Lyft Tackling Congestion?

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I recently received the above email from Lyft in my inbox. I rarely read promotional emails, however, my mind passively looking for topics for my next two blog post guided me to open the mail. Voila, skimming the email, I realized that the possibility of Lyft becoming a multi-modal service platform integrating public transportation modes in LA became slightly higher than its competitors.

Making this $20*5,000 TAP passes = $100,000, a small investment which subsidizes customers use of public transportation and creates instant revenue for LA metro today, and actually promoting the metro bike access (heavy investment made by LA metro), Lyft just increased its partnership points with LA metro.

Unlike Uber who acquired Jump that provides dockless bike and scooter service, Lyft only developed its own scooters and did not have a bike service in operation. Thus, its promotion of LA metro bikes does not create a negative effect on its own products. Also, increasing blames on TNCs for reduced public transportation ridership and increased congestion had put some burden for their publicity management. As a reaction in 2018, Lyft announced its target to make 50% of rides shared.

For Metro, decreasing ridership of public transportation as in below figure 1, efforts promoting public transit is essential. With increased investments it made to its rail and last mile transportation, a good marketing channel is much needed. TNCs already have a large customer base, where some segments of its customer bases are an effective target for Metro. Especially, those who choose shared rides (about 20% of the rides provided are shared rides), are in fact an overlapping market to the public transportation. The segment can accept the increased inconvenience for a lower fare. 

Figure 1 (data from LA Metro Ridership)


We don't know yet when a one-stop muti modal transportation planning would become available in our cities, however, it seems the first steps of partnerships needed for such developments are being made through these small steps that make much sense to both sides of the equation.

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