Today, Uber is launching its latest innovation in ride-hailing, one it has spent the past year spinning up. There’s new tech architecture, a novel user interface, and in-app intro schemes to teach the rider how to use the new service.
This innovation, though, isn't on your phone. It's in your feet.
Instead of providing door-to-door service, Uber's new Express Pool product asks app users to walk a block or two to a meeting spot. They might be dropped off a block or so away from their destination, too. The point is to save drivers and riders time by eliminating the lengthy, loopy bits of shared rides, those runs around the block to grab a fellow pooler from wherever they're standing when they tap on the app.
Uber Express Pool is the service’s first new significant product in three and a half years, and it rolls out today in six more cities—Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Washington, DC—along with Boston and San Francisco, where it’s been running as a pilot for the past three months. It should save riders money as well as time: Express Pool fares are as much as 50 percent cheaper than your standard shared Uber Pool ride and up to 75 percent compared to UberX fares.
And in this way, Uber launches itself into your commute, putting its fares in range of what you pay to ride the bus or subway. It kinda works the same way, too. When new users open the app and choose the new Express option, they'll select an area rather than a pick-up point, then wait two minutes tops while Uber matches them with their most efficient ride-hail buddies, the folks going more or less where they are. Once the app has decided on what the Pool ride will look like, it tells passengers exactly where to meet their rides (likely on a corner). “This is a fundamental breakthrough in affordability that can open up new use cases for existing riders and for new riders who aren’t able to build [the service] into their daily routines,” says Ethan Stock, who manages shared rides at Uber.
That "daily routines" bit is the key here. In many large American cities, ride-hail apps are the transportation of choice for nights out, the best way to get somewhere when it's dark and you've had a few. A recent study from the Shared Use Mobility Center looked at data from a large, unnamed ride-hail service (likely Uber or Lyft) in six major cities and determined that yeah, trips spike between the 7 pm and midnight hours on Fridays and Saturdays. But those are, at best, occasional jaunts, the kinds that used to be accomplished by ride-hail’s traditional enemy, the cab. Who among us goes the club every night, much less every week?
Uber—which lost $4.5 billion last year—craves consistent, constant riders, who think about opening the app every time they leave to go somewhere else. So the company is going after the people people who move from the office to the house and then back again every day, with a product that mimics the public transit systems many already use.
For urban places, the biggest question is: Where are those commuters coming from? If they’re ditching their personal car and a sad solo commute for a pooled ride with three other people (the max, for now, in an Uber Express Pool), that could be a nice thing for everyone: fewer emissions, taking up less space on the road, less traffic. Even better if all the poolers are heading to, say, the same train stop. That's a near-frictionless, efficient way to connect private and public transit, and build a better city for all. The ride-hail giant says this is the plan. Hopefully, Uber Express Pool "makes public transit work better and helps people to choose that rather than their own private cars, which is one of the big things Uber is working on," says Stock.
But if those riders ditch the bus—or a bike, or a skateboard, or the power of their own two feet—for an Uber, that might not be good for the city, not overall. Uber would be putting more cars on the road that way: more emissions, taking up more space, making more traffic. And this alternative feels more likely with the cheaper Express Pool service, which, as hordes of snarky internet people pointed out when Lyft launched something similar in June of last year, looks a lot like a bus. Uber Express Pool and Lyft Shuttle (which runs in San Francisco and Chicago) demand riders take mini strolls to the nearest arterials before hopping in something with wheels. With, of course, a few key differences: the ride comes when you want it to, takes fewer stops, and guarantees you a seat. For many, those will be serious upsides.
Right now, Uber says it doesn’t have the data to determine how its riders were commuting before, though it will try to find out, through surveys of riders. “We’re constantly trying to better understand what choices people are making as alternatives to Uber,” says Stock.
City agencies aren't quite sure what's up. "We at the MTA feel like, if these services are moving passengers who otherwise would have taken mass transit, with all of its environmental and space efficiencies, in more and smaller vehicles, then they’re likely working against our big picture mobility policy," says Tom Maguire, who oversees street, transit, bicycle, pedestrian and parking infrastructure for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. "If they are bringing people to and from mass transit, and serving as the last mile, then they certainly can become a complement."
Preliminary reports from independent researchers aren't clear either. Last year, UC Davis researchers found 49 to 61 percent of ride-hailing trips in seven cities wouldn’t have happened without the apps, which probably indicates the services have made traffic worse. The researchers also found that 91 percent of riders haven’t ditched their personal cars, one of Uber's avowed goals. At the same time, these results could mean American city-dwellers are experiencing a whole new kind of transportation flexibility, a freedom they haven’t seen in the decades since the country went all-in on car travel.
And if Uber (and Lyft) pull off this sort of service the way they’d like, and win the commute, it could be an existential crisis for the urban bus system. Frankly, it’s due a wakeup call. In the past half-decade, ridership has been down in New York, DC, LA, San Diego, and Boston. (Any of those look familiar? Four will be part of this Uber Express expansion.) The average bus speed in New York City is 7.4 mph, and just 5.5 mph in Manhattan. Will transit find ways to retain riders, by rethinking service frequency, reliability, crowding, routing, and maybe even the stuff agencies haven’t had any time or money for, like comfort? And if it doesn't, and buses disappear, who will miss them? Could private companies find ways to serve entire cities efficiently and—most critically—equitably? We know Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wants a shot: He told attendees at a Goldman Sachs event this month that he'd like a crack at running a city's bus system.
For now, an uneasy ceasefire, as cities study the way Uber, then Uber Pool, now Uber Express Pool, shifts their transportation ecosystem. "There's certainly a role for small and more flexible vehicles," says Maguire. But first, the challenge at hand: Uber's hoping there's a role for walking a few blocks to a pick-up spot.
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