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Why would that be relevant? What Lyft and Uber have been telling us all along is that they are not a ride-hailing company, they are just a marketplace bringing together riders and drivers. In that scenario, it is all about the up-to-the-minute price that riders are happy to pay, and drivers happy to accept.

Imagine a stock exchange where you can't see the market price, and after a week the exchange tells you "heres what buyers paid, sellers received, the difference is our subject to change take we don't let you know". Imagine a stock exchange that proclaims "stock price is decoupled from what sellers offer and buyers pay".

They're not marketplace, are they?. I can't shop different drivers and pick the one I want.

Neither can the drivers choose how much they will charge.

This sort of thing is dangerous if you want to keep drivers as independant contractors. Lyft sounds like they're no longer paying by the job, but more of a salary. Such a reclassification could retroactively allow their drivers to benefits, taxes, and other entitlements. Lyft shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways, classifying workers as employees when it suits them, then as independant driving service companies when it doesn't. Who do drivers work for? If it's Lyft, then how Lyft treats their workers is very illegal. But right now the answer is "for themselves." It will be interesting to see if Lyft shoots itself in the foot getting greedy at some point.

Yea. Lyft wanting to make their take more opaque is certainly a plausible motivation. But since Lyft and Uber are now offering complicated reward/discount programs, it's plausible that the rider's payment on any given trip is misleading and mostly a source of confusion. Driver's won't complain when Lyft's take is unusually small, but will when it's unusually large, even if it balances on average.

In general it's frustrating that pricing is becoming more opaque for everyone. Despite multiple emails exchanged with Uber, I still cannot get them to tell me how exactly the Ride Passes work in the SF area. There doesn't seem to be an unambiguous description on the website, the receipts don't explain, and different customer support agents give contradictory statements.

I have only recently used Lyft with discounts or promo deals. I don't need it enough to use it otherwise and it really is more for convenience like needing to get to the airport at 5am or back from a bar downtown without finding a bus.

My data would probably throw off the driver if they see that I paid $20 for a ride that should have been $30. The rider pay may vary on if I tip based on the actual vs discount price of the ride or other elements too.

I think the metrics they are providing are potentially more useful if the driver is able to ingest and use the data but it's likely Lyft isn't 100% honest with their presentation or made this change to benefit their business over the drivers.

They could show the non discounted price.

> I still cannot get them to tell me how exactly the Ride Passes work in the SF area. There doesn't seem to be an unambiguous description on the website, the receipts don't explain, and different customer support agents give contradictory statements.

As a user of Ride Pass in LA, I'm also confused about what it does and does not cover. When I first bought it, it locked in a rate on a route I used frequently - but now I'll see Ride Pass discounts for trips to/from LAX and other unrelated places.

Still supposedly saves me more per month than I spend on it, though.

Yep. Sympathetic guess is that they are just rapidly trying a bunch of promotions to see what people like, and they are too internally dysfunctional to keep their agents/app/website up-to-date. Cynical guess is that opaqueness is the goal, and they want you to just get in the habit of trusting their "here's how much you saved!" number without anyone looking closely at the counterfactual.

It seems clear they want to remove the disincentive for drivers to simply not work when higher pricing multipliers are not in effect (which they have the right to do if they are ostensibly independent contractors).

Had the same impression about this. Also some drivers used these figures to cap their _daily_ driving. I guess there may be still some way to estimate this based on their experience.

This isn't as bad as the fact that you have no idea where a passenger is going until you get to their location.

I recently moved to New Jersey a too up driving to help ends meet.

There are times where you drive 10 miles to pick a passenger and drop them a block (.5 miles) away from their location.

Even worse is the integrated Google app that consistently routes you through tolls enroute to picking passengers even though you don't get reimbursed for that.

Lyft is a cesspit for bottomfeeders and unfortunately I'm one.

Uber on the other hand isn't taking on new drivers since their ipo.

(If you're a Lyft Dev here please consider giving us the option too filter toll preferences when we're on our way to pick up passengers)

> Uber on the other hand isn't taking on new drivers since their ipo.

Not taking on new drivers at all, or just not paying big sign-up bonuses?

Not taking on new drivers seems like a very silly move on Ubers part, because the large supply of drivers is what keeps supply prices low and their margins healthy.

> There are times where you drive 10 miles to pick a passenger and drop them a block (.5 miles) away from their location.

As a daily rider, I agree completely. I get an Uber/Lyft every morning at 5:00 to catch a 5:25 train about 3 miles away in the Chicago suburbs. Sometimes there aren't many drivers out, and it connects to a driver near O'Hare, about 20 minutes away. So, I miss my train, have to wait 20 minutes when I could have asked my wife to take me, and it is a waste of the driver's time as well. But, I'm not going to cancel and get a fee for a ride that is only $6 to begin with. I'd love to be able to filter on drivers that are less than 10 minutes away.

Also, don't get me started on the Pre-Tax commuter program... It can only use Pools, and there are ZERO drivers that accept it now near me. I'd have to wait 30+ minutes, or it just gives up and says no drivers are in the area. I have several hundred dollars set aside in my commuter account for this, and it is useless the way they have it set up. I don't blame the drivers, but it is a shitty situation that they would promote this program, and it is kind of useless.

This could be a social politics move. By disassociating trips with money earned, it’ll stop a driver saying “I’m not going to accept a trip from these people/this area because then I won’t make as much money than if I waited for a trip from this person/this area”

That too. The drivers are not supposed to make decisions about clients like an independent contractor. Because they are employees. The rest is a fiction to get around labor rights.

Any idea how tips are handled? They aren't mentioned in the article.

> Relevant detail that I'm sure most commenters have not read

If suggesting someone hasn't read the article is against the site rules. How the hell is suggesting everyone hasn't read the article not?