有了Uber神器 私家車或成歷史

With a near record-setting investment announced last week, the ride-sharing service Uber is the hottest, most valuable technology start-up on the planet. It is also one of the most controversial.

上週宣佈了幾乎創紀錄的鉅額融資之後，共乘租車服務Uber已成爲全球最炙手可熱且最具價值的科技初創公司，但與此同時，它也是最具爭議性的公司之一。

The company, which has been the target of protests across Europe this week, has been accused of a reckless attitude toward safety, of price-gouging its customers, of putting existing cabbies out of work and of evading regulation. And it has been called trivial. In The New Yorker last year, George Packer huffed that Uber typified Silicon Valley’s newfound focus on “solving all the problems of being 20 years old, with cash on hand.”

本週，歐洲各地發生了針對Uber的抗議活動，它被指罔顧安全、對顧客進行價格欺詐、令現有出租車司機失業，以及逃避監管。還有人說，它沒什麼價值。去年，喬治·帕克(George Packer)在《紐約客》(The New Yorker)中曾憤怒地寫道，硅谷新的關注點就是，“用手頭的錢來解決所有存在了20年之久的問題”，並說Uber就是一個典型。

It is impossible to say whether Uber is worth the $17 billion its investors believe it to be; like any start-up, it could fail. But for all its flaws, Uber is anything but trivial. It could well transform transportation the way Amazon has altered shopping — by using slick, user-friendly software and mountains of data to completely reshape an existing market, ultimately making many modes of urban transportation cheaper, more flexible and more widely accessible to people across the income spectrum.

雖然投資者相信Uber值170億美元，但它到底是否值這麼多錢就很難說了；就像任何其他創業公司一樣，Uber也有可能遭遇慘敗。然而，雖然Uber有諸多缺陷，它絕不是毫無價值。就像亞馬遜(Amazon)改變了零售業一樣，Uber也可能改變運輸業——通過設計精美、用戶友好的軟件以及海量數據來徹底重塑現有市場，最終使許多的城市交通模式更便宜、更靈活，更易於爲不同收入階層的人所使用。

Uber could pull this off by accomplishing something that has long been seen as a pipe dream among transportation scholars: It has the potential to decrease private car ownership.

Uber可以通過降低私家車保有量來實現上述願景。交通學者長期以來一直認爲這是不可能的事，但Uber有這個潛力。

In its long-established markets, like San Francisco, using Uber every day is already arguably cheaper than owning a private car. Uber says that despite dust-ups about “surge pricing” at busy times, its cheapest service, UberX, is usually 30 percent less expensive than taxis.

在Uber的成熟市場，比如舊金山，每天使用Uber可能比擁有私家車更省錢。Uber稱，儘管在高峯時段“定價上浮”(surge pricing)的做法引發了一些爭議，但公司最便宜的服務Uber X通常比出租車便宜30%。

Now that Uber, Lyft and other rivals are embroiled in a vicious match for dominance across the globe, ride-sharing prices over all are sure to plummet. The competition is likely to result in more areas of the country in which ride-sharing becomes both cheaper and more convenient than owning a car, a shift that could profoundly alter how people navigate American cities.

由於Uber、Lyft以及其他同類公司都捲入了旨在佔領全球市場的惡性競爭，共乘租車服務的價格必將暴跌。這種競爭可能導致的結果是，在美國越來越多地方，使用共乘租車服務比擁有私家車更節約、更方便，這一轉變可能會爲美國城市人的出行方式帶來深遠的改變。

Over the next few years, if Uber and other such services do reduce the need for private vehicle ownership, they could help lower the cost of living in urban areas, reduce the environmental toll exacted by privately owned automobiles (like the emissions we spew while cruising for parking), and reallocate space now being wasted on parking lots to more valuable uses, like housing.

未來幾年，如果Uber和其它此類服務能成功降低私家車需求，將有助於降低市區的生活成本，降低私家車對環境的影響 (例如尋找車位時所排放的廢氣)，並把目前浪費在停車上的空間用在更有價值的地方，比如建設住房。

Paradoxically, some experts say, the increased use of ride-sharing services could also spawn renewed interest in and funding for public transportation, because people generally use taxis in conjunction with many other forms of transportation.

