A Survey of Modern Life: Mobility
Rideshare, Mapping Apps and Our Transportation Choices
This report is the fourth in a series of reports on the results from a set of consumer surveys on health-related behaviors and the influence of popular products and services. Fielded by Building H, a project to build health into everyday life, the surveys examined the influences of popular products and services — such as video streaming, food delivery services, automobiles, rideshare services, mapping services and mobile gaming — on these behaviors. This report is based on surveys specifically on mobility: one that covered rideshare services and one on mapping and directions services, along with general surveys on health behaviors and attitudes. More information on the survey project can be found here.
Key Findings
- 52.4% of survey respondents reported driving as their primary choice for distances of less than one half mile, with the number rising to 68.3% for trips from one half to one mile and 79.9% for trips between one to two miles.
- Three times as many users noted that using a mapping and directions service like Google Maps or Apple Maps led to increases, rather than decreases, in driving.
- 23.7% of rideshare users indicated that their social interactions with drivers and other riders were very positive, with another 39.6% saying that they were positive. 8.7% did report very negative interactions and an additional 2.7% reported negative interactions.
Introduction
Building H developed a set of 10 surveys of American adults that looked at the prevalence of five important health-related behaviors and one potentially unhealthy behavior, use of selected consumer products and services, and attitudes toward corporate responsibility for health impacts.
Questions across two general surveys asked about sleep, physical activity, spending time with friends, getting outdoors, screen time and eating patterns. Additional surveys assessed the impact of different types of products and services — video streaming, mobile gaming, ride-share, mapping and directions apps, food and grocery delivery services — on different health behaviors. The surveys on mobility — rideshare services and mapping and directions apps — are the focus of this report; additional data are drawn from the general surveys.
The surveys were conducted using Google Consumer Surveys in December, 2020. Sample sizes varied from 500 adults (18 years or older) in the U.S. for the ride-share survey to 1,000 for the survey on mapping and directions apps to 5,000 respondents for the general surveys. Samples were chosen to represent the U.S. population distribution across ages, genders, races, and geographic regions.
General surveys questioned participants on both their experiences with and attitudes towards health behaviors (i.e. sleep, socialization, time spent outdoors, eating patterns and physical activity). The product specific surveys questioned participants who use specific products like rideshare and mapping and directions apps on how they interact with the products, and the products’ effects on health behaviors. For example, the rideshare survey asked about frequency of use of rideshare, along with bikeshare and scooter-share services, the alternative modes of transportation that would have been used, and the social experience of the service. The survey on mapping and directions apps looked at effects on eating and on the mode of transportation used in different situations.
Results
Overall Usage
- 29.8% of survey respondents used a rideshare service like Lyft or Uber at least once a year. Note that due the timing of the survey (during the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to the availability of vaccines) we asked users about their habits before COVID-19 became a concern.
- Of those using ride-share services, most used them only occasionally: 64.5% indicated using the services every few months or once or twice per year. 12.7% used them daily or weekly.
- 56.3% of survey respondents reported using a mapping and direction service like Google Maps or Apple Maps in the last month.
Effects on Use of Different Transportation Modes
- 4.4% of rideshare users use bikeshare services at least once a month. 82.1% reported never using bikeshare services.
- 5.1% of rideshare users use bikeshare services at least once a month. 79.7% reported never using bikeshare services.
- 63.6% of respondents indicated that use of a rideshare service replaced driving their own vehicle, while 14.1% indicated that it replaced public transportation. 8.4% said the trip likely replaced walking and 3.1% indicated that bicycling was the most likely alternative.
- Using mapping and directions services has minor influences on the transportation modes people use: 73.8% of users indicate that it does not lead to increases in the use of any transportation modes and 84.7% of users say that it doesn’t lead to decreases in any modes of transportation.
- Three times as many users noted that using a mapping and directions service led to increases, rather than decreases, in driving.
The mapping and directions app survey also probed users on their preferred modes of transportation, depending on the distance they needed to travel.
- 52.4% of users reported driving to distances of less than one half mile, with the number rising to 68.3% for trips from one half to one mile and 79.9% for trips between one to two miles.
- 35.4% would normally walk if the distance were less than one half mile; 15.8% would walk if the distance were between one half mile and one mile. Only 3.9% would walk if the distance were between one and two miles.
- All other transportation modes were relatively rare (i.e. less than 5%) at all three distances.
Effect on Car Ownership
One of the hypothesized benefits of rideshare services is that their availability might encourage people to reduce their ownership of private automobiles. We asked rideshare users how the services had influenced their decisions about owning or leasing automobiles.
- 77.6% of users indicated that they continued to own or lease a vehicle.
- 5.2% said that they chose not to own or lease a car or an additional car.
- 12.8% had never owned a vehicle.
Searching for Food
- Mapping and directions users report using the apps to find a place to eat sometimes (34.4%), usually (10.4%) or always (6.3%). Only 17% report never using the apps to find a place to eat.
