The Week, August 16, 2016: (Opinion) Why Replacing the Bus with Uber is Actually Pretty Smart

“That's where ride-sharing setups like Uber and Lyft come in. A hundred families could use 100 cars to get around, but those cars would spend at least 92 percent of their time parked. But if the cars were constantly shuttling people around, those 100 hundred families might really only need 5 or 10 total. At a theoretical level, that's basically what Uber and Lyft offer. Making the math even more favorable, the rise of the apps' carpool-style services, like Uberpool, allow an even smaller number of cars to serve more people. Now, this is particularly important for suburbs, which sit on the outskirts of existing metro and subway systems. Because they're less dense, suburbs are particularly expensive to reach and support with public transit. And the big shifts in the U.S. economy are pushing more people in poverty into those neighborhoods. So government support for ride-sharing services has the potential to do a lot of good for places that need it the most — and for a lot less money, a particularly important concern in a time when Congress and many state legislatures are irrationally opposed to any new taxes or debt.”