Asian motorists and their passengers are stuck on roads for a total of 13 days annually on average because of traffic congestion, according to a survey commissioned by Uber.
Acknowledging that traffic jams in Asian cities are getting worse every year, the car-hailing company said Asians were stuck in traffic for 52 minutes every day, or 13 days a year, and spent an additional 26 minutes per day finding parking spaces.
The survey of 9,000 people in nine of Asia’s biggest cities came with Uber’s first Asian branding campaign that highlighted the absurdity of the traffic situation in Asia’s biggest cities.
Uber estimated that between 40% and 70% of private vehicles on the road today in the nine Asian cities it studied could be removed if ride-sharing becomes a viable substitute for private vehicle ownership.
In Hong Kong, the city could free up space equivalent to 70 Victoria Parks if it could take away the cars people do not need.
Uber also released a short video that depicted an animated description of how people get around currently, using cardboard boxes as cars and ending with images of a city being overrun by boxes. The film borrowed the song “Bare Necessities” from the soundtrack of the 1967 Disney film The Jungle Book.
”If car-ownership trends continue like this, Asian cities risk coming to a complete standstill in only a few years,” said Brooks Entwistle, chief business officer, Asia-Pacific, at Uber.
“Ride-sharing can be part of the solution to traffic congestion because it gets more people into fewer cars. We can unlock our cities, and their full potential, but we have to do it together.”