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With a near record-setting investment announced last week, the ride-sharing service Uber is the hottest, most valuable technology start-up on the planet. It is also one of the most controversial.
上周宣布了几乎创纪录的巨额融资之后，共乘租车服务Uber已成为全球最炙手可热且最具价值的科技初创公司，但与此同时，它也是最具争议性的公司之一。
The company, which has been the target of protests across Europe this week, has been accused of a reckless attitude toward safety, of price-gouging its customers, of putting existing cabbies out of work and of evading regulation. And it has been called trivial. In The New Yorker last year, George Packer huffed that Uber typified Silicon Valley’s newfound focus on “solving all the problems of being 20 years old, with cash on hand.”
本周，欧洲各地发生了针对Uber的抗议活动，它被指罔顾安全、对顾客进行价格欺诈、令现有出租车司机失业，以及逃避监管。还有人说，它没什么价值。去年，乔治·帕克(George Packer)在《纽约客》(The New Yorker)中曾愤怒地写道，硅谷新的关注点就是，“用手头的钱来解决所有存在了20年之久的问题”，并说Uber就是一个典型。
It is impossible to say whether Uber is worth the $17 billion its investors believe it to be; like any start-up, it could fail. But for all its flaws, Uber is anything but trivial. It could well transform transportation the way Amazon has altered shopping — by using slick, user-friendly software and mountains of data to completely reshape an existing market, ultimately making many modes of urban transportation cheaper, more flexible and more widely accessible to people across the income spectrum.
虽然投资者相信Uber值170亿美元，但它到底是否值这么多钱就很难说了；就像任何其他创业公司一样，Uber也有可能遭遇惨败。然而，虽然Uber有诸多缺陷，它绝不是毫无价值。就像亚马逊(Amazon)改变了零售业一样，Uber也可能改变运输业——通过设计精美、用户友好的软件以及海量数据来彻底重塑现有市场，最终使许多的城市交通模式更便宜、更灵活，更易于为不同收入阶层的人所使用。
Uber could pull this off by accomplishing something that has long been seen as a pipe dream among transportation scholars: It has the potential to decrease private car ownership.
Uber可以通过降低私家车保有量来实现上述愿景。交通学者长期以来一直认为这是不可能的事，但Uber有这个潜力。
In its long-established markets, like San Francisco, using Uber every day is already arguably cheaper than owning a private car. Uber says that despite dust-ups about “surge pricing” at busy times, its cheapest service, UberX, is usually 30 percent less expensive than taxis.
在Uber的成熟市场，比如旧金山，每天使用Uber可能比拥有私家车更省钱。Uber称，尽管在高峰时段“定价上浮”(surge pricing)的做法引发了一些争议，但公司最便宜的服务Uber X通常比出租车便宜30%。
Now that Uber, Lyft and other rivals are embroiled in a vicious match for dominance across the globe, ride-sharing prices over all are sure to plummet. The competition is likely to result in more areas of the country in which ride-sharing becomes both cheaper and more convenient than owning a car, a shift that could profoundly alter how people navigate American cities.
由于Uber、Lyft以及其他同类公司都卷入了旨在占领全球市场的恶性竞争，共乘租车服务的价格必将暴跌。这种竞争可能导致的结果是，在美国越来越多地方，使用共乘租车服务比拥有私家车更节约、更方便，这一转变可能会为美国城市人的出行方式带来深远的改变。
Over the next few years, if Uber and other such services do reduce the need for private vehicle ownership, they could help lower the cost of living in urban areas, reduce the environmental toll exacted by privately owned automobiles (like the emissions we spew while cruising for parking), and reallocate space now being wasted on parking lots to more valuable uses, like housing.
未来几年，如果Uber和其它此类服务能成功降低私家车需求，将有助于降低市区的生活成本，降低私家车对环境的影响 (例如寻找车位时所排放的废气)，并把目前浪费在停车上的空间用在更有价值的地方，比如建设住房。
Paradoxically, some experts say, the increased use of ride-sharing services could also spawn renewed interest in and funding for public transportation, because people generally use taxis in conjunction with many other forms of transportation.
