The anti-transit underpinnings of the
“three revolutions”
The “three revolutions” in automobility must be viewed as deeply political projects that depend on sustained austerity, weak regulations, and complicit politicians.
Public transportation has already been undermined by decades of austerity and political infatuation with the private automobile. Even if nothing were to change technologically in how cars operate, most transit systems would still be in seriously bad shape. In the U.S., 17.3 million new vehicles were sold in 2018, close to the highest number in history.1 The share of households without a vehicle in the U.S. dropped from 21 percent to 9 percent between 1969 and 2009, with low- income households increasingly owning vehicles.2 Conditions are, predictably, getting worse with Trump’s presidency. His administration cut federal transit funding from 28 percent of transportation grants to 8.5 percent, while increasing funding to highways, roads, and bridges from 34.8 percent between 2014 and 2016 to 70.4 percent.3
Existing political institutions are doing more than enough to marginalize transit as it is. But the “three revolutions” in automobility—electrification, sharing or pooling, and autono mous vehicles—threaten to deliver a fatal blow. This isn’t because of any sort of innate technological superiority over buses and trains. Rather, these so-called revolutions are capturing political and public attention by further commodifying transportation, reiterating the myth that public transit is an outdated approach. In this chapter I’ll discuss what these alleged revolutions are, their claims and failings, and why public transit remains the best option to anchor collective struggle. Let’s start with some basic definitions.
First, and already well under way, is the electrification of vehicles—the replacement of vehicles running on gasoline- or diesel-powered internal combustion engines with electric motors that use battery power generated by charging stations and regenerative braking. Electric motors are far more efficient than their fossil-fuel-propelled counterparts, converting between 60 and 73 percent of energy to actually power the vehicle down the road, compared to only 12 to 30 percent for gasoline vehicles (much of the energy is wasted as heat).4 That means that even in regions of the continent where electricity is mostly generated by burning coal, a switch to electric vehicles has a potential for significant emission reduction; when more electricity is generated by low-carbon sources, it is even cleaner.5 Switching to an electric motor can greatly decrease the emission of local air pollution like nitrogen dioxide, along with noise pollution and other harmful impacts.6
Personal electric vehicles are already gaining political traction around the world, and many governments are offering generous subsidies to drivers as an incentive to make the leap. The top-selling electric vehicles in the U.S. are manufactured by Tesla, Chevrolet, and Nissan.7 Note, however, that such vehicles don’t offer benefits for a wide range of automobile-caused problems such as congestion, pedestrian and cyclist safety, or affordability. They are also highly resource-intensive, requiring large quantities of materials to build batteries, and necessitate continued investment in expensive infrastructure like roads and highways. Electrification is by no means limited to private automobiles: buses and trains are prime targets. They have much higher per-rider efficiency, and it’s possible to rapidly replace a transit system’s fleet. Outside of China, though, electrification of transit is happening very slowly; most of the focus is on personal electric vehicles.
The second revolution is the sharing or pooling of vehicles, which has far less to do with the physical vehicles themselves than with the platforms they’re organized by. Rather than only one or two people being in a car, the objective with pooling is to increase the number of riders at any given time and reduce unnecessary transportation. Currently, sharing can look like using a ride-hailing service like Uber or Lyft, or the more transit- like services of UberPool and Lyft Line. Genuine car-sharing services like Zipcar and Car2Go are promising but, due to their limited scope, don’t tend to be prioritized by the venture capitalists who bankroll mobility services. For example, Zipcar, now owned by Avis, boasts a fleet of 10,000 vehicles worldwide and a market capitalization of $1 billion. By comparison, Uber, with an estimated 3.9 million drivers around the world, went public at an $82 billion valuation.8
Transportation experts agree that sharing or pooling is the only way to maximize the potential benefits of next-generation automobiles: failing to do so will mean as many or more personal vehicles on the road, a nightmare scenario of induced demand that leads to far more congestion, pollution, and urban sprawl.9 The “heaven” scenario—an expression popularized by Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase—would get more people into empty seats: it would see fewer cars on the road, less square footage dedicated to parking, and more ability to spontaneously take a trip. Some critics argue, though, that sharing isn’t remotely guaranteed, given the sizable behavioural shift it will require from riders.