矛盾的是，一些專家說，更多地使用共乘租車服務會帶來對公共交通的新需求以及更多針對公交領域的投資，因爲人們在使用出租車的同時，會搭配使用許多其他交通工具。

In other words, if Uber and its ride-sharing competitors succeed, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see many small and midsize cities become transportation nirvanas on the order of Manhattan — places where forgoing car ownership isn’t just an outré lifestyle choice, but the preferred way to live.

換言之，如果Uber這類共乘租車服務取得了成功，很多中小城市將可能達到曼哈頓那樣的理想交通狀況——在這些地方，放棄私家車不光是一種特立獨行的生活方式，也是人們青睞的生活方式。

“In many cities and even suburbs, it’s becoming much easier to organize your life car-free or car-lite,” said David A. King, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University who studies technology and transportation. By car-lite, Dr. King means that instead of having one car for every driver, households can increasingly get by with owning just a single vehicle, thanks in part to tech-enabled services like Uber.

“在很多城市甚至是郊區，在沒有汽車或少用汽車的條件下安排生活正變得越來越容易。”戴維‧A‧金(David A. King)說。金是哥倫比亞大學(Columbia University)城市規劃的助理教授，專門研究科技和運輸。金博士說，所謂減少用車意味着，一家人可以越來越依靠一輛汽車應付日常所需，而不是每人擁有一輛汽車，這一定程度上要感謝像Uber這樣的科技服務。

Transportation scholars are just beginning to study whether the ride-sharing industry will encourage us to give up our cars, but results from some related studies look promising.

運輸方面的學者對共乘租車行業是否會鼓勵人們摒棄私家車的研究纔剛剛起步，但一些相關研究似乎前景樂觀。

Susan Shaheen, the co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that car-sharing services like Zipcar and bike-sharing services have already led to a significant net reduction of car ownership among users. While she is beginning a study into whether Uber-like services have the same effect, she said it was plausible to guess that they would also reduce levels of car ownership.

蘇珊·沙欣(Susan Shaheen)是加州大學伯克利分校( University of California, Berkeley)交通可持續性研究中心的主任，她發現熱布卡(Zipcar)等汽車共享服務以及一些單車共享服務已經導致用戶私家車擁有率出現了明顯下降。蘇珊現在開始研究像Uber這樣的共乘租車服務是否會有同樣的效果，她說，估計這類服務也會降低私家車的擁有率。

“I’ve been studying this area for about 17 years, and what we’re seeing now is a ubiquity of mobile devices that is really altering this industry,” she said.

“我研究這個領域差不多17年了，現在我們可以看到，移動設備的普及確實在改變着這個行業。”她說。

To see why Uber and its ilk could prompt many of us to give up our cars, it helps to understand the role that taxis play in urban transport. Taxis and other car services are usually seen as the province of the rich, but that’s only partly true, studies show.

要理解Uber等服務爲何會促使很多人摒棄私家車，首先要弄清楚出租車在城市交通中的作用。出租車和其它汽車服務通常被視爲富人的象徵，但研究顯示並非完全如此。

The richest Americans do use taxis more often than middle-class Americans, but so do the poorest Americans, who rely heavily on taxis for trips that aren’t practical through public transportation — shopping trips that involve heavy parcels that wouldn’t be convenient to take on the bus, say, or a ride back home after a medical procedure.

在美國，最富有的人確實比中產階級更經常乘坐出租車，但最貧窮的人也是如此。在乘搭公共交通工具不太現實的情況下，他們會嚴重依賴出租車。比如說，購物後有很多很重的東西都不方便帶上公車；此外，手術後也需要乘坐出租車回家。

And though you may think of taxis as a competitor to subways and buses, several studies have found just the opposite.

雖然你可能視出租車爲地鐵和公交車的競爭對手，但多項研究卻發現，情況恰好相反。

In one recent study based on GPS data from New York City cabs, Dr. King and his colleagues found that many taxi trips are “multimodal,” meaning that riders mix taxis with other forms of transportation. For instance, people from other boroughs might get to Manhattan by train, and then use cabs to return home late at night.

