Uber Connects Las Vegas

On October 24, 2014, we officially launched uberX in Las Vegas. Now that we’re closing in on two weeks of operations, we thought we’d take a moment to examine where demand for safe, reliable rides exists in Las Vegas, and where people want Uber to take them.

So where do people want Uber available in Las Vegas? To answer that question, we mapped out where users have opened the Uber app (eyeballs) in the Las Vegas area:

This map makes clear that demand for Uber is highest on the Strip, Downtown and nearby areas. But based on the number of “eyeballs” — a metric we use to determine how many people open the Uber app — significant demand for Uber also exists in areas outside the Strip in areas that are traditionally underserved by taxis like Henderson, Summerlin, and North Las Vegas.

Once we determined where people want Uber, we set out to answer another question: once users connect to a safe, reliable ride with Uber, where are they using it to go? The graphic below shines some light on that question:

Line thicknesses represent the proportional amount of trips that took place between two districts; the arrow indicates where those trips were headed. Darker shades of blue denote a higher density of trips. Trips starting and ending in the same district are indicated by an arrow pointing at the origin district. District definitions, largely determined by geography and sized in proportion to their actual area in the above graphic, are explained in our methodology below. We limit the visualization to the top 3 destinations from each district, although we have seen trips taken from every possible district combination.

Once again, the Strip leads the pack — this time as the most popular destination for users of the Uber app. It’s also interesting to note that a significant number of these trips originate from traditionally underserved communities like East and West Las Vegas.

So what did we learn after two weeks on the ground in Las Vegas and its surrounding areas? A handful of key takeaways below:

• The Strip was by far the most popular destination in Las Vegas, accounting for over 40% of trips to date.

• The next two most popular district destinations were East of the strip, followed by Downtown Vegas.

• East of the Strip is most popular ride origin district; followed closely by West of the Strip.

• Excluding the Strip as a destination, the most popular trip routes were trips originating and ending in the East, followed by Downtown from the East.

But here’s the kicker: about 60% of trips with Uber ended outside the Strip.

What this means is that we are making safe, reliable and affordable transportation options available to more people in more parts of the City — including areas surrounding the Strip.

The Uber app was created to make sure people could get rides when and where they need, no matter what. Based on the data we’ve seen so far, with substantial trips throughout all our defined districts, we’re making significant headway on that front.

Right now, Uber doesn’t pick up on the Strip or McCarran Airport, which means no trips originate from either of those locations (hence, the low density of trips that begin in the corresponding districts). But Uber does bring a lot of riders to the Strip, from which they use existing transportation options like taxi or limo services to get back home. With Uber, riders have a safe, reliable option to get to the Strip from the suburbs. And that’s how Uber connects Las Vegas.

Appendix: How We Defined Districts

We divvied up Las Vegas into 6 districts based on geography to figure out on an aggregate, anonymized scale, who went where with Uber:

• The Strip and Downtown.
• North Vegas, using Interstate 515 (I-515) as its southernmost boundary at the west, and continuing that line across.
• West of the Strip and East of the Strip, using Interstate 15 (I-15) as the divide.
• South, following the Las Vegas Beltway (I-215) at the west which defined the boundary, and then continuing that line across to include Henderson.