The third revolution is the automation or self-driving of vehicles. Vehicle autonomy is often imagined as a singular “on/off” switch in which a complex computer takes over all driving processes. But it’s more helpful to understand autonomy as a spectrum, ranging from minimal intervention in cruise control and acceleration, to partial navigation of open highways, to the full-blown ability of a vehicle to self-navigate busy pothole- strewn streets without any driver control.
The Society of Automotive Engineers International has devised a standard of six levels, ranging from Level 0 (no automation), to Level 2 (partial automation, like Tesla’s controversial Autopilot system), to Level 5 (full automation, in which the steering wheel and pedals are completely removed).10 Small advances in autonomous technologies can make significant differences in safety, with lane centring and brake support. But full automation—Level 5, capable of driving in all conditions—requires a much more complex set of technologies, including radar, high-resolution lidar (radar, except pulses of lasers instead of microwaves), multiple ultrasonic sensors, high- definition mapping, cameras, and immensely powerful computers to process the data.11
Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft are banking on Level 5 autonomy for their future profitability, as such technology would eliminate the need for costly human labour. And many of the world’s largest companies—including Apple, Huawei, and Microsoft, along with the usual automotive companies—are working on autonomous vehicle technologies.12
These next-generation technologies are expected to emerge in tandem, helping to improve public transportation as a by-product by providing connections between workplaces, transit stations, and homes. But as I will argue, that hope is loaded with politically naive assumptions that ignore the history of automobility and that may end up triggering a death spiral for transit systems if they are not directly challenged—and unless vastly improved alternatives are quickly built up before it’s too late.
There is great financial incentive for these next-generation projects to succeed. Total revenue of autonomous vehicles is projected to hit $2.8 trillion by 2030, of which Google’s Waymo will represent 60 percent.13 Autonomous ride-hailing services may account for nearly $4 trillion in global economic activity by 2050, with another $3 trillion coming from driverless delivery and business logistics.14 Larry Burns, a University of Michigan engineering professor and former vice-president of research and development at General Motors, said in 2015: “This is an arms race. You’re going to see a new age for the automobile.” Burns suggested that annual profits for the “first mover” could be $30 billion.15
Uber went public in 2019 with a valuation of $82 billion, while Lyft priced its initial public offering at $24 billion.16 These ride-hailing services have come to dominate markets by imposing ongoing pressures on drivers through repeated rate cuts, a refusal to pay benefits, and an insistence that they are exempt from regulations such as minimum wage and overtime. Jarrett Walker told me, “A lot of PR dollars are being spent trying to pretend it’s about something else: that it’s about Uber and Lyft being more efficient or more innovative. No, it’s about racing to the very bottom on driver compensation and still not being able to make money.”
