Uber and Lyft to blame for SF’s terrible traffic

While many a San Francisco denizen can feel the pile up of traffic since the advent of rideshare companies, one city agency is finally coming out to state the obvious—Uber and Lyft have made city streets unbearable.

In a filing submitted before the California Public Utilities Commission, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) says the lauded start-up companies are to blame for our current congestion woes.

Per the San Francisco Examiner, an estimated 45,000 Lyft and Uber workers are now zipping around the city. “That far surpasses San Francisco’s 1,800 taxi cabs.”

While ride-sharing has been a boon for residents who don’t rely on personal vehicles for transportation, what we gain in ease of cabbie convenience we lose in swifter streets. Traffic these days is a nightmare, and the amount of disregard for pedestrian right-of-way by drivers has fallen by the wayside.

"In 2016, San Francisco was rated as having the third worst traffic congestion in the nation," SFMTA notes. "Much of the increase San Francisco has experienced in vehicular traffic can be attributed to the huge increase in the number of [ride hail] vehicles operating on city streets."

Meanwhile, Uber seems more concerned with the amount of fornication allegedly happening inside their drivers’ cars and, at least according to a recent lawsuit, secretly tracking politicians and celebrities.

• Uber takes out $8 million permit on Oakland building [Curbed SF]
• SF blasts Uber, Lyft for downtown traffic congestion [SF Examiner]
• Why is San Francisco traffic so bad? Uber and Lyft are to blame, says city [SFGate]
• Uber bans flirting and sex in new set of rules for passengers [NY Daily News]
• Lyft Signs Lease On New China Basin Headquarters [Curbed SF]
• Uber employees secretly tracked politicians and celebrities, lawsuit claims [The Verge]