Post-COVID metropolis and Uber
As the world considers its post-pandemic future, many questions about changes in cities, travel, mobility, work, and consumer preferences have been floated. Uber commissioned WXY to take a look at the emerging trends around urban development and transportation against data from Uber’s Rides business in 4 cities and towns in the US (New York City, Phoenix, Cincinnati, and Waco) and 4 cities globally to better understand how people were using rideshare and whether there were any indication of changes that will stick.
A few notable findings emerged:
- When cities thrive, Uber thrives. When local economies are active and diverse, where there is a lot to do and a lot to go to, when public transport systems are robust, Uber thrives.
- Uber is an essential platform that meets the needs of low-income riders, and even more so during the pandemic. Uber has captive riders on its platform, e.g. people without mobility options. Uber served as an essential mode of transportation for essential workers during COVID, but also served as such before COVID and will do as cities start reopening.
- Uber supplements transit for essential work; it’s mobility insurance. Essential work destinations were popular destinations during COVID, and Uber was the insurance policy for people getting to essential jobs when transit service had to be cut. Similarly, when people needed to visit open spaces during the pandemic, they used Uber when they didn’t have another option.
- Potential for mixed uses everywhere. There’s still some uncertainty about how central business districts will recover, but across all regions, there was more demand from districts with a mix of residential, retail, and office. This is particularly relevant to the United States and Canadian context where these kinds of developments are less typical.
Key takeaways:
Mobility for lower-income communities
Uber served as a form of mobility insurance for districts that didn’t have as many transit options. While trips decreased significantly in most areas, low-income households appeared to use Uber more consistently throughout the pandemic. And in some cases, we actually saw more trips to areas with lots of essential jobs, such as distribution centers or hospitals. We see this building on pre-COVID studies about mobility choices by lower-income communities and a survey of travel choices during the pandemic.
Car ownership as the shared competitor
For the data we looked at, Uber and transit use seem to be on the same recovery trendline while private car travel is rebounding faster. As cities continue to reopen, transit ridership is still at 50 to 70 percent of pre-pandemic (April 2019) levels in the 8 US and global cities we looked at. Trips on Uber have recovered to similar levels in all but one of these cities at the time of the report (Hong Kong). Meanwhile, overall vehicle miles traveled from private car use grew to pre-COVID or above levels in some places. This corroborates a growing body of evidence that Uber and transit are used by the same multimodal riders and that private car ownership is the shared competitor. It also correlates with the data that shows that private car driving continues to dominate travel choices and actually grew during the pandemic.
There’s still a lot of uncertainty about what recovery will look like, but we hope that there will be a concerted effort to address the stark need for greater access with solutions that also address climate and equity challenges. On-demand, shared mobility provided an essential service during the pandemic, especially for people who have comparatively fewer options, and there’s potential for it to continue to have outsized impact in building back better as well.
