit service.
“The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority [MBTA] has a paratransit service designed for people with a disability or who can’t use or get to fixed route transit,” said Salzberg. “The city is required to provide door-to-door service, but it’s not convenient. It’s costly, and the rider has to book 24 hours ahead of time.
“Over the last few months, MBTA has offered Uber as an extension of this service. It’s a win-win for transit service and the city.”
Part of Uber’s focus is working with the best and most brilliant minds in the world, forging relationships with academics to partner on research covering city planning, long-term future car ownership, and transit use.
Reliability, Quality, and Affordability
There is no way anyone would give up using a car daily if there was not a replacement equal to or better than the current experience.
Salzberg argues that Uber has provided an alternative to driving your car that looks competitive and can save lives.
“We offer service 24/7/365. We’ve seen DUI reductions in some cities because late night services are offered at a time when traditional public transit and taxi cabs have trouble meeting the demand. We’re always on and always available.”
Ride sharing companies also serve a much wider geographical array—into suburbs and even small towns.
Price point, too, is imperative to providing commuters and travelers with a different option from their personal vehicles. Uber’s prices have dropped significantly since it launched, and the company is aiming to get to a point where it’s cost-competitive to giving up your car altogether.
Collaboration
Uber shares its API to allow other developers to integrate Uber into their applications. From Transit App to Citymapper to Moovit, apps all over the world are integrating Uber to provide ways for people to book public transport.
Citymapper, in particular, has created a multi-modal option that can provide directions and solutions for an entire journey, even if public transportation can’t get you the entire way.
“Citymapper offers Uber-to-transit as a unified mode. The only reason the app company can do this is because we have an API.”
While this helps developers integrate Uber services, the company’s free tool, Movement, shares insights about traffic and mobility in cities where Uber operates, ultimately helping decision makers for city planning to understand their cities better.
“We asked ourselves what are some of those clear needs on the public side for information and insight that we can build for, that we can build a product to? It’s difficult to do long-range transportation planning and forecasting models of what a city will look like in the next 20 or 30 years. We think that Movement can help.”
Shared Driving Experiences
UberPOOL launched in 2014, allowing passengers to share a ride that was going close to their end destination. Not only does this bring down the cost of a trip, but it could also bring down the number of cars on the road.
“It matches riders in real time and makes ride sharing more compelling. It’s an obvious way to help reduce congestion,” Salzberg said.
Uber’s driverless fleet is also critical to the company’s future of fewer cars on the road. The current assumption is that we take the system of today where everyone owns their car, and replace it with everyone owning their driverless car. The same level of car use is counterproductive to taking cars off the road.
The vision people are excited about, however, is the shift to shared driverless vehicles.
“With a higher utilization for vehicles and a lower number of cars owned by the population, you start to get a lot of beneficial impacts,” he said.
Will You Break the Link?
Uber’s foundation for building efficient transportation options in cities is a long way from being completed. That’s part of what Salzberg loves about his job.
“Part of being in this role means I get to focus on the long-term time horizon, and I’m excited about that. We’re having real conversations with cities about city planning five to 15 years in the future, and we’re starting to engage on some of these issues.”
Uber is also making a difference now.
We all know New York City’s infamous and iconic yellow taxi service, but it turns out it’s not very convenient for people outside of Manhattan or North of 96th street.
Salzberg shared that five percent or fewer pickups by the taxi cabs were happening in the outer boroughs, which is where 80 percent of the population of the city lived.
“Since we launched in the city, more than 40 percent of our trips are starting in the outer boroughs like Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. We’re bringing similar service to the enormous LA metro area, with a five to 10-minute response time and affordability even in far flung suburban areas.”
Just one more way the company is helping people break the link with their personal cars. Examples like this continue to pop up across the country and the world. It’s still not clear exactly what part Uber will play in developing better city and transportation infrastructure, but there is no doubt that the company’s involvement will be impactful.
I’m not ready to break the link between me and my car—yet—but I’m excited to see the options that could come to pass.
“Uber has proven you don’t have to take a personal car everywhere you go,” Salzberg said. “If you can break that link, all kinds of exciting things can happen.”