Ride-hailing companies are indeed struggling to turn a profit. In 2018, Uber lost $1.8 billion despite $50 billion in sales and $11.3 billion in net revenue.17 Lyft logged $8 billion in bookings that same year, collecting $2.2 billion in revenue—but still lost $911 million.18 But investors don’t see that as a problem. Uber’s executive team has often appealed to the growth of Amazon, which didn’t turn a profit for almost two decades, as an example of how it plans to eventually succeed.19
Uber and Lyft survive—and attract ever more venture capital—due to their success at dodging or resisting rules that apply to other transportation modes, including taxis and limos. The companies have poured enormous resources into opposing proposed limits on the number of cars on city roads, mandatory data sharing with regulators, the provision of wheelchair-accessible vehicles (WAVs), and requirements for basic background checks or insurance for drivers. In 2016, Uber spent over $1.4 million on federal lobbyists, and millions more are spent at municipal, state, and provincial levels.20
In the first half of 2018 alone, Uber spent $876,000 lobbying the New York City Council, mostly over the proposed cap on ride-hailing vehicles and minimum wage for drivers.21 Another $73,000 was spent by Lyft.22 Transportation expert Hubert Horan has argued that Uber successfully exploited gullible business and tech industry journalists into propagating a “heroic innovator” myth, “apparently oblivious to the fact that they were amplifying claims crafted by Koch-funded groups designed to undermine market competition, the concept of urban transport as a public good, and the legitimacy of any form of regulatory authority.”23
Many of the next-generation automobile companies have a well-established revolving door with senior government officials. In 2017, Valerie Jarrett—a long-time adviser to former president Barack Obama—joined Lyft’s board of directors.24 A few years earlier, Uber had hired Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, for a senior vice-president position. In 2017, Plouffe was fined $90,000 by the Chicago Board of Ethics for illegally lobbying mayor Rahm Emanuel, having failed to register as an Uber lobbyist.25
In 2016, Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford, and Volvo combined forces to create the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets lobby group. The group is headed by David Strickland, the former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under Obama. As reported by Verge: “NHTSA is currently working on a set of rules and policies, pitting Strickland against his former agency in the race to clear the road for fully self-driving cars.”26
Many municipalities that have attempted to introduce meaningful restrictions have been beaten back by such interests. Uber and Lyft ceased operations in Austin due to safety concerns but wormed their way back into the city after appealing to the state’s legislature.27 A report by the National Employment Law Project and the Partnership for Working Families concluded that Uber and Lyft have successfully lobbied forty-one states to strip municipalities of their ability to establish regulations, a process that the report summarized as “barge in, buy, bully, and bamboozle.”
The report concluded: “In many cases, using these strategies and tactics, Uber has secured a high level of access in multiple state and city legislative processes, enabling it to draft its own bills, heavily influence the vetting, and even effectively staff elected officials on the issue.”28 Consumer rights group SumOfUs compiled a list of the seven steps that Uber uses to successfully gain access to a city, including attempts to “convert riders into a political base” by recruiting the support of celebrities including Kate Upton and Ashton Kutcher.29
“[Ride-hailing companies] have an interest in trying to undermine regulations and squeeze out those profits where they can. You can definitely try to keep playing catch-up and cutting them off when they’re trying to game you. But frankly, your chances of success are not that high. Even if it is technically possible, practically you’re probably going to end up getting gamed.”
—Michal Rozworski, co-author, The People’s Republic of Walmart
According to Horan, Uber riders only pay 41 percent of costs—the rest is subsidized by private capital. Horan argued that “unlike most startups, Uber did not enter the industry in pursuit of a significant market share, but was explicitly working to drive incumbents out of business and achieve global industry dominance.”30
These companies also rely on tax loopholes for massive gains. Uber’s main corporate structure is based in the Netherlands; it operates through a network of Bermuda-registered subsidiaries and shell companies that exploit byzantine rules concerning royalty payments and offshore havens. Only 1.45 percent of Uber’s net revenue is subject to U.S. taxes.31 A New York Times investigation suggested that Uber was improperly downloading the burden of sales tax payments to New York Uber drivers, rather than to passengers—which could represent over $200 million in compensation owed to drivers.32
Uber and Lyft are vehemently opposed to sharing data about their operations. So governments are often deprived of urgently needed information on driver statistics and ridership patterns, which in turn undermines their ability to plan for changes like increased congestion or depressed transit usage. Researchers have been forced to devise a range of methods to track the impact of ride-hailing services. Northeastern University built a software script that analyzed vehicle location data to help model drop-offs by ride-hailing services, while Boston’s transit agency conducted a rider intercept survey to assess impacts.33 Katie Wells, an urban geographer and postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, says that “we have no idea how many drivers there are” on the roads, as Uber doesn’t share any of its information with public regulators. Such data is even inaccessible via Freedom of Information Act requests. As University of California researchers put it: “Limited data in the public sector perpetuates less-informed decision making, which in turn results in transportation systems that do not meet the public’s needs.”34
