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LAX bans Uber and Lyft from picking up passengers at the terminal
It's about to get even harder to hail an Uber or Lyft at Los Angeles International Airport. Ride-hailing vehicles will be banned from making pickups outside LAX's terminals under new rules announced by officials on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reports. Instead, passengers wishing to get picked up by Uber or Lyft will have to take a shuttle to a parking lot next to Terminal 1.
It's a new twist in the increasingly fraught relationship between airports and the app-based car service companies that have added to some of the confusion and congestion at most travel hubs. With more people flying than ever before and a growing share of those people expecting to use their smartphones to summon cars to pick them up, the traffic situation outside of airport terminals has reached a breaking point.
LAX is in the midst of a $14 billion revamp[*] of its aging roads and terminals. Construction has led to some road closures, while airlines are adding routes leading to an increase in passenger pickups and drop-offs.
"We understand that trying to get into the central terminal area is a challenge and has been for a long time, and we've been working to make that much better," Keith Wilschetz, deputy executive director of the Operations and Emergency Management Division at Los Angeles World Airports, told the LA Times. "This is a way we can do that."
[...] Other airports have adopted similar tactics in recent years. San Francisco International Airport, for example, recently moved almost all ride-hailing passenger pickups to the top floor of the main parking garage. Some passengers said the change has made pickups more efficient, even though it involves a longer walk from the gate. Similar changes are expected to take place at Boston's Logan International Airport.
Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft have tweaked their apps for drivers in the hopes of making drop-offs and pickups more seamless. Both companies have added a feature called rematch that allows drivers who have just dropped off a passenger to pick up a new customer without leaving the airport and waiting in an off-site area.
[*] See: LAX airport is getting a $14 billion makeover and new 'happy face' machines to rate satisfaction.
Related: Logan Airport Uber and Lyft changes set to take effect in October
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @11:56AM (5 children)
A queue for the ride hailers, where one picks the first car there, rather than the specific driver matched by app. So an ordered pickup line, we could even call it a rank. Then rather the nomination of a provider we need a generic name for such services, and a common colour scheme would help the punters. Hmmm call them taxis and have them all painted uber blue and lyft yellow. Solved.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday October 07 2019, @12:13PM (2 children)
at big events this is exactly what Uber does.
They bring their own cell towers/wifi points so people standing around a big line, don't overwhelm the system.
Then with the app open, it matches cars in a carrel so the people standing next to these "wifi" points, get ubers in a line.
I don't know the actual details, but I have seen it a few times at festivals - it would be chaos without some sorting tech...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @01:48PM (1 child)
Missing the point that this would no longer be a "ride hailing" service (or more appropriately a chartered livery), and would in fact be a taxi service and thus should be licensed as such.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 07 2019, @03:00PM
they have always been an unregulated taxi service. The gps tracking feature is nice, why they could not just have added that to existing taxi services? Oh yeah, disruption and market share i forgot good business practice.
(Score: 4, Informative) by richtopia on Monday October 07 2019, @03:47PM (1 child)
This is actually what currently happens at PDX. There are three lines: taxi, Lyft, Uber. When you get in the region you open the app and get a code, which you then present to the driver once you've waited through the queue. This matches the driver to your destination.
Thursday night around 10PM all three lines were busy, probably 50+. Since my company picks up the tab, I opted for the shortest line, the local taxi. As I stood in line for 20 minutes, I watched someone move through the Lyft line faster than I got to my taxi. The local taxi also cost more than double.
The "hack" to get around this new queue is to select a different quality of pickup. If you share a Lyft the app follows the normal ride hailing mechanism, and when I looked the closest driver was 7 minutes away. I may try this next time I return through PDX; I can ask for the ride from inside security to shave down that wait time.
The new system is called "Fast Match": https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013078748-Airport-information-for-passengers [lyft.com]
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday October 07 2019, @11:23PM
I experienced this recently with Lyft at SAN. It worked pretty smoothly; people were loading their luggage into cars about as fast as could be expected given a limited area that allowed about four simultaneous car-loading processes. To get a car any faster you would need a different pickup location, but then you'd also be waiting for your car to arrive.
Lyft had a few employees on-hand to organize the line. I believe that was because it was the first week of the Fast Match system.
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