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Uber has been fundamentally broken at LAX, so hopefully these changes will make it better. It's so bad that taxi cabs are making a bit of a resurgence, because

Uber has been fundamentally broken at LAX, so hopefully these changes will make it better. It's so bad that taxi cabs are making a bit of a resurgence, because they win on convenience, user experience, and price. About half of people who request an Uber ride at LAX never get accepted by a driver[1]. I've been on the receiving end of that. My last time at LAX, there were half a dozen Uber drivers sitting in the lot. I kept getting notifications on my phone that I was being offered rides at increasingly high prices. When I tried to accept the driver would deny me. One driver pulled up and said that "because the app is buggy today", I wouldn't get matched with a driver but he'd be willing to drive me home for $50, paid via cash or venmo (for comparison, my Uber ride to the airport was $12). After watching the drivers a bit, SURPRISE, the app wasn't buggy. The drivers were just working as a cartel to deny every potential fare, which jacked up the prices in the app. Then they'd swoop up to frustrated travelers and offer to drive them home for an even more exorbitant rate, while also sidestepping Uber's cut. Unlike Uber, Lyft will apparently try to match you with drivers outside of the airport. That makes it harder to artificially raise prices. A Lyft driver a few blocks away ended up taking me home for $13+tip. In the time a spent waiting for him to pick me up, not a single Uber car took a passenger. [1]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-may-stop-letting-drivers-see-destinations-16078491.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-may-stop-l...

tschwimmer 5y ago
I have had the same happen to me at SFO.
- rkk3 5y ago
  Last time I landed at SFO, in Feb around 8pm, it was consistently $100 to $120 to go from SFO to SOMA. I waited for 10-15 minutes then got a "bargain" price of $50 to go from SFO to SOMA in a clunky older car. The driver actually said he was in the airport parking lot waiting for over 20 minutes to get matched.
clairity 5y ago
> “ A Lyft driver a few blocks away ended up taking me home for $13+tip.” i used to do this as a price hack anyways, when i was flying between LA and SF regularly. you could take any shuttle out of the airport to a nearby hotel/parking lot, which is where you’d have the car pick you up at non-airport prices (typically giving a bigger tip to the driver too).
ChicagoDave 5y ago
This goes both ways. Many passengers will cancel rides hoping the surge price drops. It’s a game. There’s no penalty for passengers, but drivers get lower incentives if we have too many cancels or declines. If a driver declines trying to get a better rate, they’re only hurting themselves.
ashtonkem 5y ago
To be fair, LAX is fundamentally broken. The traffic design around it is from an era when only the rich and powerful flew, not today. There's what, two lanes of traffic to get into one of the most important airports in the United States? DIA has more roads into it, and it's nowhere near as big as LAX. Frankly, not running a train from an airport the size of LAX to downtown remains a bafflingly stupid decision, in my opinion. They should've really just done like Chicago or DIA and put a train station in the airport.
- bsder 5y ago
  > Frankly, not running a train from an airport the size of LAX to downtown remains a bafflingly stupid decision, in my opinion. That really wouldn't be all that useful as downtown LA isn't really some useful central point. About the only thing you could do usefully would be to connect it to Union Station so that you can take the Coaster to San Diego, for example. Everybody going to LAX is coming from all over the place in LA. And, if you're going to fly domestically, you probably go to Ontario and pick up Southwest, anyway.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Sure, but they could actually put a train station in the airport itself and connect it to a meaningful local transit hub. The planned people mover is close to what I’d want, and it’s kind of mind boggling that it took the olympics for LA to realize that you need to bring trains closer to airports.
- CyberDildonics 5y ago
  This could not be further from the truth. The vast majority of the time the road in, out and through LAX are not congested at all. The fact that it is in a giant circle with short parking in the center and planes leaving on the outside makes it much easier to get close and pick up or park. The denver airport is much more sprawled and needs trains to get people from some terminals to others. Also you don't seem to realize that there are airports in burbank, orange county and oxnard. There is even a smaller airport in santa monica. LAX doesn't serve all of southern california but it does have substantial throughput.
908B64B197 5y ago
> I wouldn't get matched with a driver but he'd be willing to drive me home for $50, paid via cash or venmo (for comparison, my Uber ride to the airport was $12). After watching the drivers a bit, SURPRISE, the app wasn't buggy. The drivers were just working as a cartel to deny every potential fare, which jacked up the prices in the app. Then they'd swoop up to frustrated travelers and offer to drive them home for an even more exorbitant rate, while also sidestepping Uber's cut. Someone should go report the plates to the airport authorities. Pretty sure it's illegal for individuals to offer "cash-only" rides like that.

