Transport-network company Uber said ride-sharing services can help reduce the volume of private vehicles on Metro Manila roads by about a million, thus, easing the traffic congestion in the metropolis.
Uber recently commissioned a Boston Consulting Group survey in 10 Asian cities to compare benefits of ride sharing in the region, and underscored that in Manila, there would be a reduction of as many as a million private vehicles if the idea of completely relying on ride-sharing would continue gaining traction.
“With ride sharing, personal-car needs of Manila residents could be met with one-third of private cars we have today—that’s almost a million fewer vehicles,” said Laurence Cua, general manager of Uber Philippines, at the “Unlock Manila” media event on Thursday.
Uber pointed out that its service is not meant to supplant public modes of transport, but private vehicles for personal use.
This is consistent with the result of the Boston Consulting Group study, which concluded that to ease traffic congestion, ride sharing should be seen as a substitute to private vehicles and not public transport.
Also, in a survey, 71 percent of Metro Manila residents already consider ride-sharing services as an alternative to owning a car, Cua added.
Manila residents still cover the most number of miles in their travels via public transport. The study said 51 percent of total kilometers traveled annually are still via public transportation. Private cars, as a mode of transportation, landed at second place. Ride sharing, meanwhile, at the moment, takes up only 5 percent of the total miles traveled by commuters in a year.
This is a disadvantage, as ride-sharing is estimated to be “1.8 more transport-efficient [people-kilometers] than private vehicles.”
Jason Moy, principal of Boston Consulting Group, elaborated in their broader study a scenario where ride-sharing adoption substitutes the most popular private vehicle—in the case of Manila, this points to cars, as opposed to motorcycles.
With ride-sharing services replacing private vehicles as the second most-used transport mode, and these ride-sharing groups advocate more pooling (i.e., Uber Pool as the first choice rather than Uber X), the 2.5 million total number of vehicles in Metro Manila can be reduced to 1.5 million.
Cua, while declining to mention specific numbers, said on a monthly basis, Uber has over a million people using its ride-sharing services.
