Uber was supposed to reduce car ownership, cut traffic congestion, make mobility more accessible for underserved communities, allow its drivers to make a good living, and be complimentary toward transit services—or so Kalanick claimed. It only took a few years for all the big promises to be revealed as overly ambitious at best or outright lies at worst.
Uber’s real impact has been to make life worse for virtually everyone it touches. A series of studies have found the company made traffic worse in major cities, did little to affect car ownership, took passengers away from transit services, and increased trip emissions. Meanwhile, it decimated the conditions of existing taxi workers and squeezed its own drivers (who mainly hailed from marginalised communities) to disproportionately serve affluent young people living in cities.
The big promises and uncritical coverage served as a cover for the company’s real project: to deregulate the taxi industry, chip away at the rights of workers, and increase corporate control over how people get around. In short, it succeeded where a 1990s campaign funded by the Koch brothers had failed. The real benefits accrued not to the public whose streets were flooded with unregulated taxis or workers whose livelihoods evaporated, but to Uber’s early investors who were still able to cash out when the company went public and to other companies dubbed ‘Uber for X’ that were able to spread its piece-work labour model to other sectors.