The testing of autonomous vehicles has indicated that many companies will skirt rules and pressure local governments into allowing their presence on roads and highways without clear safety regulations. In 2017, thirty-three states had either passed or initiated legislation or an executive order to allow autonomous vehicles on public roads.35 That was followed in 2018 by fifteen states enacting another eighteen autonomous vehicle- related bills.36 In February 2018, California became the first state to allow fully autonomous vehicles to operate on public roads with a safety driver, who is responsible for overseeing the operations of the vehicle and intervening if necessary.37 Arizona followed suit only a few days later.38
The Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets has successfully lobbied the federal government to keep collision data secret and worked against local governments being able to craft their own autonomous vehicle legislation to protect residents.39 Significant lobbying efforts were made by various autonomous vehicle groups in the lead-up to the U.S. Senate vote on the AV START Act in early 2018, which several senators held up due to serious concerns about safety. The bill would have allowed companies to test and market autonomous vehicles to consumers before federal safety regulations were implemented and would block more stringent state regulations.40 It failed to pass in late 2018, but Congress continues to meet about advancing legislation.41
Indiana state legislator Ed Soliday introduced a bill to regu late the autonomous vehicle industry, which passed both the House and Senate but eventually died due to lobbying efforts by the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets and General Motors’ Auto Alliance.42 Soliday said at the time:
You can ask legislators all over the country. [Automotive lobbyists] come in and they want one of two things—and they will do anything to get it. They either want unlimited, unfettered, total access to every street and road in your state with no accountability whatsoever and no federal safety standards, and if they can’t get that, then they want to kill any legislation. They are powerful lobbyists—they will tell any story, they will make any exaggeration.43
It’s not entirely impossible to regulate these companies. They can be corralled to a degree, as was demonstrated when the New York Taxi Workers Alliance pressured New York City Council to vote for a twelve-month cap on Uber and Lyft vehicles (with the exception of those accessible to people in wheelchairs) and establish a $17.22/hour minimum wage for drivers.44 Transport for London, the transport regulator for the British capital, suspended Uber’s licence in November 2019 after finding out 14,000 trips had been taken with drivers who faked their identity on its app, although the company is allowed to continue operating during the lengthy court battles to come.45 And battles are unfolding—including California’s sweeping AB-5 legislation—over the employment status of ride-hailing drivers that may significantly impact the industry.46
Ride-hailing and autonomous vehicle companies have long positioned themselves as friends to transit, looking to share cities and towns rather than dominate them. It’s a public relations gambit.47 Many major firms have already indicated they wish to replace public transportation as we know it by creating citywide mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) networks, including scooters, e-bikes, autonomous vehicles, flying cars, and vanpooling.48 In 2018, new Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, “I want to run the bus systems for a city. I want you to be able to take an Uber and get into the subway … get out and have an Uber waiting for you.”49
This clear threat to public transit was confirmed in Uber’s filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2019 for its initial public offering, stating: “We believe we can continue to grow the number of trips taken with our Ridesharing products and replace personal vehicle ownership and usage and public transportation one use case at a time.”50 Specifically, Uber described “all public transportation miles in all countries globally” as part of its total addressable market.51
Uber and Lyft are having serious impacts on public transit. Transportation policy expert Bruce Schaller calculated that ride-hailing services transported 2.6 billion passengers in 2017, a 37 percent increase from 2016.52 Ride-hailing services have added 5.7 billion miles of driving per year in the nine largest markets: the metropolitan areas of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC. These services are not only replacing existing automobile travel but expanding it. Between 2015 and 2019, the average U.S. household increased the amount it spends on for-hire services, including Uber and Lyft, from twenty dollars to seventy dollars, while spending on transit decreased by 15 percent.53
A widely circulated study from the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies indicated an average net loss of 6 percent had occurred in transit usage in seven major American cities due to Uber and Lyft.54 A survey in 2018 by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council of Boston found that 42 percent of ride-hailing users would have used public transportation, while another 12 percent would have walked or cycled.55 “Despite what the companies say, ultimately they see transit riders as potential customers,” Kafui Attoh of the City University of New York, and author of Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California’s East Bay, told me.
