[URBAN NOTE] "Uber’s Discrimination Problem Is Bad News for Public Transit"

[rfmcdonald]

Wired's Aarian Marshall writes about the potential racism problems behind the integration of Uber and like services with public transit networks.

Uber and Lyft may have changed lives in the Big American City, but they’re hardly ubiquitous. Just 15 percent of Americans use these services, according to the Pew Research Center. One-third have never heard of them. The ridesharing giants do have an excellent way to build a bigger, less urban customer base: teaming up with government.

In Florida, in New Jersey, and in Colorado, Uber and Lyft have partnered with municipalities to solve first-mile, last-mile problems, ferrying riders to bus stops, train stations, or even their homes for subsidized fares. The companies also have eyes on disrupting this country’s stretched and expensive paratransit system.

But those ambitions are troubled by a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington, and Stanford University, which says Uber and Lyft have a discrimination problem.

In Seattle and Boston, the researchers used Uber and Lyft profiles with “white sounding” and “distinctively black” names to request rides. In Seattle, UberX and Lyft drivers took 16 to 28 percent longer to accept requests from the apparently African-American profiles.

UberX drivers in Boston, who see their passengers’ names and photos only after agreeing to go get them, were twice as likely to cancel a pickup of a black rider while en route, and three times more likely to cancel on an African-American man than a white one. (Lyft did not see the same cancellation effect. The researchers speculate that, because its drivers can see the photos and names of their passengers before they accept the request, discrimination happens before the transaction begins.)