Uber共乘服務顛覆城市運輸形態----中壢英文補習班－金學堂英語的部落格

【聯合報╱By FARHAD MANJOO╱李京倫譯】

App Geared to Upend Urban Transportation

The ride-sharing service Uber, the target of protests across Europe recently, has been accused of a reckless attitude toward safety, of price-gouging its customers, of putting cabbies out of work and of evading regulation. It is impossible to say whether Uber is worth the $17 billion its investors believe it to be. Although the company is already in more than 100 cities in 36 countries , it could fail, like any start-up.

But for all its flaws, Uber could well transform transportation the way Amazon has altered shopping — by using slick, user-friendly software and mountains of data to completely reshape an existing market, ultimately making many modes of urban transportation cheaper, more flexible and more widely accessible to people across the income spectrum.

In its long-established markets, like San Francisco, using Uber every day is already arguably cheaper than owning a private car. And now that Uber, Lyft and other rivals are embroiled in a vicious match for dominance across the globe, ride-sharing in more areas may become cheaper and more convenient than owning a car .

And some experts say the increased use of ride-sharing services could also spawn renewed interest in and funding for public transportation, because people generally use taxis in conjunction with many other forms of transportation. “In many cities and even suburbs, it’s becoming much easier to organize your life car-free or car-lite,” said David A. King, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University in New York .

Susan Shaheen, a director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that car-sharing and bike-sharing services have already led to a significant net reduction of car ownership among users.

In one recent study based on GPS data from New York City cabs, Dr. King and his colleagues found that many taxi trips are “multimodal,” meaning that riders mix taxis with other forms of transportation.

“The one-way travel of taxis allows people to use transit, share rides and otherwise travel without a car,” the researchers wrote. “In this way taxis act as a complement to these other modes and help discourage auto ownership and use.”

A survey commissioned by regulators in San Francisco found that if taxis were more widely available, people would use public transit more often, and would consider getting rid of one or more cars.

But taxi service is generally capped by regulation, and in many cities the number of taxis has not been increased substantially in decades, despite a vast increase in the number of kilometers people travel. In some places this has led to poor service: For instance, one out of four San Francisco residents rated the city’s taxi service as “terrible.”

Ride-sharing services substantially increase the supply of for-hire vehicles on the road, which puts downward pressure on prices. As critics say, Uber and other services do this by essentially evading regulations that cap taxis. This has led to intense skirmishes with regulators and questions over who has oversight to maintain the safety of the blossoming new industry.

These questions are likely to be worked out as these services mature; like most new technologies, this one too will attract increased legal oversight .

But Uber has done more than increase the supply of cars in the taxi market. Thanks to technology, it has also improved their utility and efficiency. By monitoring ridership, Uber can smartly allocate cars in places of high demand, and by connecting with users’ phones, it has automated the paying process. When you’re done with an Uber ride, you just leave the car; there’s no fiddling with a credit card and no tipping. Even better, there’s no parking.

Compared with that kind of convenience, a car that you own — which you have to park, fill up, fix, insure, clean and pay for whether you use it or not — begins to seem too troublesome .

“And if your car sits there five out of seven days, suddenly you’re starting to look at that fixed cost as being a waste,” Dr. King said.

中譯

Uber共乘服務最近在全歐洲成為抗議對象，人們控訴它輕忽安全、對乘客哄抬車資、讓許多計程車司機失業又逃避監督。

Uber是否有投資人相信的170億美元價值無從斷定。這家公司雖然在36國100多個城市有據點，卻仍可能像任何新創公司一樣垮掉。

Uber縱有缺點，卻可能如亞馬遜改變購物方式般大幅改變運輸形態：藉著使用聰明好用的軟體和大量資料，徹底重塑現有市場，最終讓許多都市運輸方式更便宜、更有彈性，讓各種收入的人更負擔得起。

在Uber經營多年的市場，如舊金山，每天用Uber已經可以說比擁車更便宜。既然Uber、Lyft和其他競爭對手都捲入全球爭霸的險惡競賽，共乘服務可能會在更多地方變得更便宜，也比擁車方便。

有些專家說，共乘服務使用者增加也許會引發對大眾運輸又一波的興趣和投資，因為人們通常會把計程車和其他多種交通工具搭配使用。紐約哥倫比亞大學都市計畫助理教授金恩說：「在許多都市，甚或郊區，過著沒有自用車或很少開車的生活變得容易多了。」

柏克萊加州大學永續運輸研究中心主任蘇珊‧夏辛發現，共乘汽車和公共自行車服務讓使用者擁車率淨下降。

最近金恩博士和同事研究紐約市計程車全球衛星定位系統資料，發現許多計程車趟次都是「多重形式」，也就是乘客把計程車和別種交通工具混合使用。

研究人員寫道：「計程車單向移動的特性讓人們可以使用大眾運輸系統和共乘，不必擁車就能旅行。如此一來，計程車成了這些交通方式的補充，有助降低汽車自有率和使用率。」

舊金山監理單位委託製作的調查報告顯示，如果計程車更普及，人們會更常使用大眾運輸系統，並考慮出脫一輛或更多輛車。

不過，計程車業常受管制，許多城市數十年來數量並未大幅放寬，人們旅行的里程卻已大增。這在某些地方已使服務品質低落，例如舊金山，四分之一居民對計程車服務的評價是「糟透了」。