矛盾的是，一些专家说，更多地使用共乘租车服务会带来对公共交通的新需求以及更多针对公交领域的投资，因为人们在使用出租车的同时，会搭配使用许多其他交通工具。
In other words, if Uber and its ride-sharing competitors succeed, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see many small and midsize cities become transportation nirvanas on the order of Manhattan — places where forgoing car ownership isn’t just an outré lifestyle choice, but the preferred way to live.
换言之，如果Uber这类共乘租车服务取得了成功，很多中小城市将可能达到曼哈顿那样的理想交通状况——在这些地方，放弃私家车不光是一种特立独行的生活方式，也是人们青睐的生活方式。
“In many cities and even suburbs, it’s becoming much easier to organize your life car-free or car-lite,” said David A. King, an assistant professor of urban planning at Columbia University who studies technology and transportation. By car-lite, Dr. King means that instead of having one car for every driver, households can increasingly get by with owning just a single vehicle, thanks in part to tech-enabled services like Uber.
“在很多城市甚至是郊区，在没有汽车或少用汽车的条件下安排生活正变得越来越容易。”戴维‧A‧金(David A. King)说。金是哥伦比亚大学(Columbia University)城市规划的助理教授，专门研究科技和运输。金博士说，所谓减少用车意味着，一家人可以越来越依靠一辆汽车应付日常所需，而不是每人拥有一辆汽车，这一定程度上要感谢像Uber这样的科技服务。
Transportation scholars are just beginning to study whether the ride-sharing industry will encourage us to give up our cars, but results from some related studies look promising.
运输方面的学者对共乘租车行业是否会鼓励人们摒弃私家车的研究才刚刚起步，但一些相关研究似乎前景乐观。
Susan Shaheen, the co-director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that car-sharing services like Zipcar and bike-sharing services have already led to a significant net reduction of car ownership among users. While she is beginning a study into whether Uber-like services have the same effect, she said it was plausible to guess that they would also reduce levels of car ownership.
苏珊·沙欣(Susan Shaheen)是加州大学伯克利分校( University of California, Berkeley)交通可持续性研究中心的主任，她发现热布卡(Zipcar)等汽车共享服务以及一些单车共享服务已经导致用户私家车拥有率出现了明显下降。苏珊现在开始研究像Uber这样的共乘租车服务是否会有同样的效果，她说，估计这类服务也会降低私家车的拥有率。
“I’ve been studying this area for about 17 years, and what we’re seeing now is a ubiquity of mobile devices that is really altering this industry,” she said.
“我研究这个领域差不多17年了，现在我们可以看到，移动设备的普及确实在改变着这个行业。”她说。
To see why Uber and its ilk could prompt many of us to give up our cars, it helps to understand the role that taxis play in urban transport. Taxis and other car services are usually seen as the province of the rich, but that’s only partly true, studies show.
要理解Uber等服务为何会促使很多人摒弃私家车，首先要弄清楚出租车在城市交通中的作用。出租车和其它汽车服务通常被视为富人的象征，但研究显示并非完全如此。
The richest Americans do use taxis more often than middle-class Americans, but so do the poorest Americans, who rely heavily on taxis for trips that aren’t practical through public transportation — shopping trips that involve heavy parcels that wouldn’t be convenient to take on the bus, say, or a ride back home after a medical procedure.
在美国，最富有的人确实比中产阶级更经常乘坐出租车，但最贫穷的人也是如此。在乘搭公共交通工具不太现实的情况下，他们会严重依赖出租车。比如说，购物后有很多很重的东西都不方便带上公车；此外，手术后也需要乘坐出租车回家。
And though you may think of taxis as a competitor to subways and buses, several studies have found just the opposite.
虽然你可能视出租车为地铁和公交车的竞争对手，但多项研究却发现，情况恰好相反。
In one recent study based on GPS data from New York City cabs, Dr. King and his colleagues found that many taxi trips are “multimodal,” meaning that riders mix taxis with other forms of transportation. For instance, people from other boroughs might get to Manhattan by train, and then use cabs to return home late at night.
