“Drivers don’t like to work for the ride share because of lower prices and drivers are tired of it,” says Khan, a labor advocate who is also reportedly eyeing a seat on the Boston City Council.īut for now things are drifting back to normal. Riders, he points out, may not know that it’s Uber, not the drivers themselves, who collect the lion’s share of surged fares.
UBER PRICING DRIVER
One driver I spoke with, Munim Khan, says the impact of the return of surge pricing may be blunted by drivers’ dissatisfaction with pay, which is calculated at about 36 cents a mile, plus fluctuating flat rates.
Expanded unemployment in Massachusetts, plus difficulties lining up necessities like childcare, not to mention continued concern about catching viruses from passengers, could also fuel drivers’ decisions to stay home, putting a damper on the apps’ recovery when demand spikes again in the fall. Griffith and the Guild have warned that drivers’ dissatisfaction with Uber and Lyft’s shifting payment formulas, along with the recent push from the apps to keep them classified as contractors rather than as benefit-eligible employees, could dissuade drivers from returning to the road in the numbers they once did. Changes in the way drivers are compensated mean they often don’t reap the same rewards they used to from those higher fares. Questions remain about what the rest of the year holds. “It was like 12:15 in the morning and it was a $10 surge, an $18 surge, and it stayed like that for two days,” Griffith says, adding that the surges have slowed down in the weeks since, as more drivers circulate through the city. The impact of the change was immediate, says Beth Griffith, executive director of the Boston Independent Drivers Guild. State law prohibits surge pricing when a state of emergency is in effect, a fact that ride-hailing companies and many drivers alike blamed for Massachusetts’ particularly acute driver shortage, considering the state of emergency lasted for more than a year. The most significant change appears to be the return on June 15 of surge pricing, which means the apps can once again bump up the price of rides when demand spikes, and give drivers more of an incentive to get behind the wheel and pick up passengers.
Sometimes the outcomes late at night, given how early the T closes and the decimation of Boston’s taxi industry, were downright dangerous.īut now, it seems this frustrating storm has finally begun to clear. That combination, plus Massachusetts’ ban on surge pricing during the pandemic, made the user experience on the apps worse in Boston than in just about any major city in the U.S. That lack of supply collided with a sudden surge in demand, as Bostonians returned en masse to bars and friends’ apartments to reunite with vaccinated pals, or headed to the airport for long-delayed vacations. Riders found themselves facing unheard of wait times, or trying to hail a car only to find there weren’t any Uber or Lyft rides to be found. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty ImagesĮarlier this year, as the city moved toward reopening and legions of Bostonians were once again hailing rides on their phones, app-users were confronted with a stubbornly lingering side effect of the pandemic: an Uber and Lyft shortage.ĭrivers felt there wasn’t enough incentive to hit the road.
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