Ride-hailing services like Uber are trying to bring a more formal version of “slugging,” or casual carpooling, by pairing riders and nonprofessional drivers digitally. In New York City, Uber has recently proposed a pilot of this service as a way to help ordinary, nonprofessional drivers find carpool matches during the coming shutdown of the L train in 2019. While the city should not favor any one company, it should consider testing app-based “slugging” by ordinary drivers in New York.
“In America’s densest few urban cores with very low car ownership, traditional ride-hailing services (even with pooling) could increase congestion in principle if they draw transit trips into car trips on net.”
Contemporary commuter ride-hailing has two distinct forms. On the informal end is slugging, arguably most developed in Washington, D.C., for which the only compensation to the driver for a pickup is high-occupancy vehicle status. According to Slug-Lines.com, a de facto homepage for the D.C.-area phenomenon, slugging may have begun in the District as early as 1975, shortly after the HOV lanes in the area were opened to car- and vanpools. This matching began spontaneously at naturally obvious physical pickup points, like commuter parking lots, without digital assistance.
At the opposite end are the formal app-based car services whose main innovation is to bring Manhattan-level taxi availability to less-dense urban areas. These apps have added pooling services that allow multiple riders to share and split costs, but they’re still a lot like taxis driven by professional or semi-professional drivers.
Google’s Waze Carpool in San Francisco and Uber Commute in Chicago are piloting efforts to blur the line between formal services and informal carpooling. Instead of depending on a physical pickup point, slugging drivers would find and match with carpoolers on an app. Drivers receive the IRS reimbursement rate of 54 cents per mile for car travel in both pilot efforts. Waze Carpool is limiting drivers and riders to two trips per day, taking an extra step to emphasize the strict commuter carpool role of its app.
Ride-hailing services, especially the pooling options, are rightfully praised for their potential to reduce congestion and parking constraints in areas with weaker transit coverage and high private car ownership. But in America’s densest few urban cores with very low car ownership, traditional ride-hailing services...
Read the entire piece here at City & State's New York Slant
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Alex Armlovich is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in City & State's NY Slant