There has been roughly $120 billion invested in various shared mobility services, from ride-hailing giants like Uber and Lyft to bike and scooter-sharing companies such as Lime and Bird, and car-sharing platforms like Zoomcar.
While some mobility services have become staples in urban transportation, others have struggled to meet expectations or have been outpaced by competing technologies. Post-pandemic, here is the current lay of the land:
Ride-Hailing
By most measures, ride-hailing remains the largest and most influential mobility service.
In major cities, platforms such as Uber and Lyft dominate with more users and vehicles than other mobility services. For example, in New York City, there are twice as many ride-hailing vehicles as shared bikes and nearly ten times as many as taxis.
Ride-hailing usage has mostly rebounded from pandemic lows, with daily trips in New York and Chicago at 91% and 85% of pre-pandemic levels. The pandemic did, however, push ride-hailing away from pooled rides, which previously comprised up to 24% of trips in New York but remain below 4% now.
Taxis
Even before the pandemic, taxis were losing ground to ride-hailing services, and the lockdowns exacerbated the decline.
Traditional taxi ridership plummeted by 80-95% during the pandemic. By July 2024, taxi trip volumes in cities like New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco were still 44-66% below January 2019 levels.
Car-Sharing
Operating fleets of depreciating vehicles presents challenges, and fleet-based car-sharing businesses have struggled to expand outside a few key markets.
Automakers have tried to make fleet-based car-sharing work, but most have scaled back these efforts, with a few exceptions like Stellantis’ Free2Move and Renault’s Zity.
In Europe, the number of car-sharing vehicles has plateaued, except in Germany, where supportive government policies—such as designated parking spaces and public transit integration—have driven growth.
Micromobility
Despite high-profile bankruptcies and consolidation, micromobility services are experiencing renewed growth in the U.S. and Europe.
Station-based bike-sharing, rather than dockless bikes and e-scooters, is seeing the fastest growth. In the US, station-based bike ridership rose by 53% from 2019 to 2023.
Overall, U.S. micromobility trips increased from 114 million in 2022 to 133 million in 2023, close to the 2019 peak of 136 million. Bikes made up 51% of these trips, while e-scooters accounted for 49%.