August 04, 2016
Kevin Cashman
Truthout, August 2, 2016
Moyers & Company, August 4, 2016
New transportation technologies — self-driving cars, electric vehicles, and ride hailing services like Uber — promise to revolutionize transportation, especially in cities. While there are certainly potential benefits to these technologies, they have been called “solution[s] in search of a problem” because many of the benefits touted by advocates of these technologies are benefits that public transportation, walking, and cycling already offer in abundance.
One thing rarely mentioned in the enthusiastic boosterism of these technologies is how their widespread adoption will affect the poor. Like other expenditures (especially those on necessities), the poor often pay a large portion of their income on meeting their transportation needs.
The Pew Charitable Trusts recently looked at the burden of transportation costs on the lower third of households, finding it consumed 15.7 percent of their income in 2014 (Figure 7). This is a significant percentage of their income, and it is likely even higher for the poorest households in this group. By contrast, transportation expenses were just 8.2 percent of the income of top third of households. And it is likely that the vast majority of these expenses were necessary travel: trips to work, food shopping, or doctors’ appointments. This group is not taking many vacations.
Given this reality, cities should look more closely at supporting lower cost transportation options as part of plans to make cities more equitable (and conducive to lower cost transportation options). Paramount among them should be walking, which has very few direct costs; although it is not feasible for those who live far away from where the work, which is the case for many poor people. After that, public transportation can save many people a significant amount of money per month versus using a vehicle, which is probably why it is already heavily relied upon by poorer city residents. Cycling is also a low-cost option that cities should accommodate better, even though it suffers from some of the same downsides as walking.
Cities can do a far better job of serving the transportation needs of low-income people. At top of the list would be making public transportation free and extensive. This is very desirable from an equity perspective and likely only possible on a large scale for public systems.
But cities should be very cautious about supporting new technology that is inaccessible to the poor, like ride hailing services, which are usually more expensive than public transportation and not required to accept cash (they almost always require smartphones and credit cards). For example, The New York Times uncritically touted the UberPool carpool service as cheap and environmentally friendly, but most of these benefits were illusory. In addition, the trip highlighted in the story was from San Francisco’s Tenderloin to Noe Valley, which took the passenger somewhere between 25 to 55 minutes, and if split evenly, cost around $10. The same trip on Muni’s J Church light rail line would take 18 minutes and cost only $2.25 — costing less and taking less time. And although self-driving and electric cars could have lower costs in the long-term, the ongoing costs and the upfront costs will still be significant. Tesla’s “affordable” car, the Model 3, is expected to cost around $42,000 when launched in 2017. (Other popular all-electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt cost around $30,000 new.)
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There are undoubtedly some benefits to these new technologies. Self-driving cars could help fill the gaps in public transportation use by, for example, helping increase mobility for elderly. But in the near future, it is likely that cities will come under intense pressure to sacrifice public transportation in favor of new, private alternatives. (This is in part due to the influx of relatively rich people into cities who prefer using taxis or private vehicles as opposed to public transportation.) In fact, a city in Florida has already outsourced some of its services to Uber, and Uber is developing a vehicle that appears to compete with buses.
The troubling management problems with Washington, D.C.’s Metrorail system have already been met with calls for further privatization, which could result in a system that caters more to an upscale clientele and that could harm workers and public. (The paratransit service of Metro — MetroAccess — is already privatized, which has imposed significant hardships on its workers and costs on the D.C. government through fraudulent “billing errors.”). While proponents of these technologies use them to undermine public systems, it’s unclear how these alternatives will be able to serve the number of people that mass transit does, especially if cities are also trying to move toward safety plans to decrease the number of vehicle-related fatalities like Vision Zero, or limit the number of cars on the road.
In the coming years, it will be important to remind politicians and residents that unless new technology is equitable, regulated, and aligned with future goals, it shouldn’t be a significant part of a city’s transportation system.
