Uber and Public Transit: Working Hand in Hand in Edmonton
Written bySince our arrival in Edmonton in December of 2014, we’ve been working hard to make Uber the most efficient way to get around town. With uberX, safe, reliable rides are available at all hours of the day, supporting and extending Edmonton’s existing transportation network.
How?
Gaps in public transportation become hubs for Uber: Our driver partners go where Edmonton’s Light Rail, the LRT, doesn’t run.- Uber complements public transit: Making it easy for people to take advantage of the existing public transportation options.
This means that Edmontonians aren’t just using Uber to get a ride on evenings and weekends, but also to commute to school, work and everything in between. Uber helps connect them to the existing public transit infrastructure, making the city that much more accessible to residents, commuters, and tourists.
To gauge how people have incorporated Uber into their daily commutes, we looked at one week’s worth of trips that started or ended within a half-km of a transit stop:
What we discovered is that 36% of trips started or ended within 400m of an LRT stop. Above, you’ll see a map illustrating one week’s worth of these trips. Of the trips that start or end close to an LRT stop, almost 90% pick up or drop off in an area that isn’t conveniently served by public transit.
The map below shows just how far and wide our driver partners go when dropping off their riders – far beyond the reach of the LRT.
What’s more, 55% of trips in January either started or ended more than 2km from where the user’s previous trip ended more than two days later. These one way trips help further show that uberX has become part of a broad mix of transportation options that Edmontonians utilize to get around town.
We’re humbled by the love we’ve received in Edmonton, with over 12,000 of you showing your support for safe, reliable rides in this great city. As 2015 presses on, we’ll work to expand throughout YEG, providing our driver partners with new economic opportunities, and increased service for our riders.
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