In recent weeks, New York City took efforts to cut down on traffic congestion within the city by capping the number of ride-hailing vehicles allowed in the city. However, it appears that New York City is not America’s only metropolitan area that is struggling with congestion due to the rise of ride-hailing services.
According to data provided by the Seattle Department of Transportation, 20 million rides were embarked upon in the Seattle area during 2017. Additionally, this data suggests that ride-sharing services are not leading to a reduction in driving. Instead, passengers who would otherwise take public transit or walk to their destination are increasingly reliant on leading ride-sharing companies like Lyft and Uber.
How Much Seattle Traffic Congestion Is Attributable to Uber and Lyft?
Like most cities, Seattle has only had ride-sharing as a transit option for a few short years. Leading services like Uber and Lyft both arrived to the area in 2014, but Seattle acclimated to ride-sharing quickly.
Due to ride-sharing’s growth, it is easy to forget that many cities, including Seattle, passed measures to limit the amount of ride-sharing drivers on the road. For its part, Seattle passed a 2014 regulation that limited an individual ride-sharing company to no more than 150 drivers on the road at once in Seattle. As these companies grew, the regulation went away.
Today, Uber alone has approximately 14,000 drivers operating in Seattle, which is a figure based on a Washington State Supreme Court opinion delivered in May of 2018. If you are left wondering why such figures would be mentioned by the state’s Supreme Court, the answer is that ride-sharing companies have gone to great legal lengths to prevent releasing Seattle ridership data to the public.
As such, it is difficult to get a precise estimate on the amount of traffic congestion that ought to be attributed to ride-sharing. However, reasonable efforts have made to estimate the congestion Uber and Lyft cause in major cities by Bruce Schaller, an independent transportation consultant whose work has garnered national attention.
Mr. Schaller’s methodology revealed that the two leading ride-share companies have led to approximately 94 million additional miles driven in the Seattle area’s roads during 2017. Interestingly, Uber did not argue against Mr. Schaller’s methodology or conclusion, instead choosing to rebut the notion that an additional 94 million miles are a major problem. In its response, Uber pointed to federal data that showed the Seattle area hits 94 million miles in about two days of driving across the area.
What seems clear, however, is that the risk of ride-sharing accidents increase as more miles are driven and ride-sharing company market share continues to grow. If you or a loved one has been injured in a Seattle ride-sharing accident with Lyft or Uber, a Ledger Law ride-sharing accident lawyer in our Seattle office is ready to discuss your claim.
Contact us online today for a free case evaluation to discuss your accident and right to legal compensation.
