Reducing Environmental Effects of Transportation Network Companies

Featured Faculty: Susan Shaheen

 

In partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a team of researchers from UC Berkeley's Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC) released its final report on the environmental impacts of transportation network companies (TNCs). The report also makes recommendations for how TNCs, like Uber and Lyft, can play a role in a sustainable future. TSRC researchers who contributed to the report are Professor Susan Shaheen, Elliott Martin, and Adam Stocker.

Most significantly, the report finds that TNCs appear to lead to an increase in total driving and, as a result, in greenhouse gas emissions in the three major markets that were examined (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington D.C.). To counteract these increases, the researchers forward several recommendations, including the use of road pricing, designing streets to favor low-carbon transportation, incentivizing the use of electric vehicles, and ensuring that TNC contractors are paid a fair wage.

To learn more about the research, see the issue brief and the full Sustainable Transportation Research Center report

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