Hacker News Reader

Comment by bri3d | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know if Lyft plan to contribute their map corrections back to OSM? They mention other companies doing so in this blog post, but don't make it clear whether or not they, too, intend to.

I'm curious to see how good Lyft Maps is, too. Uber Maps is, frankly, a disaster in my area, frequently suggesting illegal and/or impossible turns. I try to submit map feedback every trip (very hard as a rider, as most forms of available feedback seem to be to punish the driver rather than the platform), and it's still never been fixed. Most drivers seem to use Google Maps or Waze instead and if I see a driver using Uber Maps, I need to watch the trip and suggest several corrections. Ironically, I'm only a few miles from the office where most Uber Maps staff used to work.

View on HN

I also find it consistently obnoxious that there is essentially no way to say "My driver was fine, but your platform did something stupid" when leaving feedback. At least, not without jumping through a million hoops. The arrogance of our industry is tiresome.

I took a ride in SF a while ago and it predicted a 3 minute pick up time which turned out to be 25 minutes - no fault of the driver, and the only way I could complain about this was to click through like 4 levels of "other issue" and then jump through hoops sending emails back and forth with support.

Pick up time predictions are garbage, because ride shares allow cancelations. Last time I used a ride share, I had eight drivers accept and then cancel on me. The predicted departure time was always "8 minutes away" and then "looking for another driver" over and over. I probably waited an hour.

Talking to a driver about this I was told that the platform is always re-routing drivers to maximize revenue for lyft, so when the app says "finding you another driver", it's not the driver that canceled, it's the platform decided that driver was better off, revenue wise, to complete a different fare.

The fact that this is opaque to the end user just means we get mad at the workers and not the corporation, classic.

The fact that OP can see "finding another driver" 8 times suggests that perhaps there is some prioritization system, and OP was low priority - such that if any other request came in before him, then the driver would be re-routed.

Possible that those shitty tips you've been leaving are adding up in other ways? I live in a neighborhood that borders a part of town that is accepted as a "bad" part of town and is often confused as being part of that part of town. I have only ever not had the "finding another driver" twice from my house, and originally assumed it was location location location. I had a guest stay with me last summer, and they never received that treatment which led me to believe it was an account thing. We'd test by requesting a car at the same time. Their rates were cheaper, and they never had a new driver issue.

It would make perfect sense to have some ML model which predicts which customers will be most profitable, and treat those guys well to improve retention amongst that client set.

(Regarding Uber, not Lyft, but...) It would also make perfect sense to predict which customers are investigators in areas Uber is illegal, and avoid them. Which they did [0]. I would be shocked if they weren't giving more profitable customers higher priority and better treatment.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secr...

Forget ML, Lyft can tell if you are a more profitable / more engaged customer through your usage of Lyft Pink, which explicitly offers Priority Pickup. They are transparent about getting you a driver sooner, for cheaper, and I guess the subscription you pay for drives the value.

Uber used to never allow drivers to rate the riders after the tipping was complete. Not sure if that's still the flow.

It's much simpler than that. Drivers accept and then they cancel the ride themselves if they don't like the destination or the earnings. Normally you would penalize those drivers but I imagine with Lyft losing market share they likely can't afford to penalize drivers all that much.

No, drivers don't see the destination until they arrive and the trip begins.

I'm often on one side of the Bay Area trying to get to the other and had many drivers pull up, then cancel or try to get me to cancel when they see I'm going across the Bay.

My assumption was that most drivers are using 3+ different apps, so if they get an Uber request while they're driving a Lyft route they just don't accept it, hence the bouncing around "finding another driver" because all the drivers are already busy

Also, riders are using two or three different apps, so if Uber promises a 2-minute wait and then confirms with a 6-minute wait and Lyft is promising a 3-minute wait, cancel the Uber ride and now that driver is available again.

Doesn’t that incur a cancellation fee?

Usually not in my experience, as long as it’s within a short time (5 minutes?) since booking.

I don't know about lyft but with Uber this depends on the country (gov regulations might force to be transparent with the drivers beforehand).

That's at least not true for Lyft as of October last year. But there are many factors, like other apps, traffic, getting offered something better from another app, etc.

> With upfront pay, drivers can now see ride information and what they’ll earn before accepting a ride. Drivers will have access to trip details including the pickup and drop-off locations, estimated time and distance to complete the ride, and a map view of the full ride in addition to the fare.

https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/upfront-pay-and-the-next-cha...

