Ride-sharing companies get boost in Pittsburgh
Just last month, Uber, the country’s biggest ride-sharing service, was operating in Pennsylvania on a temporary license issued by the state Public Utility Commission.
That status changed Nov. 4, when Gov. Tom Wolf signed a bill that allows ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft to operate legally in the Keystone State.
The law became effective immediately.
The change, said Shari Shapiro, head of Uber’s public affairs for Pennsylvania and Delaware, enables the transportation technology company to gain a major leg up on some far-reaching, game-changing ideas it has been working on in Pittsburgh.
Shapiro outlined some of those ideas – which include the ongoing trials for autonomously driven cars in Pittsburgh – during an hourlong presentation Nov. 2 at the Hilton Garden Inn for members of the Washington County Chamber of Commerce.
Shapiro didn’t have to do much explaining about what her company currently does.
A show of hands from the approximately 100 people in attendance revealed that about 98 percent of them have used Uber’s ride-sharing service, which enables people to use an Uber application on their smartphone to summon a car to take them to their destination.
“We’ve provided 800,000 Uber rides in Pennsylvania” in the past two years, Shapiro said, noting that 90 percent of the 3 million rides the company provides in 400 cities around the world every day are less than 10 minutes in duration.
Quoting Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick, Shapiro said, “We want to be as reliable as running water for everyone everywhere.”
To reach that goal, Shapiro said the company hires an average of 100,000 new drivers a month.
While Uber may be best known as a disruptive technology to traditional taxi services – many have sued the company – with its own independently contracted drivers who are immediately available through the web app, its long-term business strategy intends to achieve its ubiquity goal with driverless cars. Some of those already are plying Pittsburgh’s streets with a “safety driver” on board to handle any glitches in the test runs.
“We think that self-driven cars will have a way of making us all safer,” Shapiro said, noting that most accidents are caused by human error.
And according to Shapiro, Pittsburgh, where Uber is collaborating with engineers from Carnegie Mellon University, will be the place that determines the future of autonomous driving.
“We’ve brought 500 jobs to Pittsburgh, and made it the international headquarters for self-driven vehicles. Pittsburgh will be the center for this technological revolution,” said Shapiro. “We want to reduce the number of cars and reduce congestion significantly in a way that has never been done.”
But she was quick to add that the company views the process “as a 10-year progression” that will gradually transition Uber from its driver-based service to an autonomously operated one.
In the meantime, Uber has continued to expand its driver-operated ride service in the region. The company claims to cover more than 90 percent of Pennsylvania’s population.
She acknowledged following her remarks that while Uber began hiring drivers in Washington and Greene counties this summer, she could not say when the company would reach the “critical mass” required to provide seamless service in the local area.