Ride-hailing companies have actively worked to replace transit systems in smaller municipalities. Altamonte Springs in Florida contracted Uber for a one-year pilot to do the job previously done by public transportation, subsidizing 20 percent of Uber fares in the city and 25 percent of Uber fares connected with rail service.56 The director of transportation policy for Lyft has said that it’s “very interested” in expanding the Altamonte model across the country as an opportunity to take hold in suburban areas.57
By early 2018, Uber had stuck thirty-five partnerships with public transit agencies around the world.58 In March of that year, the city of Arlington, Texas, announced that vanpooling service Via was completely replacing its bus system.59
A number of concerns emerged early on in Altamonte Springs: the lack of options for people with disabilities or who don’t have smartphones and credit cards, and the requirement that Altamonte sign a far-reaching nondisclosure agreement about the deal.60 But many other small cities in the area opted for a similar deal. Over 100,000 residents in the northern Orlando area were brought into an Uber-operated “public transit” arrangement by 2016.61 Altamonte’s efforts to maintain transit usage with a further 25 percent discount on Uber fares if the rider is travelling to or from a train station failed to take hold: the city manager said that “the monstrous majority” of rides weren’t of that nature.62
The same has happened in Innisfil, Ontario, where the municipality is subsidizing Uber for any trip over three to five dollars (the rate varies based on destination) in order to complete routes that bus lines would otherwise have served.63 In early 2018, it was reported that the subsidized Uber program in Innisfil cost “just” $165,535 over the first eight months, with 3,400 residents taking 26,700 trips. That works out to a per-trip subsidy of $6.20, extremely high compared to the subsidies that transit agencies receive in other municipalities—and, crucially, it relies on precarious, non-unionized labour.64 In 2019, it was reported that the so-called Innisfil Transit was raising its flat fare by one dollar per trip and implementing a thirty-ride-per-month cap for users. A regular user of the Uber service told CityLab: “I would never get on a bus in Toronto and hear the driver say, ‘Sorry, but you’ve hit your cap.’ Uber was supposed to be our bus.”65
The “three revolutions” in automobility must be viewed as deeply political projects that depend on sustained austerity, weak regulations, and complicit politicians. As Hana Creger, environmental equity co-ordinator at the Greenlining Institute, put it to me: “Uber and Lyft became popular because as a rider it’s a great service. It’s cheap, it’s convenient, it’s fulfilling a transportation gap that transit was not providing in many cases. There’s been a massive deterioration of our public transit system because of underfunding. That in itself allowed rideshare services to fill that gap and take advantage of that. I think part of the solution is increasing funding for the construction, operation, and maintenance of mass transit in order to make it a more competitive, cheaper, and more efficient option.”
Quality public transportation represents a direct threat to attempts by these companies to remake communities: transit agencies offering free, frequent, and accessible service that reaches all parts of a city or region at any time of day—and maybe even offers a functional app for trip planning—would significantly undermine the growth potential for ride-hailing services and autonomous vehicles. As argued by Jeff Sparrow: “Car culture will only be defeated by destroying its foundations. Once it is cheaper and more convenient to catch the train, the car will no longer represent freedom but will instead signify expense, waste and frustration.”66 As a result, the continued stagnation and eventual demise of public transit is very much in these companies’ interests. To that end, they are actively breaking up the remaining network of transit by poaching riders from the most profitable lines.
It’s a process that Daniel Aldana Cohen described to me as companies slipping into cracks in service in order to “pry those cracks open.” By the time transit agencies and regulators sum up the willpower to respond, it may well be too late. The entrance of ride-hailing companies into communities represents a quiet but fierce competition over space, labour power, and decision-making: one that Peter Norton describes as a “low-grade war, as it always has been.”
The “three revolutions” aren’t about technology superiority. The most effective and viable transportation modes already exist: the bus, train, bike, and wheelchair. It’s a question of political priorities—and whether the next century of transportation is guided by a neoliberal privatism or aims for a more collective and livable society.
“We’re making alternatives less possible by pursuing these high-tech futures,” Norton says. “And we saw this all historically. When we made it more possible to get to work by driving your own car, we inevitably made it less possible to get to work by any other means. We are making that mistake again right now.”