As we reported Friday, Uber is trialling a new service in San Francisco called SmartRoutes that lets passengers hop on a ride along specific routes for a cheaper fare, exactly as they would with a bus. However, Lyft already launched a service along these lines to much fanfare back in May, called HotSpots, although now it seems this service was quietly shut down on yesterday. Apparently Lyft discovered that aggregating demand in certain areas did not improve productivity much more than picking up individuals at their original locations. Hence HotSpots was deemed simply not necessary, so it will be interesting to see if Uber has the same experience with SmartRoutes.
As we reported yesterday, Uber is trialling a new service in San Francisco called SmartRoutes that lets passengers hop on a ride along specific routes for a cheaper fare, exactly as they would with a bus. However, Lyft already launched a service along these lines to much fanfare back in May, called HotSpots, although now it seems this service was quietly shut down on Friday. Apparently Lyft discovered that aggregating demand in certain areas did not improve productivity much more than picking up individuals at their original locations. Hence HotSpots was deemed simply not necessary, so it will be interesting to see if Uber has the same experience with SmartRoutes.