Whether you drive yourself or hail a ride, solitary splendour will become more expensive
went to press, will be one of the largest in tech history. The hoopla cannot drown out uncertainty about the firm’s future. Ride-hailing platforms have grown hugely in recent years, changing the face of urban transport. They have also been virtuosic losers of money. Lyft made an operating loss of nearly $1bn in 2018; Uber, about $3bn.
Perhaps instead the firms could cut their per-ride costs. Payments to drivers are the juiciest target, and indeed Uber is keen to develop a fleet of driverless taxis . Yet even these may struggle to turn a profit. A recent analysis by Ashley Nunes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Kristen Hernandez, now at Securing America’s Future Energy, an advocacy group, concludes that driving your own vehicle costs about $0.
Removing the subsidy to drivers means pricing road space by levying tolls that increase with traffic. That would deter driving, and reduce congestion and other social costs of automobile use. Such charges are rarely popular with drivers. But governments’ enthusiasm for new, untolled roads has dimmed. And they do not help much with traffic.
Congestion delays the response to a request for a ride, which inconveniences passengers. And it raises the cost of operating taxis by increasing the time spent between dropping off one rider and picking up the next. The more efficiently firms can serve customers, the better their cost proposition relative to driving alone. So total trips would fall, but a greater share would involve an app-hailed vehicle.
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