I had a ride from YVR airport where no less than 30 drivers[0] cancelled on me. I would get the notification that the driver was on their way, tap it, and then catch a brief one second flash of the driver before they disappeared and I was back in the queue.

[0]: I’m sure it would be much more, but I gave up and took the train instead

At airports, its often much better to walk just outside the boundary of the airport.

Airports often have special rules, pickup fees, etc. Drivers don't want to pay an $8 fee just to make a loss on your journey. As soon as you're a few yards out of the airport, none of that applies and a driver will be happy to take you.

>its often much better to walk just outside the boundary of the airport

are you serious? what airports do you visit where you can do this as a suggestion without laughing. It's like telling the freshmen that there's a pool on the school roof.

even something as small like a Bob Hope in Burbank would be difficult. Most airports do not consider pedestrian traffic to the edge of their properties. I've done it once at that airport because my office was pretty much next door to the Fry's across the street. still made me regret that decision. I'm now in Dallas and even Lovefield pedestrian traffic past getting to the parking area is non-existent. From DFW? Forget it. Much like your suggestion

Walking out of an airport of any size (and even many/most smaller commercial airports) is between impossible and taking your life in your hands given that sidewalks/crosswalks/etc. are largely lacking. Most commercial airports just don't contemplate pedestrians walking in and out. It might be possible to walk to East Boston from Logan airport though I'm not sure how--and that's an airport that's basically right in the city.

Take a shuttle to car rentals or a hotel, and then you'd be out of the airport area; doesn't have to be a "walk" walk.

Most airports have moved to a centralized rental car location that is still inside the airport perimeter, so not sure how this is helping? The ride share algos are still going to recognize you are at the airport and charge you accordingly

Typically the centralized rental car facility is near or at the airport boundary at airports I’m familiar with.

Logan is one of the easiest. You just take the bus to the MBTA stop or the free silver line into Seaport. The convenient public transportation is the reason I rarely take cabs or rideshare to or from Logan.

Sure. It's convenient to public transit. Really no reason to catch a cab to downtown unless you have a lot of luggage, you're going in or out at a weird time, or home is somewhere inconvenient to public transit. I was responding to literal "walking." (I live outside the city personally and transit doesn't really work.)

There's a sidewalk from Terminal A arrivals that you can take to the Maverick neighborhood and the East Boston Greenway. There was one from Terminal E as well to Wood Island and beyond, but part of it's been closed for a while due to the Terminal E expansion. There's a pedestrian detour through the cell phone lot that'll get you there.

You won't be able to walk to Downtown Boston, obviously, but Logan Airport is theoretically walkable if you're in East Boston. I'd still take the shuttle bus to the Airport T station where you can do the same walk to the greenway.

It is very easy at LAX. You walk about 100 yards across one (admittedly very busy) intersection and get picked up for 1/3 the price. You already have to take a shuttle to even get picked up unless you have a black car, so this adds 5 minutes. It is still annoying if you have luggage.

You could also take a shuttle to a local hotel or car rental, but that is breaking some rules.

What 100 yards are you talking about? Stepping out the doors at any terminal at LAX takes you to the parking lot if you walk 100 yards. To get off of airport grounds would take a much significantly longer walk without any pedestrian walkway

The airport boundary is Sepulveda, which is, admittedly, closer to 300 yards from Terminals 1, 7 and 8.

But there is a pedestrian walkway the entire way. With traffic lights at crosswalks and everything.

I am talking about the walk from LAXit. This is the parking lot where Uber/Lyft/Taxi pickups are, and you generally have to take a shuttle to get there to begin with.

LAXit is on Sepulveda, but it is safer to cross the street to a parking lot. I'll admit I underestimated the distance. It is closer to 300 yards:

https://goo.gl/maps/DWsk4MSx9HuDJAJz5

Since the thread is about YVR, it's actually pretty easy and safe to walk all the way to Richmond (or a shorter distance to the east side of Sea Island which has normal businesses / residences). Sidewalks all the way from the terminal, and no crazy crossings are required. I'm sure this isn't typical, but if you don't mind the walk it's perfectly viable in this case.

You can also take the SkyTrain for free within Sea Island (which is not well known, I feel) - 2 stops to Templeton, and there are probably plenty of Ubers around there, since there is an outlet mall near that station, or at least a much shorter walk into Richmond.

Off the top of my head:

LAX: walking paths and signalized crosswalks get you all the way to the hotels east of Sepulveda, or take the free shuttle to the cell phone lot and order from there.

SJC: Cross the parking garage to the bike path and from there cross the street. Or just walk down the bike path

ORD, MDW: Free shuttle to the rental car facility, or take the L one stop.