最近在一项以纽约市出租车GPS定位数据为基础的研究中，金博士(Dr. King)及同事发现，很多出租车乘客的行程中都包含了多种方式，就是说乘客在乘坐出租车的同时，还使用其他交通工具。例如，其他区的居民可能会乘火车到曼哈顿，深夜再乘出租车回家。
“The one-way travel of taxis allows people to use transit, share rides and otherwise travel without a car,” the researchers wrote. “In this way taxis act as a complement to these other modes and help discourage auto ownership and use.”
“由于出租车的单程性，没有私家车的人们可以同时使用公共交通、共享乘租或其他方式出行，”研究人员写道。“这样一来，出租车就成为其他交通方式的补充，有助于降低购买及使用私家车的积极性。”
A survey commissioned by regulators in San Francisco found that if taxis were more widely available, people would use public transit more often, and would consider getting rid of one or more cars.
旧金山监管机构委托进行的一项调查发现，如果能更广泛地提供出租车，人们会更频繁地使用公共交通工具，而且会考虑放弃一辆或多辆私家车。
There’s only one problem with taxis: In most American cities, Dr. King found, there just aren’t enough of them. Taxi service is generally capped by regulation, and in many cities the number of taxis has not been increased substantially in decades, despite a vast increase in the number of miles people travel. In some places this has led to poor service: In the San Francisco survey, for instance, one out of four residents rated the city’s taxi service as “terrible.”
只有一个问题：金博士发现，大多数美国城市的出租车数量根本不够。出租车服务的规模一般受到监管机构的限制，而且在许多城市，尽管过去数十年间人们的出行里数大幅增加，但出租车的数量并没有大幅增长。因此在一些地区，出租车服务质量很差︰例如，在旧金山的这项调查中，每四名居民中就有一人认为，市内出租车服务“很糟糕”。
Ride-sharing services solve this problem in two ways. First, they substantially increase the supply of for-hire vehicles on the road, which puts downward pressure on prices. As critics say, Uber and other services do this by essentially evading regulations that cap taxis. This has led to intense skirmishes with regulators and questions over who has oversight to maintain the safety of the blossoming new industry.
共乘租车服务通过两种方式解决以上问题。首先，它们可以大幅增加路面上可供租赁的汽车数量，从而为价格造成下行压力。正如评论员所说，Uber和其他服务能够做到这一点，主要是因为它们避开了限制出租车的那些监管。这已经引发了与监管机构的激烈争执，以及应该由谁来监管这一蓬勃发展的新兴产业安全的疑问。
These questions are likely to be worked out as these services mature; like most new technologies, this one too will attract increased legal oversight and a gradual regulation of the business.
随着这些服务日趋成熟，这些问题可能会得到解决。正如大多数新技术一样，这一服务也将吸引更多的法律监管，整个行业会逐步规范。
But Uber has done more than increase the supply of cars in the taxi market. Thanks to technology, it has also improved their utility and efficiency. By monitoring ridership, Uber can smartly allocate cars in places of high demand, and by connecting with users’ phones, it has automated the paying process. When you’re done with an Uber ride, you just leave the car; there’s no fiddling with a credit card and no tipping. Even better, there’s no parking.
不过，Uber不光是增加了出租车市场的车辆供应。感谢科技的发展，它还改善了出租车的用途和效率。通过对乘客群体进行监测，Uber能够用智能的方式把车辆调配到需求较高的地方；通过与乘客手机关联，能使付费过程自动化。当你享受完Uber的服务后，直接下车就行，无需刷信用卡，也不用付小费。更棒的是，无需泊车。
Compared with that kind of convenience, a car that you own — which you have to park, fill up, fix, insure, clean and pay for whether you use it or not — begins to seem like kind of a drag.
与这么方便的服务相比，私家车似乎似乎成了累赘：你得泊车、加油、修理、上保险、清洁，而且无论使用与否，都要花钱。
“And if your car sits there five out of seven days, suddenly you’re starting to look at that fixed cost as being a waste,” Dr. King said.
“如果你的汽车七天有五天都不用的话，你会突然发现，那些固定成本根本是种浪费，”金博士说。
