3 Simple Changes That Uber & Lyft Must Make

Say you’re ending your day of driving and you’d like to give a couple more rides. You’re right near downtown area but you don’t want to end up getting a ride that takes you 20 miles in the opposite direction. What if there was a way where you could set a radius so that you would get ride requests but they would take you no more than five miles from your current location?

Joe here with The Rideshare Guy, and I’m going to discuss that feature as well as two other changes that Lyft and Uber should implement today. Take a look at the video below, then scroll to the video transcript if you prefer to read.

Three changes that would substantially improve life for drivers

The three changes:

1. Add a pick up and drop off radius mode,
2. Quadrupling the permanent rate on wait time for stops
3. Change the cancellation window after arrival from five minutes down to two minutes

Pick up and drop off radius: Let us choose how far we want to go

This would be a simple change. It would open us up to the vast majority of trip requests especially near a downtown area. Those requests are typically in my area no longer than five miles long but there are some times where I’m finishing my day and I can get those requests but I don’t want to get the request that’s going to take me 20 miles in the opposite direction. If they included a radius mode it would be a lot like destination mode but with radius mode basically they could set it as a five mile radius and once you’re in radius mode, you will not receive a request that will take you more than five miles from your current location.

Radius mode would be a lot like destination mode where we’d be allowed say, five or six of these radius rides per day. This is just a really simple and easy feature to add and I know a lot of drivers like myself would use it on a daily basis.

Stops should be shorter, and should pay more

Both Uber and Lyft should quadruple the permanent rate on wait time for stops. In my opinion, stops need to be fixed. Anytime I get a ride with stops, I dread those rides. I just feel like a lot of passengers are taking advantage of those stops, sometimes making us wait longer than five minutes for certain stops and that’s not what stops should be used for.

In my opinion stops should be in and out. They should be no longer than 30 seconds and I actually personally have a five-minute wait time threshold for stops anyway. That could even be reduced to three minutes. If I’ve been waiting in a stop for five minutes, I’ll just go ahead and end the ride right there. I just feel like that passenger should have requested another ride as opposed to adding a stop to their current ride.

Quadrupling the permanent rate would would equate 15 seconds of waiting to a minute of drive time. This just would hopefully encourage passengers to make their stops quicker and if they have a long stop then they will just request multiple rides as opposed to adding stops.

Drivers should be able to cancel after 2 minutes, not 5

Uber and Lyft should both change the cancellation window after arrival from five minutes down to two minutes. Currently when you arrive at a passenger’s pickup location, after you have arrived Lyft will start charging a wait time rate after you’ve been waiting for a minute and with Uber that’s after you’ve been waiting for two minutes. They should just get rid of that altogether and basically reduce that five-minute cancellation window down to two.

Currently you get paid that wait time but you can’t cancel the ride and collect the cancellation fee until five minutes have passed. I feel five minutes is too long. That should be reduced to two.

When you request a ride you are given the time that a driver is going to arrive. Passengers should be ready when we arrive. We should never be waiting for more than a minute in my opinion. So five minutes is way too long. They can reduce that five-minute cancellation window down to two. Hopefully this would encourage passengers to be ready when drivers arrive at their pickup location.

Why these changes would improve life for drivers

In summary, I would add the radius mode. I would quadruple the permanent rate on wait time for stops and change the cancellation window, reduce the cancellation window from five minutes down to two minutes after arrival. Overall I feel like this would not only help drivers but improve the Lyft and Uber systems especially with that radius mode. Drivers  that currently utilize destination mode in those circumstances would now be open to the vast majority of trips especially near downtown areas. A lot of those trips are just short trips and since a lot more drivers would be available to the vast majority of trips, this would make the Lyft and Uber systems more reliable, more drivers would be available.

And with the quadruple charge for stops and the two-minute wait time after arrival, that would just improve the overall efficiency of the Lyft and Uber systems. There would be a lot less dead time for drivers. So let us know in the comments what you think of those changes. Do you like them? Do you have some better suggestions? And until next video, drive safe.