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by dcpdx
4162 days ago
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The company I work for recently won a contest put on by Lyft offering free Lyft Line rides to and from work for an entire week. I live in Lower Pac Heights and work in the Financial District and take a couple different Muni routes to and from work. I'll take either the 2 or the 3 heading in and the 38L heading back; the 38L is way too crowded in the morning by the time it gets to my closest stop. Morning commute usually takes around 15 minutes and afternoon takes around 10. So, my commute isn't bad by any means but I decided to give Lyft Line a shot to see if I could do any better. The first day I tried hailing one in the morning, the app hung up looking for drivers; it said 1 minute to match with a driver but I waited 3 before quitting the app and deciding to take Muni. That afternoon, I tried again but ran into the same issue. The next afternoon, I was finally able to line up a ride but had to wait 10 minutes for the driver to get to me. Once he did and we were on our way, I had the joyful experience of sitting in traffic for blocks on end while watching Munis zip by in the designated lanes beside us. Not including wait time, the ride took around 20 minutes (double my normal commute time). I'm sure there are some routes for which Line is a better option than public transportation, but I personally have a much better experience on Muni than I did with Line. I get why they're focused on rush hour; a service like Line requires a critical mass of people to use the app concurrently in order to make it work. But, the downside of this is that the times when it reaches this point are the times when traffic is the worst and public transportation offers a superior alternative in many cases. We'll see if this ends up taking off, but I know I won't be using it for my commute. Maybe this would be better suited for one-off events like Outside Lands, Giants games etc. but I'd imagine they'd run into the same problems. |
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