The Social Experience
For better or for worse, using a rideshare service is a social experience. The rider typically interacts with the driver and, in the case for shared rides, with other riders. These interactions are generally positive:
- 23.7% of users indicated that their social interactions were very positive, with another 39.6% saying that they were positive. 8.7% did report very negative interactions and an additional 2.7% reported negative interactions.
Discussion
In general, we fielded these surveys in order to understand the everyday health behaviors of people in the U.S., the products and services they use, and their attitudes about these behaviors. We focused specifically on mobility — how people get where they need to go — because it is a fundamental everyday need and because how that need is met has a bearing on several key behaviors that affect our health. Different transportation modes involve different degrees of physical activity, ranging from the most sedentary (being driven in an automobile) to the most active (riding a bicycle). They also vary in terms of exposure to the outdoors and to casual social interactions, both of which can foster better health. Shifting some percentage of everyday trips from less active to more active modes could have positive health benefits, not to mention additional benefits from reduced pollution, reduced noise and reduced production of greenhouse gases.
The survey results highlight and sharpen our understanding of the degree to which automobiles dominate transportation in the U.S. First, while the major rideshare operators also offer access to shared bikes and scooters, those options are never employed by vast majorities (approximately 80%) of users and only approximately 5% of users choose them as often as once a month. Perhaps the most troubling result to come out of the surveys is the number of Americans who choose driving over walking for trips of one-half mile or less. The extreme end of this range — a half mile, would amount to a walk of only 7–10 minutes at a moderate to brisk pace. To be sure, there are many Americans with disabilities that limit their ability to walk even a short distance. But even if the roughly 14% with such disabilities were taken out of the results, there would still be a slight majority choosing driving over walking. And, interestingly, the results are largely independent of age (differences in choices of modes was within error margins) and given that disability tends to rise with age, it suggests there night even be a greater preference to drive (or be driven) among younger American adults.
The past decade has seen multiple innovations in mobility — mapping and directions apps, rideshare services, shared bikes and scooters, and now e-bikes — and yet the auto-centricity of our transportation culture remains very strong. If anything, some of the new services are reinforcing that dominance. Our results showed that rideshare services displaced active modes (11.5% of rides replaced walking or biking) and public transportation (14.1%), which usually involves at least some walking or biking to and from stations. The influence of mapping and directions services was more subtle, but three times as many users reported driving more than driving less as a result of having digital maps and directions at the ready. One positive trend is that the availability of rideshare services is having a small but positive influence on people’s decisions to buy or lease automobiles. Depending on one’s perspective, it’s either a hopeful sign, or, given that rideshare services began roughly a decade ago, an indicator that the impact on car ownership is small and not likely to become transformative any time soon. The finding that 12.8% of users had never owned a car means that non-owners are overrepresented among rideshare users, suggesting that that rideshare availability is filling a gap for some people.
The popularity of using mapping and directions services to locate places to eat presents an interesting opportunity for those services to help nudge users toward more healthy meals. There’s work to be done to measure the healthfulness of a given food establishment, but if standard ratings were in place, mapping apps could help sort and filter on that basis and likely have a positive impact.
Finally, the generally positive ratings of social interactions in rideshare services is a hopeful sign. As more and more services create greater efficiencies by eliminating human interaction, it’s a nice reminder to see that people value those connections.
Conclusion
The findings of these surveys are not surprising given the long dominance of automobile transportation in the U.S. What’s notable is that a decade of technology and service innovations in mobility has not significantly chipped away at that dominance. In some cases, it seems to have reinforced it. There could be a number of reasons for the lack of progress: the degree to which public infrastructure favors automobile transport and limits opportunities for safe walking, biking, or scootering; the high rate of personal vehicle ownership, which makes hopping in a car an easy action; increasing rates of deaths and injuries to cyclists and pedestrians; and cultural norms about transportation habits, which can create social contagion and also result in new services that seek to align with, rather than upend those norms. Whatever the reason, the low rate of change suggests that new technology and service innovations won’t by themselves lead to transformation — that will take coordinated policies, concomitant investments in infrastructure and, most importantly, committed leadership.
The COVID-19 pandemic, with lockdowns, social distancing and fears of person-to-person contagion, has created a significant disruption and sparked a certain amount of experimentation. We’ve seen slow streets, skyrocketing sales of e-bikes, and, in some parts of the world, efforts to design and implement 15-minute cities. Given the changes, the trends studied in these surveys will bear further periodic monitoring.
Mobility remains a key opportunity to build healthy behaviors back into people’s everyday routines. As new services roll out, it’s imperative that we understand their influence on their users and, ideally, design them from the start with clear intentions to foster better health.
Acknowledgments
Thomas Goetz, Sara Singer, Carlo Martinez and Brittany Sigler all contributed to the conceptualization and development of the surveys; Carlo Martinez contributed data analysis; Sara Singer provided valuable editing.
