Poll shows overwhelming support for ride sharing

A new poll shows overwhelming support from BC residents to bring services like Lyft and Uber to the province now.

“The introduction of ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft is not a controversial idea for residents of the Greater Vancouver area,” say Bruce Anderson and David Coletto of Abacus Research, who conducted the poll on behalf of Ridesharing Now for BC.

They added: “Lots of people imagine that they would use these services, and opposition to their introduction is very limited. People feel that there would be benefits in terms of affordability and convenience and upsides in terms of environmental issues and impaired driving. This doesn’t look like tentative or conditional support, but more like people who are ready for this change to happen in the local marketplace.”

Results:

  • Overall, 64% of residents strongly support (31%) or support (32%) having ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft available in BC in 2018. Another 28% accept the idea of the service being introduced. Only 9% are opposed.
  • Support is broadly based, crossing region, demographic, and political lines: 63% of BC NDP, 67% of BC Liberal, and 68% of BC Green Party voters.
  • Residents see several good reasons for having ride sharing available: at the top of the list is affordability and convenience — but many also see it as a sustainability solution, and a help in the fight to limit impaired driving.
  • Abacus found broad interest in driving for a ridesharing service. 74% of respondents felt that being able to earn extra money as driver for Uber or Lyft was a good argument to allow ride sharing services to operate in the province.

The survey was conducted online with 546 adult residents of Greater Vancouver from February 5 to 12 and has a margin of error of +/- 4.6%.