New Study Provides a Counter-Narrative for Ride-Hailing Companies

The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has released a new study that measures the "VMT Efficiency" of the transportation network company (TNC) Lyft. The results of the study counters an emerging body of evidence finding that TNCs add to automobile congestion and steal transit riders.

"Because they carry multiple passengers, ride-hailed cars contribute fewer miles per person to traffic than personal cars making equivalent trips," writes Carolyn Said to summarize the key finding of the study. The Rocky Mountain Institute used data provided by Lyft from the company's three largest U.S. markets (San Francisco, Chicago, and New York) to calculate the effect of TNCs for vehicle miles traveled (VMT). According to an article explaining the study on the RMI's website, the VMT Efficiency metric "is the ratio of the mileage a trip would take a person to drive to his or her destination using a personally owned vehicle (including distance traveled to find parking) to the total mileage it takes the TNC to drive a person to the same destination."

Said notes that the study did not "look at the critical question of how Lyft passengers would have gotten to their destination in the absence of ride-hailing — whether they would have walked, biked, taken public transit or driven," though RMI promises further study to tackle that question. Previous studies, most recently a prominent study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, have found that TNCs are most likely adding to congestion in cities by stealing riders away from public transit.