According to a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, just 36 percent of American adults say they have used ride-hailing services. Sixty-one percent say they have heard of the services but hadn't taken a ride. The remaining 3 percent said they hadn't heard of them at all. That comports, mostly, with other surveys conducted in the past year about Uber and Lyft ridership, which have found that between 24.4 and 43 percent of the US population has used apps to summon rides.

Though those numbers may seem underwhelming, they actually mark a substantial jump in ridership and name recognition for the ride-hailing services. When Pew, a nonpartisan research organization, ran an identical survey in 2015 of Americans 18 and older, it found just 15 percent had used the services. And a third, 33 percent, had no idea what Uber and Lyft were. But this new survey also found that few riders aren't making ride-hail services part of their daily routines, which is less great news for the long-term growth of these companies, both set for initial public offerings this year.

Americans' interactions with the ride-hailing services depend, unsurprisingly, on who they are, where they live, how old they are, and how much they make. More than half of 18- to 29-year-olds have used Uber, Lyft, and their like, but just 24 percent of those over 50 have. Fifty-five percent of college grads have hailed an Uber or Lyft, but 20 percent of those with high school degrees or less have gotten into the services. While 53 percent of those with household incomes over $75,000 have hitched ride-hail rides, less than a quarter of those making less than $30,000 have done the same. And high-income urban dwellers are way more likely to have hopped aboard than high-income people living in rural areas, 71 percent compared to 32 percent.

All of this makes sense. Uber and Lyft undercut the prices of many taxi services, expanding the market of those taking one-off rides but remaining too pricey for some low-income households. Young people are early adopters, meaning it has taken a while for Uber use to trickle down to the olds. And the services are still far from available everywhere. The business model is hard to work in far-flung rural areas, where riders might have to wait tens of minutes for a pickup and drivers get fewer fares. That part's OK for the ride-hail giants: There are still riders and markets to capture (and fight over). Lyft would not confirm the Pew survey's figures, but a company spokesperson wrote in a statement that Lyft is "excited to see an increase in usage of services like ours. We're looking toward a future where car ownership is entirely optional." Uber did not respond to a request for comment.

Still, the number of habitual riders is small. Only one in 10 users of ride-hailing services say they use these apps at least weekly, including just 2 percent who say they use them every day or almost every day. That's actually down from 3 percent in 2015. Which means there aren't that many folks who see ride-hail as an everyday commuting option. Another 22 percent are monthly users, while a majority of riders (67 percent) say they use these services less than once a month.

https://www.wired.com/story/uber-lyft-ride-hail-stats-pew-research/


Ride-hail was and continues to be a gamechanger, but how will its own game change now that other forms of mobility-as-a-service are also swipe-able, scalable and ever cheaper? Where does it fit in with other modes of transportation? And will people ever give up their cars? Prognosticators convened last month in Los Angeles at LA CoMotion, a conference for transportation public-private partnerships, to tackle these questions and more.

In a conversation moderated by The Rideshare Guy Harry Campbell, Toyota Mobility Foundation Program Director Pras Ganesh, Boston Transportation Department Commissioner Gina Fiandaca, Via Business Development Principal Lilija Rudis, and Ridecell Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Alliances Mark Thomas talked about what's to come for ride-hail and shared mobility.

1. It will force multi-modality on cities, and push public transit to compete on efficiency. Boston exemplifies this. Fiandaca, its transportation chief, said: "the explosion of ride-hail has certainly filled gaps in our transit system, and it has certainly highlighted the fragility of our transit system." Accordingly, the city is looking toward a future where residents combine modes. Fiandaca said planners are asking themselves: "How can we best serve them through a variety of options?" Rudis, whose company Via provides on-demand group transit, said shared mobility is important because it's long been needed. Ride-hail has "identified a latent demand for rides that already existed," Rudis said. "So when Uber and Lyft came on the market it was very, very apparent that there were lots of rides that in many cases transit wasn't serving, or in some cases rides that people were previously taking with their personal vehicles and preferred to take a ride-hail system."

2. Mobility disruption in general is driven by three things, and they'll make your ride cheaper. Ridecell's Thomas told the panel there are three trends changing transportation: autonomous vehicles, on-demand services and electrification of the fleet. Ridecell is a platform on which to build and scale a mobility idea, basically a make-your-own-Uber solution. Consequently, it constantly analyzes the industry, tracking price points for passengers as much as returns on investments for its clients. Thomas said the three trends converge in the ride-hail space and will force passengers' fares down. "It's these three disruptions together, that come together [in a few years], that will be enough to dramatically change the economics of using shared mobility," he said.

3. People will continue to choose transportation mode by purpose. People make decisions according to whether they're going for work, play or errands; they also consider the age of who they're moving with. That will remain. "Everyone talks about shared mobility, but mobility is actually nothing but a means to an end," Ganesh said. Asking "'Why do people move?' is probably the more important thing." His organization, the Toyota Mobility Foundation, is a kind of urban mobility thinktank comprised of public-private partnerships that implements global experiments in transportation policy. "People move for education, for employment, for entertainment, for healthcare," Ganesh said. "So the purposes of why people move are actually kind of the key trigger. And then you have to think about what is the most efficient or optimal form of getting to that particular place."

4. People won't get out of their cars until they seem like old CDs. One day your own car, that you must store and maintain, will feel too expensive and too space-consuming. Thomas compared personal vehicles to CDs and shared mobility to digital music. Why occupy the space and pay for the entire thing, when you can press a button on your phone and only spend on exactly what you want right now? The tipping point on shared mobility over personal vehicle use will be "when it becomes twice as cheap to use a shared vehicle than use your own," Thomas said. [We won't want our own cars] in the same way that probably none of use are out buying CDs and DVDs anymore. You know, we're pushing a button and listening to Spotify. If we can push a button and get a ride for half the cost of owning our own car, that's the real power of this transformation."

5. Ride-hail and ride-share services won't necessarily be limited to urban centers or even places with strong public transportation. On-demand transportation can substitute for government-managed transit, as it has in a Via partnership with Arlington, Texas. The city previously had the distinction of being the largest city in the U.S. without a public transit system. Unlike Uber or Lyft, Via is not door-to-door. It functions more like a smaller, more tech-driven bus or vanpool. Its platform aggregates information on people heading in the same direction and then displays options for shared rides with nearby pick-up points, and drop-offs near a destination. Via provided its technology to Arlington, which designed the service for select stops around town with a flat $3 fare.

6. Design philosophy must change to a compartment focus, to allow people sharing a car to feel like they're in their own space. Traffic will be reduced when people get off the idea that only their own cars will give them the space they need through their work and leisure time. "People think autonomous Uber is just a car without the driver," Thomas said. "It feels like your own car, even though it's shared." Think of an individual business class airplane seat with your own screen, in your own compartment within a self-driving car's cabin.

7. The global winners will localize service. Mobility providers should consider an area's culture and weather along with demographics. Ganesh exemplified differences among markets in Asia. In Thailand, frequent rain is a factor that increases demand for door-to-door options. An interest in an easy hop-on and hop-off mode of transportation depends on age. In some cultures, women might not freely move about without their families. "You need to understand the culture," Ganesh said. "It may be the same company [fragmenting its own market] but they need to localize to be successful within that context."

Julie Walmsley, Contributor

https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliewalmsley/2018/12/09/what-does-the-future-hold-for-ride-hailing-here-are-7-expert-predictions/#58197e3e4b25