Lyft will now let you schedule trips ahead of time
Ridesharing platform Lyft heard the people and the people wanted to schedule rides ahead of time. Starting today, Lyft is adding a new feature to let you schedule in advance that ride to the airport or crucial business meeting for which you need to be on time.
Gett, a ridesharing service in New York, has offered this feature for more than a year and we’ve heard rumors Uber has toyed with the idea of scheduling rides ahead of time, but so far does not offer that option.
It’s unclear how the service will be affected by surge pricing during high-traffic times.
It’s also unclear how popular the feature will be with Lyft riders. We asked how much of a demand this was on Lyft’s end and a spokesperson simply added:
“Passengers have asked us for this feature, so we want to roll this out to give additional peace of mind to our users when they have specific trips coming up — like to the airport. People like the security of knowing they already have a ride scheduled.”
I know I’ve personally wanted this option for some time and it would be nice to know a ride is for sure coming at the time I needed to be picked up.
The option works by selecting a pickup location, tapping a clock icon on the right of the Lyft app then selecting the time you want to be picked up. You can update or cancel a scheduled ride up to 30 minutes before pickup without getting charged.
The scheduling feature is only available in San Francisco for now. Lyft will test how it goes and start rolling the feature out from there.
Is this a foreshadowing of our driverless car, chatbot, smart home future? Imagine asking Alexa to schedule you a self-driving car during pre-assessed low-traffic intervals to get you wherever you want to go on time.
NEWSLETTERS
1,886
SHARES