I'm Liking Lyft Quite a Bit

Until my trip to Missouri a few days ago, I'd only used Lyft once. No particular reason -- it was just Uber that I thought of first when needing to hail a ride, except for the first time I decided to install the Lyft app on my phone.

But, money being tight and all, and nobody having responded to my plea for Uber gift cards to help out, I noticed that I'd received a "$1 off all rides through July 31" offer from Lyft, so when I arrived at the Springfield airport, I checked both apps.

Lyft was about $3 cheaper than Uber even before the dollar discount to get from the airport to the nursing home my mother lives at, and the estimated wait time was about the same, so ...

Altogether I needed three rides in Springfield -- from the airport, to the airport, and one in between to go meet friends (who dropped me off after). Each time, the Lyft fare was cheaper than Uber even before the dollar off. Each time the car arrived in a timely manner and was clean and comfortable and had a courteous driver who got me where I needed to go in an efficient manner. I spent about $75 total (including tips). With Uber, it would have been $85-$90.

I'm not saying you should use Lyft rather than Uber. I'll probably continue comparing prices each time I need a ride myself. But I'm not seeing any reason to arbitrarily go with Uber as a default. Both services have worked well for me, so price seems like the only reason to pick one or the other.

And by the way, isn't this "hail a ride with your phone" some gooooooood stuff? I remember the days when I had to call for a cab well in advance, talk to a human being about scheduling, and then cross my fingers and hope the driver arrived in a timely manner without a lot of confidence that it would happen. Now I press a button and if the app says the driver is x minutes away, he or she usually arrives within x-1 minutes of the estimate, and I can "see" where the car is at on a map on my screen.