In the modern world, people have created many technological solutions for human needs. As cities become bigger, the population needs to go from point A to point B somehow, and this is called transportation. In the 21st century, there are three main ways of transportation: first is the use of one’s own car; second is the use of public transport; and the last one is the use of taxis via online services. The main problem is that the third way is killing the second way of transportation, and we need to understand if it offers us a better life or not.
Starting with the advantages of this act, I want to mention that using ride-sharing services like Uber, YandexGo, and Uklon takes less time. Firstly, it creates an opportunity to not go to public transport stations; they can call a taxi wherever and whenever they want. Secondly, taxis move faster than metros and buses, so people go to their destination spending less time. The second thing is that people can go to their destinations spending less energy and with more comfort. On hot summer days, taxis offer air conditioning, and on cold winter days, they offer a heater, which makes the client experience more premium. The last thing I want to mention is that people actually make money from that; people take this side hustle as a serious job, and some families depend on the money that is made as a taxi driver.
However, despite these enormous advantages, there are several disadvantages: firstly, people spend much more money on the everyday process (a taxi costs around 10 times more than public transport, even 20-30 times if the distance is too long, but public transportation is fixed for any distance); secondly, more need for taxis causes more cars on the city roads, which causes huge traffic jams during peak hours, and this problem automatically spawns another issue with ecology – cars massively pollute the air; lastly, there is stratification (some people nowadays see using public transport as a sign of being poor even though they do not own a car. In their mind, normal people should use taxis, and they make people using public transport feel poor).
In conclusion, the advantages of this trend do not outweigh the disadvantages despite having huge benefits such as spending less time, comfortable drives, and job opportunities. The reasons behind this are that it makes people spend more money on daily actions, causes more traffic jams, and leads to stratification.