Widespread Demand for Lyft’s Ditch Your Car Program Reflects North Americans’ Frustration with Car Ownership
Personal cars are a major cause of congestion and one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why Lyft is working towards a future where people have access to a variety of alternatives to personal cars including bikes, scooters, public transit, carsharing and ridesharing. In fact, we estimate that hundreds of thousands of people gave up their cars because of Lyft in 2017.
We believe this is just the beginning of seismic shift away from personal vehicles and towards shared transportation options. To test this theory, we offered Lyft passengers in 36 U.S. cities transportation credits to ‘ditch’ their cars for a month and take other forms of transportation including scooters, bikes and public transit.
Within the first 24 hours, 130,000 Lyft riders expressed interest in participating — that’s nearly the same number of new cars purchased in the state of Iowa in all of 2017. We surveyed both those who applied and those who ended up participating in the program and learned several interesting facts that demonstrate our riders are ready for the shift away from personal vehicles.
Applicants told us why they are ready to give up their cars:
52% found driving stressful, and 11% associated driving with high stress
53% report using their cars less since adopting rideshare services
52% report using multiple transportation options to get to their destinations Participants told us that multiple transportation options helped them travel differently:
57% reported using their car even less after participating in the program
71% used multiple transportation options when traveling to or from entertainment
83% stated that they were familiar with public transit by the end of the program
In the survey, a participant shared the following of their experience using public transportation as one of the options during the Ditch Your Car program: “With the transit card I got from Lyft, I decided I had no excuse not to explore public transit as an option. I wanted to see if I could rely on it to get to and from work on a regular basis. It ended up saving me a lot of money because I only filled my car up once last month. And now I'm still using it about 4 out of 5 work days because it saves money and reduces the stress of driving in traffic.” Additionally, two Los Angeles-based BuzzFeed producers participated in the Ditch Your Car program, deciding to sell their cars at the conclusion of their 30 day experience.
These findings support our efforts to bring more transportation options into the Lyft app and incentivize the use of those options to initiate the shift away from personal car use.
“The nationwide interest we’ve seen from passengers and partners on the Ditch Your Car initiative demonstrates how Lyft’s vision to reduce car ownership is gaining steam. By working together with cities, we will continue the decade long mission to make more sustainable and inclusive transportation a reality,” said Lyft Co-Founder and President, John Zimmer.
Lyft is six years old and this shift is still in its early days. We are committed to working in the communities we serve to reduce congestion and greenhouse gas emissions with cooperation from other mobility companies, public transit agencies, and government.