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Report: Uber Picks Up More Outer-Borough Customers Than Taxis
By
Emma Whitford
Published Aug 11, 2015
Modified Aug 11, 2015
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By
Emma Whitford
Published Aug 11, 2015
Modified Aug 11, 2015
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Last month, while Mayor de Blasio did his best to warn New Yorkers that Uber would soon "flood" the city if measures weren't taken to cap its growth, the $50 billion ride-sharing company argued vehemently that a cap would actually turn the outer boroughs of Manhattan into an Uber desert.
In a July interview with Fusion, Uber's New York GM Josh Mohrer stressed that "Uber encourages the use of mass transit (especially in the outer boroughs) by providing a 'last mile' link to the subway." Adding, "If you supply-constrain Uber, it too will eventually become unreliable. Vehicles will focus on the high end in midtown Manhattan, rather than the outer boroughs."
Granted, Mohrer didn't mention a mass e-mail sent to new Uber drivers in New York City late last fall encouraged those drivers to "position" themselves in the "busiest areas of the city"—Manhattan below the north end of Central Park, plus a swath of Brooklyn from Greenpoint south to Park Slope—if they hoped to receive a "guaranteed" $5,000 for their first full month of driving.
Still, despite the mayor's best efforts, the cap was scrapped—no doubt thanks to Uber's full-throttle PR war, including TV spots, Uber driver job fairs in the outer boroughs, and a "De Blasio" tab on the app in New York. In its place, the City has committed to a four-month, cap-less study of Uber's impact. Uber, in turn, has agreed to fork over its trip data, including trip length, and pick-up and drop-off locations.
Data-devoted Five Thirty Eight FOILed the TLC for the comprehensive data last month (the TLC released complementary data for yellow and green taxis last week), and has synthesized "nearly 93 million trips taken by Uber and conventional taxis over a six-month period from April to September last year, including date, time and coordinates of the pickups."
According to Five Thirty Eight's analysis, 22% of Uber's 4.4 million rides from the designated time period originated outside of Manhattan, compared to 14% for green and yellow taxis. A color-coded map of the five boroughs shows that, outside Manhattan, Uber pickups were particularly strong in far-flung neighborhoods—some wealthy (Little Neck and Whitestone in Queens), some less-so (Dyker Heights and Marine Park in Brooklyn.)
That's not to say that Uber drivers are avoiding Manhattan's Central Business District—which, the TLC and DOT have argued, has suffered from increased congestion in recent years, thanks in part to Uber and the rest of the For Hire Vehicle industry. The FOILed data also shows that 63% of all Uber rides originate south of 59th Street in Manhattan—on par with 62% of taxi pickups.
Still, data is easy to spin, and feuding parties tend to interpret it as they please. "This tracks very closely with the patterns we've seen in this sector—with the overwhelming majority of pickups concentrated in Manhattan,” mayoral Spokesman Wiley Norvel told the blog.
While Uber spokeswoman Alix Anfang countered, "Uber is proud that the communities outside of Manhattan, which yellow taxis go to the least, are our fastest-growing areas," adding that 69% of Uber rides originated in the Manhattan core in the first half of 2015, compared to 76% the year previous.
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sharing economy
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Emma Whitford
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