Per Hour and Per Mile, Uber Drivers May Be More Efficient Than Cabbies

The jury is still out on whether ride-hailing services put more or fewer cars on the road. But according to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economics, UberX drivers may be about 30 percent more efficient than taxi drivers when it comes to actually driving passengers—which could have implications on congestion for the rest of us.

Judd Cramer, a PhD candidate in economics at Princeton University, and Alan B. Krueger, the prominent Princeton economist (who, notably, co-authored a paper with Uber last year, but maintains no ongoing relationship) analyzed the efficiency of taxi drivers and UberX drivers in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle, using what they call “capacity utilization rate.” This is measured by either the amount of time, or number of miles, that a driver logs with a passenger in the car relative to total hours and mileage.