tschwimmer 5y ago

I have had the same happen to me at SFO.

rkk3 5y ago
Last time I landed at SFO, in Feb around 8pm, it was consistently $100 to $120 to go from SFO to SOMA. I waited for 10-15 minutes then got a "bargain" price of $50 to go from SFO to SOMA in a clunky older car. The driver actually said he was in the airport parking lot waiting for over 20 minutes to get matched.

clairity 5y ago

> “ A Lyft driver a few blocks away ended up taking me home for $13+tip.” i used to do this as a price hack anyways, when i was flying between LA and SF regularly. you could take any shuttle out of the airport to a nearby hotel/parking lot, which is where you’d have the car pick you up at non-airport prices (typically giving a bigger tip to the driver too).

ChicagoDave 5y ago

This goes both ways. Many passengers will cancel rides hoping the surge price drops. It’s a game. There’s no penalty for passengers, but drivers get lower incentives if we have too many cancels or declines. If a driver declines trying to get a better rate, they’re only hurting themselves.

ashtonkem 5y ago

To be fair, LAX is fundamentally broken. The traffic design around it is from an era when only the rich and powerful flew, not today. There's what, two lanes of traffic to get into one of the most important airports in the United States? DIA has more roads into it, and it's nowhere near as big as LAX. Frankly, not running a train from an airport the size of LAX to downtown remains a bafflingly stupid decision, in my opinion. They should've really just done like Chicago or DIA and put a train station in the airport.

bsder 5y ago
> Frankly, not running a train from an airport the size of LAX to downtown remains a bafflingly stupid decision, in my opinion. That really wouldn't be all that useful as downtown LA isn't really some useful central point. About the only thing you could do usefully would be to connect it to Union Station so that you can take the Coaster to San Diego, for example. Everybody going to LAX is coming from all over the place in LA. And, if you're going to fly domestically, you probably go to Ontario and pick up Southwest, anyway.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Sure, but they could actually put a train station in the airport itself and connect it to a meaningful local transit hub. The planned people mover is close to what I’d want, and it’s kind of mind boggling that it took the olympics for LA to realize that you need to bring trains closer to airports.
CyberDildonics 5y ago
This could not be further from the truth. The vast majority of the time the road in, out and through LAX are not congested at all. The fact that it is in a giant circle with short parking in the center and planes leaving on the outside makes it much easier to get close and pick up or park. The denver airport is much more sprawled and needs trains to get people from some terminals to others. Also you don't seem to realize that there are airports in burbank, orange county and oxnard. There is even a smaller airport in santa monica. LAX doesn't serve all of southern california but it does have substantial throughput.

908B64B197 5y ago

> I wouldn't get matched with a driver but he'd be willing to drive me home for $50, paid via cash or venmo (for comparison, my Uber ride to the airport was $12). After watching the drivers a bit, SURPRISE, the app wasn't buggy. The drivers were just working as a cartel to deny every potential fare, which jacked up the prices in the app. Then they'd swoop up to frustrated travelers and offer to drive them home for an even more exorbitant rate, while also sidestepping Uber's cut. Someone should go report the plates to the airport authorities. Pretty sure it's illegal for individuals to offer "cash-only" rides like that.