A new study says the explosion in app-based car services like Uber is having a negative effect on the city, increasing congestion on the streets and decreasing ridership on mass transit. NY1's Jose Martinez filed the following report.
Ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft are beloved by those who use them to get around.
"It's very convenient," said one New Yorker. "I live in the city. Everytime I use it, it's always on time picking me up."
But some drivers have a different view.
"It's way congested, way too much traffic," said one delivery driver.
A new report by a former deputy city transportation commissioner, Bruce Schaller, says the use of Uber, Lyft and other e-hailing services has surged to an average of 15 million rides a month in the fall.
"They've tripled in size in terms of overall rides since mid-2015. And that makes a huge difference," Schaller said.
Initially, the growth of e-hailing came at the expense of traditional yellow cab rides. Now, the services are simply adding to the congestion on city streets.
According to the report, they are responsible for more than half a billion miles of driving in just three years, a trend that Schaller calls unsustainable, the title of his report.
"It's just exponential growth," Schaller said. "We're just going to have more and more congestion."
Schaller's report warns that this growth "will lead to mounting costs for businesses and consumers from increasing traffic delay and hinder progress toward the City's goals for mobility, economic growth and the environment."
The e-hailing services have become so popular, they are being blamed for the for the first dip in subway ridership in close to a decade.
After striking out in his 2015 attempt to cap Uber's growth in the city, Mayor Bill de Blasio now says he's going to roll out a new vision for how to reduce congestion.
"It's certainly a public policy challenge all of us are facing," said Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg. "They're a very convenient mode of transportation. People are embracing them. But we have to figure out how to manage the impacts on our streets."
In a statement, Uber said it's growing fastest in areas outside of Manhattan that have fewer mass-transit options and pointed to a 2016 study commissioned by the de Blasio administration that construction was to blame for the increase in congestion.