MSN: kind of a long walk, but there are sidewalks the whole way

SLC: take the light rail one stop

PSP: dunno why you’d want to walk in the heat, but it’s a short walk on sidewalks to El Cielo Road

Bear in mind: The minimum wage retail staff that run all the stuff in the airport can’t really afford to pay even economy lot parking rates, so basically every large airport has some kind of public transportation if you know how to look for it.

When I fly out of Seatac in the summer I park my motorcycle in the employee parking, which is free. Do other airports not offer cheap/free employee parking?

Employee of what? The airport?

Who do you think?

As opposed to being a pilot or something.

It’s both.

Before they had ridesharing at Midway, I would ride the first hotel shuttle I could get on and request from its parking lot.

> At airports, its often much better to walk just outside the boundary of the airport.

Even easier to use one of the many taxi cabs waiting at the curb right by the terminal.

I don’t understand why I shouldn’t receive a $5 cancellation fee when drivers cancel if they are choking to charge me $5 for cancelling…

I feel like the regular taxi stand is now often much faster (and often cheaper) at many airports as a result of these dynamics

i recently flew to Austin a few times and the turnaround time from airport to destination using waiting taxis was far, far faster. not cheaper though! i have found these Uber/Lyft lots that airports are using now to be a bit of disaster; they have markedly reduced the convenience factor of uber/lyft from airport to destination.

edited for spelling

This is my experience as well, but it's highly dependent on what city you're in.

Do they actually take credit cards nowadays? And do they expect gigantic tips?

I really hate shelling out $60 for a 20 minute taxi ride, then being expected to shell out an extra $20 on top of that and getting endless grief over wanting to use a credit card to top it all off

Every cab I've been in in the last decade has expected that you're paying by card. Many prefer it, because the drivers don't want to carry a bunch of cash. Many cab companies even have apps where you follow the progress of the cab you called, and pay for the ride.

I have no idea what the tip expectation of cab drivers are. I tip the same rate I tip for all traditionally tipped services. I don't actually care whether or not that meets their expectations.

I've known a couple of people who never tip cabbies. Nothing bad happens to them.

> I really hate shelling out $60 for a 20 minute taxi ride, then being expected to shell out an extra $20 on top of that and getting endless grief over wanting to use a credit card to top it all off

Drivers actually comment on your tip amount? And they complain about an extremely generous 33% tip?? I wouldn't use that cab company ever again.

When I was a teen I would tip the driver whatever the change would be to the cash I had on hand. These would be trips between LAX and West Hollywood. Cost like 25-30 bucks? I don't remember.

The only cab I saw that took cards had a thing that would slide across the front and get an impression of the text embossed on the card. I guess that wouldn't work today since cards aren't embossed anymore

Every cab I've been in over the last 10 years or so has had a card reader. Sometimes just Square, sometimes something fancier.

> Pick up time predictions are garbage

This boils me to no end. Google Maps estimates often make rideshare look like a timesaver compared to transit, but when you add five, ten, even fifteen minutes to the pickup estimate, it really changes things.

I feel like the ride shares need to commit to firm pricing and pickup times at booking, ride is discounted $1/min for every minute over the estimate.

I wonder if you could penalize for cancellations somehow.

Maybe add a cost to accept a ride, which is waived at pickup.

(I don't know how things work)

It’s especially rich when Lyft gives you this treatment after you’ve selected the more expensive “rapid pickup” option. Nothing hits quite like the tech company gaslighting experience of being told “Just a moment…Just a few more seconds…” for upwards of five minutes by an app eager to discourage you from canceling your $5 extra “three minute pickup.”

Lyft's pick up estimates are basically made up as far as I can tell.

I think for users who comparison shop between Uber and Lyft, the pickup ETA is part of each app’s bid. Putting a lower price costs them money, while putting a lower ETA is free.

This... As soon as you click "reserve", you're locked in...

100% massively detracts from my willingness to pay for their services …

This is a case where a positive AB test result could push you in the wrong direction. It might take a long-term holdout group to find the negative effect, and those can be hard to manage.

Which is why Lyft does that annoying 59-second countdown until you can see your driver's details and actual wait time, so you have a sunk cost to discourage you from switching to Uber when the actual wait time is longer than promised.

Lyft support is inconsistent.

Sometimes, you'll report a minor issue and get an over-the-top "OMG - WE'RE SO SORRY! HERE'S FREE MONEY AND YOU'LL NEVER BE PAIRED WITH THIS DRIVER AGAIN!"

