New Study Shows That It Is Cheaper to Uber Than Own a Car in 4 of the 5 Largest U.S. Cities
Car ownership may not be the ideal means of transportation for many of the country's largest urban centers
Is ride-sharing the future for urban commuters
Owning a car in a large city can be quite the expensive endeavor. Not only will you likely have to sit in traffic for long periods of time, but paying for parking can quickly add up when you have to commute to work every day.
As such, many urban workers have turned to using ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft to get to their place of employment. That might be a pretty wise choice, as a new report from Mary Meeker of the Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers investment firm indicates that it is less expensive to Uber than to own a car in four of the five largest cities in the U.S.
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The finding was presented in Meeker’s annual internet trends report. It found that it is cheaper to Uber than to own a car in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
For example, the average weekly cost to own a car in NYC was found to be $218. Meanwhile, the average cost to use Uber during the same period came out to be $142, according to the study.
All that rush hour idling can really add up when it comes time to fill up at the pump
Photo: Jeff Turner
The outlier was Dallas. While the weekly cost to own a car in the Lone Star State city was found to be $65, it cost upwards of $181 to use an Uber.
Of course, the reported cost of using Uber in these cities included both UberX and POOL use. Since some of these services allow multiple riders to split the cost, that could have greatly reduced the reported weekly cost of utilizing the service.
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What’s more, the findings only cover weekly commuting costs. They do not, for example, cover trips to experience the nightlife downtown nor excursions to other neighborhoods during the weekend.
With these cities growing larger and the available space within them rapidly decreasing, it kind of makes sense that daily driving wouldn’t be advantageous for everyone. Still, if your city has reliable public transportation, that might just be a third alternative that you could consider for your daily commute.
News Source: Lifehacker
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