[URBAN NOTE] "Embrace new transit technology or else, U of T study says"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Jesse Winters notes the call to assimilate Uber into GTA transit planning.

Transit planners across the Toronto and Hamilton region can either embrace new and disruptive technology like Uber, or resign themselves to a future of endless gridlock compounded by striking taxi drivers and a gutted public transit system that hardly anyone uses, according to a new report by the University of Toronto’s Mowat Centre.

“That’s a pretty decent takeaway from the report,” said co-author Sara Ditta with a laugh.

While that dystopian vision comes from the report’s somewhat stylized worst-case-scenario description, Ditta said the themes underpinning it are serious and pressing.

“The fact is that shared mobility is here,” Ditta said. “It has and will continue to change how people travel, and policy makers need to take steps to address that.”

“Shared mobility” is the term Ditta and her colleagues use to describe the current shift away from personal ownership of things like bikes and cars toward shared use of those resources though apps such as Uber and Lyft, publicly-owned bike share programs and other innovations of the so-called “sharing economy.”