Other times, you'll report an actual problem, like being charged more than advertised, and they'll do nothing to remediate.

After being charged more than expected on a couple recent rides, I basically stopped using Lyft.

If it's anything like AirBnB, it probably depends on whether you're getting the chipper day-shift call center or the cheap outsourced offshore call center as far as what kind of support you get. My wife and I landed in a cockroach-infested but very beautiful condo through AirBnB once and the night shift guy basically accused me of being used to living with cockroaches as a business traveler and that one or two should be expected. I had to offer to send him video of me spraying the walls of the kitchen with roach spray with tens of wriggling bodies of various instar stage falling onto the counter before he would even commit to looking in to it.

I called the same support number the morning after and the support people were all very accommodating. Called them one more time that afternoon to confirm that our payments were refunded and got the same treatment as the previous night.

This experience is one of the reasons I never use AirBnB for anything anymore. Their support was awful at the exact moment I needed them to offer me any option other than sleeping in our rental car on the beach.

I have an Airbnb support horror story too.

I reported the space being poorly cleaned first thing in the morning (I had arrived at 1 AM). They asked if I preferred a phone call or chat. I didn't want to spend a morning on the phone with them, so I chose chat.

Every 20 minutes for the next few days, I got "Hi, I'm NAME_HERE, and I'm taking over your case!" The names changed, but they never actually _did_ anything beyond "taking over" the case. I felt like I was in a Seinfeld episode.

One of them then decided the best resolution was to tell the host I'd complained about the cleanliness (without including me at all). I started getting nasty messages from the host, who thought I'd happily stayed there for 4 days and then spontaneously opened a complaint. So now on top of sleeping in a gross Airbnb, I was getting constant notifications on my phone of the host calling me all sorts of nasty names.

I opened a _new_ ticket and chose phone support to finally get a hold of somebody. Her accent told me she was in an offshore call center, but she was helpful in getting it resolved. I think they had me book a hotel for the remainder of the days and reimbursed me, or something to that effect.

After I checked out, the host filed a frivolous damages claim against me. I clicked the "not my problem" button and thankfully never heard about it again.

I will never, ever use Airbnb chat support again. Was perhaps the worst customer service experience I've ever had.

Lived near a bridge and both Lyft and Uber would endlessly try to have drivers end the drive on the bridge instead of routing off it.

Totally agree, I just had this happen to me two days ago. The Uber app bugged out and left me with a fare that was double what I was quoted, and there was basically no way to get in touch with Uber about it. You know how often support chatbots offer a "talk to a human" option? Not Uber. Just links to articles about how I'm holding it wrong.

It’s worth taking to Twitter to complain in those situations. I’d love if we didn’t half to, but I’ve found most companies help when you make your issue public.

Maybe Uber isn’t a company who will care, but most are.

This - I find 2/3rds of my issues are platform vs driver. And there is no way to penalize the platform vs the driver + the driver then deals with the aftermath of a pissed off customer even if they were great. It would be as easy as having two star ratings, “how was your driver?”, and “how was your whole experience?”.

After ten years of using Lyft/Uber for airport trips instead of driving I’ve decided to go back to park/fly companies. This past week I had a scheduled and confirmed pickup with Lyft, driver cancelled 2 min before pickup and it took 5 more “driver found” messages and 50 minutes before I switched to Uber and got picked up in 10 minutes. Uber has done the same in the past, so they aren’t reliable either. It was a $110 fare trip.

I’m beginning to despise Lyft/Uber as much as the cabs they replaced.

Lyft is one of the biggest contributors to OSM. Here is a list of OSM accounts related to Lyft [0]. In many places where I've edited OSM, Lyft employees have contributed quality data where there wasn't any before.

How (and, how respectfully) companies should contribute to OSM is an ongoing debate. But corporate influences are often a good thing, and I think nearly anyone would agree that Lyft's contributions to OSM have been resoundingly helpful.

[0] https://github.com/OSM-DCT-Lyft/US/wiki/OSM-Team-Members

Isn't this the driverless car team, vs. the ride-mapping team?

Regardless, it's good to see that they are contributing back to OSM. I agree that overall the use of OSM by anyone "lifts all ships" as long as users continue to contribute back. OSM is one of the most positive projects around lately in terms of taking something that used to be extremely expensive and highly restricted and democratizing it.

I used to work for Lyft and I can confirm that both teams (driverless and ride-share) contribute. Ride-share scaled later which may give you that false impression.

And Yes, it's a big investment for Lyft for the open source community.

