Congestion at the Curb: An Analysis of Ride-hailing at LAX and Recommendations to Optimize the TNC System at Airports

Welcome to Rideshare Drivers React, your weekly roundup of the conversations trending among drivers in The Rideshare Guy community. Click Subscribe above to be notified of each edition. 

This week, we have a special edition of Rideshare Drivers React, featuring a whitepaper I co-authored with Blair Schlecter titled ‘Congestion at the Curb: An Analysis of Ride-hailing at LAX and Recommendations to Optimize the TNC System at Airports’. 

The report was released in conjunction with NewCities and CoMotion, and in the report below, we discuss many of the key key issues surrounding congestion and ride-hailing at airports and have some recommendations on potential best practices.  

Some of the highlights we found:

• Re-match is one of the most effective tools TNCs bring to airport pick-up and drop-offs but the new LAXit system effectively negates this feature.
• Airport officials have less ridehail data than the Uber and Lyft drivers circling the terminals. The latter has access to surge pricing maps, can see number of drivers queued up, etc - all from their driver app.
• The fee structure is a mess! UberBlack passengers who receive curbside service pay a $5 fee for pickup and $0 for dropoff while UberX passengers pay $4 for pickup and $4 for dropoff. And two separate UberPOOL passengers would pay a total of $8 for pickup and $8 for dropoff.

Many of the busiest airports in the country are evaluating or re-evaluating how best to accommodate ride-hailing, balancing traffic with the passenger experience. Below, I’ll share more excerpts from the whitepaper. You can read the full report here.

“What started as a novel way to hail a ride with an app is now a multi-billion dollar industry with millions of drivers and hundreds of millions of passengers worldwide. While many have enjoyed the comfort and ease of hailing a Transportation Network Company (TNC) ride, cities are now dealing with the negative effects of tens of thousands of extra cars on the road…

Airports around the country are attempting to deal with the sudden influx of ride-hail passengers, but Los AngelesInternational Airport (LAX) was one of the first to implement an off-terminal pick-up site, a major structural change to the TNC pick-up process. 

This report aims to examine the change, provide recommendations to optimize the system, and analyze how other airports around the country can learn from this process to ensure a smooth transition when it comes time for them to face their own ride-hail problems.

Ultimately, the changes that airports likeLAX are implementing are for the better, but change can anger constituents and transportation is a polarizing topic.In this case, it only took a few days growing pains to unleash a torrent of media criticism and pressure onto airport officials. In today’s day and age of dynamic media, it’s more important than ever to make a great first impression…”

Many thanks to CoMotion LA & MIAMI and NewCities for partnering with us to release the report and especially to Blair Schlecter, Jonah Bliss, Jake Laffoley, and John Rossant for their hard work in helping produce and release the final product.