最近在一項以紐約市出租車GPS定位數據爲基礎的研究中，金博士(Dr. King)及同事發現，很多出租車乘客的行程中都包含了多種方式，就是說乘客在乘坐出租車的同時，還使用其他交通工具。例如，其他區的居民可能會乘火車到曼哈頓，深夜再乘出租車回家。

“The one-way travel of taxis allows people to use transit, share rides and otherwise travel without a car,” the researchers wrote. “In this way taxis act as a complement to these other modes and help discourage auto ownership and use.”

“由於出租車的單程性，沒有私家車的人們可以同時使用公共交通、共享乘租或其他方式出行，”研究人員寫道。“這樣一來，出租車就成爲其他交通方式的補充，有助於降低購買及使用私家車的積極性。”

A survey commissioned by regulators in San Francisco found that if taxis were more widely available, people would use public transit more often, and would consider getting rid of one or more cars.

舊金山監管機構委託進行的一項調查發現，如果能更廣泛地提供出租車，人們會更頻繁地使用公共交通工具，而且會考慮放棄一輛或多輛私家車。

There’s only one problem with taxis: In most American cities, Dr. King found, there just aren’t enough of them. Taxi service is generally capped by regulation, and in many cities the number of taxis has not been increased substantially in decades, despite a vast increase in the number of miles people travel. In some places this has led to poor service: In the San Francisco survey, for instance, one out of four residents rated the city’s taxi service as “terrible.”

只有一個問題：金博士發現，大多數美國城市的出租車數量根本不夠。出租車服務的規模一般受到監管機構的限制，而且在許多城市，儘管過去數十年間人們的出行裏數大幅增加，但出租車的數量並沒有大幅增長。因此在一些地區，出租車服務質量很差︰例如，在舊金山的這項調查中，每四名居民中就有一人認爲，市內出租車服務“很糟糕”。

Ride-sharing services solve this problem in two ways. First, they substantially increase the supply of for-hire vehicles on the road, which puts downward pressure on prices. As critics say, Uber and other services do this by essentially evading regulations that cap taxis. This has led to intense skirmishes with regulators and questions over who has oversight to maintain the safety of the blossoming new industry.

共乘租車服務通過兩種方式解決以上問題。首先，它們可以大幅增加路面上可供租賃的汽車數量，從而爲價格造成下行壓力。正如評論員所說，Uber和其他服務能夠做到這一點，主要是因爲它們避開了限制出租車的那些監管。這已經引發了與監管機構的激烈爭執，以及應該由誰來監管這一蓬勃發展的新興產業安全的疑問。

These questions are likely to be worked out as these services mature; like most new technologies, this one too will attract increased legal oversight and a gradual regulation of the business.

隨着這些服務日趨成熟，這些問題可能會得到解決。正如大多數新技術一樣，這一服務也將吸引更多的法律監管，整個行業會逐步規範。

But Uber has done more than increase the supply of cars in the taxi market. Thanks to technology, it has also improved their utility and efficiency. By monitoring ridership, Uber can smartly allocate cars in places of high demand, and by connecting with users’ phones, it has automated the paying process. When you’re done with an Uber ride, you just leave the car; there’s no fiddling with a credit card and no tipping. Even better, there’s no parking.

不過，Uber不光是增加了出租車市場的車輛供應。感謝科技的發展，它還改善了出租車的用途和效率。通過對乘客羣體進行監測，Uber能夠用智能的方式把車輛調配到需求較高的地方；通過與乘客手機關聯，能使付費過程自動化。當你享受完Uber的服務後，直接下車就行，無需刷信用卡，也不用付小費。更棒的是，無需泊車。

Compared with that kind of convenience, a car that you own — which you have to park, fill up, fix, insure, clean and pay for whether you use it or not — begins to seem like kind of a drag.

與這麼方便的服務相比，私家車似乎似乎成了累贅：你得泊車、加油、修理、上保險、清潔，而且無論使用與否，都要花錢。

“And if your car sits there five out of seven days, suddenly you’re starting to look at that fixed cost as being a waste,” Dr. King said.

“如果你的汽車七天有五天都不用的話，你會突然發現，那些固定成本根本是種浪費，”金博士說。