That may be true. But as a whole, it is worth noting that Lyft hires a significant number of people to edit OSM. Here is an interesting 2021 post by Jennings Anderson discussing paid edits on OSM, and how companies compare in their contributions:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Jennings%20Anderson/diary...

I agree about how successful OSM has been recently. In an age where Wikipedia for example seems relatively mature, it's fun to see OSM grow at such a pace.

Jennings Anderson is a lead on Digital Twins standardization now

Yes - Lyft contributed the overwhelming majority of the new data back into OSM. The only exceptions were layers that didn't meet OSM community standards for various technical reasons.

Source - I led this team

your team contributed more OSM changes than .. who? everyone else in the whole world?

They're saying "we contributed the overwhelming majority of the data we collected and corrected, except for that which wasn't eligible for contribution." It really seems like Lyft operated in good faith here, they just didn't mention it in the blog post.

I'm pretty sure he meant that Lyft contributed the overwhelming majority of the changes they made to OSM.

some people's reading comprehension...

Thanks for making the contributions, we all benefit!

If you had any pull in that decision, well done. You made the world a little bit better for everyone. Can't ask for much more than that sometimes.

I've submitted a correction for an illegal turn instruction twice on Google maps. No reply. But my other corrections have been accepted.

Providing feedback to large corporate machines is akin to screaming into the void at this point. Sometimes the void hears you and responds with a generous canned message. Other times you unsurprisingly get silence. That's why I became completely divested and disinterested in providing general feedback for maps, locations etc.

Map creators include intentionally incorrect information (Map Traps) so people copying them are obviously copying them. I sometimes wonder if that’s the root cause of companies failing to correct some of their mistakes.

https://www.gislounge.com/map-traps-intentional-mapping-erro...

Using anything that could cause incorrect directions as a trap location / trap street would be a ridiculously bad idea. I strongly suspect the reason is a more standard corporate one; the volume of corrections and signal to noise ratio is probably quite poor.

In the case of my repeated Uber map correction attempt, I suspect that my correction isn't prioritized because of two factors: first, the turn which Uber Maps suggests, while both illegal and very dangerous, is not impossible (it's an illegal left turn accomplished by making a U-Turn around an island designed to prevent left turns). So, they probably see enough volume of "driver completed route as suggested" data signals to ignore any "but it's illegal and dangerous" complaints, a classic problem with "data driven" systems. And, Uber don't seem to have a real process for riders to submit mapping corrections, only drivers, so my request is unlikely to ever be routed to the correct queue to begin with.

Map Traps (as these are called) are normally pretty harmless, e.g. a non-existent, small cul-de-sac that doesn't exist. A turn restriction (which is quite invisible!) seldom is.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, I see some bigger driveways listed as roads on Google maps, and I always wonder if it’s a legally correct city survey artefact and I could park a car there etc. if I wanted, or just a trap/misclassification.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/CXRh6LFRhgZo1P9k8?g_st=ic

Yeah, good question. Whether it was intentional or not, it still acts as good Map Trap

The way to get that corrected is to ask the local police to ticket illegal turns at that intersection for a day, indicating that Google refuses to correct the issue and is directing hundreds of violations a day at the intersection. Google ignores unenforced road signs that are frequently ignored by their data providers (drivers), so enforcement complaints from drivers are necessary to force the correction.

Their other data providers are me, as a user submitting a correction, and Streetview, which they could use to confirm the turn restriction.

I don't understand how Maps verification works.

I've added sidewalk vendors to the map with names like "coconut cakes lady," and had them approved instantly.

I've also tried to rename streets, including the news article about the name change, and had them unceremoniously ignored. Same for adding a new bar to the map with a photo of the menu, even though other places I've added have had hundreds of thousands of views.

There doesn't seem to be an underlying system. There's a famous traffic stop in Muine, Vietnam listed as something like "social security office." The photos are all of the traffic stop. The reviews are about the traffic stop. If you run the name on Maps through translate, it comes back "traffic stop." I've tried repeatedly changing the category to "traffic police" and been silently denied.

There's a bar in downtown SF at the wrong address. Comments are about the address being wrong. There's even a photo that says "our address on Maps is wrong." Try to fix it in Maps? Denied.

Here is an overview of which corporation contribute how many edits based on the osm account names affiliated with the corporations: https://piebro.github.io/openstreetmap-statistics/#b34d Lyft is the eleventh most active company by edit count with a total of 4M edits and 1.5M edits in the last year.

Disclaimer: I created the stats and website.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com