{"id":53818,"date":"2015-12-18T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=53818"},"modified":"2015-12-18T11:46:45","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T16:46:45","slug":"doing-the-uber-hip-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2015\/12\/18\/doing-the-uber-hip-hop\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Why UberHop will help the TTC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-lorinc\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I look at the wonderfully clean map<\/a> that Uber has provided for its new jitney service, it\u2019s not hard to see how frustrated commuters from transit deserts like Liberty Village might be lulled into believing that the San Francisco sharing monster\u00a0will solve their morning problems.<\/p>\n

After all, the routes look like they could be drone flight paths, all converging on King and Bay.<\/p>\n

But as the Uberati will soon discover, those shared cabs must navigate the same core streets that are already so clogged they have slowed transit service to a crawl.<\/p>\n

What does Uber know that the TTC doesn\u2019t know?<\/p>\n

Nothing, really, except how to use its considerable marketing savvy to capitalize on turning point moments the TTC should ordinarily have to itself, such as the introduction last week of the proof-of-payment rear door access on streetcars (this isn\u2019t the first time Uber has piggy-backed on transit news to market itself).<\/p>\n

Indeed, the UberHop service could well contain the seeds of its own demise. Yes, riders will get to sit. But if there\u2019s a surge of consumer\/commuter interest, the congestion\u00a0on downtown streets may actually get worse, prompting those frustrated TTC defectors to ask themselves if paying a\u00a0$5 fare to get\u00a0stuck in traffic is any better than paying a $3 fare to get stuck behind\u00a0traffic on a streetcar. And I guarantee that all of them will be watching the clock.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s response will be more interesting to observe. If the TTC\u2019s senior managers are smart, they will quickly abandon a legal retaliation response and instead deploy some kind of short-haul shuttle service to those neighbourhoods where Uber is doing its fishing.<\/p>\n

In fact, there really should be no mystery about how to respond to this specific threat: Uber\u2019s revealed its hand, and the TTC can use the market signal \u2014 those maps! \u2014 to test drive some not-so-new ideas, e.g., a mini-bus\/jitney service that works areas like Liberty Village or the Distillery District. (Vancouver uses mini-buses as well as standard city buses, and the sky didn\u2019t fall.)<\/p>\n

But what about the TTC\u2019s political masters? As with the cab industry, Uber poses two forms of competitive threat: one is particular and commercial (loss of business to a rival) and the other is general and reputational (we can do it better, cheaper, cleaner, etc.). In the short term, the TTC can step on the UberHop service, one way or the other. But what it can\u2019t easily do is untangle the massive goodwill deficit that has made UberHop (and Line Six, its short-lived<\/a> predecessor) possible.<\/p>\n

The fault, it bears saying a thousand times, doesn\u2019t lie with the TTC itself. The TTC\u2019s problems are symptomatic of an irrational decision-making process\u00a0that under-invests in high density\u00a0areas but shovels vast troves of cash into suburban white elephant schemes\u00a0that won’t\u00a0dent congestion anywhere.<\/p>\n

What UberHop should do, more than anything else, is force Toronto city council to bear down on this pivotal problem of opportunity cost: by spending money on one thing, we will not spend money on another thing, or, more precisely, a lot of other things.<\/p>\n

City council is allocating an insane amount of cash \u2014 $3.5 billion in the best possible scenario \u2014 on a three-stop subway i Scarborough that may or may not redress some allegedly ancient wrong, but will never produce sufficient ridership to justify the excessive (and possibly unknown)\u00a0capital and operating costs.<\/p>\n

At the same time, we haven\u2019t got a clue about how to provide suitable rapid transit in high-growth areas so starved for service that they\u2019re now being targeted by private companies gambling that the city will cave in the face of competition.<\/p>\n

More than anything else, UberHop\u2019s arrival provides crisp third-party\u00a0validation of a critique about under-investment that Tory, local politicians, and provincial cabinet ministers have been hearing, but not listening to, for many years.<\/p>\n

Which is this: not only is the Scarborough subway (and other such purposeless megaprojects) a monumental waste of scarce resources; it is a project that makes a grand mockery of Tory\u2019s anti-congestion rhetoric and positioning.<\/p>\n

UberHop will put many\u00a0more bulky private vehicles on all those downtown streets that the mayor claims to be so concerned about. It will siphon revenue from a transit service he says requires\u00a0more resources. And its mere existence wonderfully illuminates the sheer\u00a0foolishness of council\u2019s recent transit investment choices\u00a0—\u00a0choices, it must be said, that Tory stubbornly refuses to revisit.<\/p>\n

And all for $5 a ride.<\/p>\n

photo by Dylan Passmore<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I look at the wonderfully clean map that Uber has provided for its new jitney service, it\u2019s not hard to see how frustrated commuters from transit deserts like Liberty Village might be lulled into believing that the San Francisco sharing monster\u00a0will solve their morning problems. After all, the routes look like they could beContinue reading “LORINC: Why UberHop will help the TTC”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":53832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traffic","category-transit"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Why UberHop will help the TTC - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2015\/12\/18\/doing-the-uber-hip-hop\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Why UberHop will help the TTC - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I look at the wonderfully clean map that Uber has provided for its new jitney service, it\u2019s not hard to see how frustrated commuters from transit deserts like Liberty Village might be lulled into believing that the San Francisco sharing monster\u00a0will solve their morning problems. 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