Is Uber the Enemy or Ally of Public Transit?

If you’re taking an Uber, you’re not taking the bus. You’re not taking a subway, either, or a streetcar, or a funicular, or a public ferry. You can only be in one place at a time, and that place, if you’re taking an Uber, is a car.

But a new study in the Journal of Urban Economics suggests that for the average U.S. transit agency, Uber may be connecting riders to transit more often than distancing them. Using data from the National Transit Database for 2004 to 2015, University of Toronto economist Jonathan D. Hall (no, not Uber’s chief of economics, though he’s also named Jonathan Hall), Utah State’s Huntsman School business professor Craig Palsson, and Brigham Young economist Joseph Price found that the ride-hailing platform encourages overall transit ridership in certain types of cities, and within certain types of transit agencies.