Both innovative and controversial, Uber has without a doubt shaken up the taxi industry. It has made an impact on the way people get around cities, and it has done so all without spending a dime on infrastructure. A major change in the way that uber vehicles are navigate through the city (which will be crucial when it makes the shift to driverless vehicles) is "smart routes." Rather than driving directly to any user that hails the car on the app, the smart route feature will suggest collection points for the vehicle based on the density of users requesting a ride, almost similar to the way a bus route works. This process reduces the amount of time the vehicle is driving to pick up multiple users, allows for more people to be transported over a given period of time, and would reduce the number of ubers on the road during peak hours.As uber grows, or new competition arises, there may be increased competition for convenient curbside locations in places where people are regularly being picked up along a route. This would provide need for a new type of infrastructure to accommodate the massive demand for pickups at these nodes, and they can take the form of stations not dissimilar from a BRT station, or anything else the mind can imagine. If the general trend is for most people to choose foregoing car ownership during the onset of the self-driving car era, this demand could become very real - very quickly.
From the standpoint of a transit planner, this becomes very interesting. The problem can essentially be viewed from a reactive or proactive approach (or combination of the two). Do we monitor the areas that are receiving the most pickups and then install the infrastructure accordingly? Or do we encourage the development of specific TOD hubs, and implement the infrastructure there, allowing us to determine the more efficient location for this infrastructure?
Uber is a rising entity in the world of transportation. I read an article from New York Times that stated Uber is buying out university robotics departments in order to hire scientists who can revolutionize transportation, particularly to innovate a self-driving vehicle for their company (I posted the link to article below).
ReplyDeleteWith this information that you shared, it reveals that Uber's influence may prove to extend beyond the ease of transportation and into the design of our streetscapes. It will be interesting to see how transportation planning design may evolve to cater to the needs of private transportation companies. I personally always saw street design as a response to public needs but if transportation companies like Uber play a bigger role in city transportation, and street design follows the needs of Uber, will it still be catering to the needs of the public or to large private corporations?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/uber-would-like-to-buy-your-robotics-department.html?_r=0