Uber's plan to get more people into fewer cars

In the TED talk, Travis talks about the future of human-driven transportation; about how we can cut congestion, pollution and parking by getting more people into fewer cars; and how we can do it with the smartphones using the Uber app. 

He mentioned In the US, people spend 7 billion hours a year, wasted, sitting in traffic. 160 billion dollars in lost productivity, of course also sitting in traffic, and 1/5 of our total carbon footprint is spewed out in the air by those cars that we're sitting in. And that is only 4% of our problem though. Because if you have to own a car which means 96% of the time your car is sitting idle. And so, around 30% of our land and our space is used storing the cars. 

And in the beginning of 2010, Uber created the method where people simply push a button and get a ride. It turned out that lots of people use it and ultimately they started to discover that there was a lot of duplicate rides. They saw a lot of people pushing the same button at the same time going actually heading to the same place.Then, they introduced the uberPOOL. It is working as more people getting around the city in fewer cars, taking cars off the road. They have taken 7.9 million miles off the roads and  taken 1.4 thousand metric tons of CO2 out of the air.

I remembered once in the lecture, the guest lecturer mentioned in the future, there will not be any individual owned cars about replaced by bikes and shared cars. Michael Glotz-Richter, a German Marshall Fund Fellow from Bremen stated that 45% of vehicle kilometers traveled were declining due to the use of car sharing, and people were selling their cars or not buying cars, and the reductions in energy use and CO2 emissions were notable it also shows people are changing their behavior.

Travis is combing the concept of car sharing and carpool together which would help to reduce the Co2 emission. I am looking forward to see and try if there is uberPOOL in Sydney as well. Save the cost as well as help the environment.

Reference:

"Uber's Plan to Get More People into Fewer Cars." Travis Kalanick:. Accessed April 19, 2016. https://www.ted.com/talks/travis_kalanick_uber_s_plan_to_get_more_people_into_fewer_cars?language=en.

"Susan Shaheen: How Car Sharing Accelerates Sustainability." GreenBiz. Accessed April 19, 2016. https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/10/14/shaheen-how-car-sharing-gets-us-here-sustainability.

"Car Pool." - Sustainable Living. Accessed April 04, 2016. https://www.bendigobank.com.au/generationgreen/sustainable-living/transport/car-pool.asp.