If you're willing to walk and carpool with people you may not know, you can save some money with Lyft's new Shared Saver option. Lyft said in a blog post that the new ride-sharing service will not be affected by Lyft's surge pricing, even during peak hours. Lyft says you just have to be willing to walk to the pick-up and drop-off locations and share a ride with others. The new mode is just a small tweak to Lyft Line that lets you carpool with other users whose routes are similar to yours. If you're willing to take a walk, you can save money on your next Lyft ride.
Lyft says you only have to walk a few blocks to your pickup and drop-off location; a screenshot in a Lyft blog post shows the walk takes about two minutes. When you get out of the car, the Lyft app will tell you where to walk to get to your actual destination, according to the blog post.
If you feel a sense of déjà vu when you read this news, that’s probably because Uber’s version of the program, Uber Express Pool, launched in 2018, The Verge reports. The Verge says that after three years of running Uber Pool, Uber has learned a lot about the pros and cons of offering ride-sharing as a ride-sharing option — like how sometimes people are matched to rides even though where they’re going isn’t anywhere close to each other . Situations like this caused a lot of inconvenience to almost everyone involved, so Uber addressed some of these issues and launched Uber Express Pool on February 21, 2018.
Uber Express POOL is much like Lyft's Shared Saver. You walk to pick-up and drop-off locations and share rides with others, according to the press release. According to The Verge, Lyft’s Shared Saver is currently only available in Denver, Colorado, and San Jose, California. Uber Express POOL has been piloted in San Francisco and Boston and is currently available in Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Miami, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., with both ride-sharing services to be added to more cities in the future.
Ride-sharing companies like Lyft and Uber aim to reduce the number of cars on the road by offering more ride-sharing services, according to the Associated Press. "Lyft is committed to empowering individuals by enabling more people to share rides, helping reduce car ownership and partnering with public transportation," Lyft spokesman Adrian Durbin told AP News in a statement Car ownership becomes optional.”
Ride-sharing options are certainly quite affordable and convenient compared to some public transportation options, especially in cities where public transportation is unreliable, so more work needs to be done to understand why people decide to use certain modes of transportation. It will be interesting to see how these numbers change as more and more people choose to carpool through their favorite ridesharing services.
Whatever you decide, you have choices. Lyft and Uber's ride-sharing options both look like great ways to get around, and if they haven't arrived in your city yet, they certainly will soon. Just keep an eye on your ride-sharing apps to see when you might have the option to save some money by sharing your ride with other passengers.
