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This article was published on March 30, 2017

Lyft is turning cabs into fixed-route shuttles in its latest experiment


Lyft is turning cabs into fixed-route shuttles in its latest experiment Image by: Lyft / Instagram

Lyft is trialing a new service called Shuttle, which sees cabs operating along a fixed route with set pickup and drop-off points in San Francisco and Chicago.

That’s handy for people who commute the same way each day. In addition to increasing reliability for frequent users, Shuttle brings the added benefit of fixed fares that aren’t impacted by Prime Time surge pricing on Lyft’s platform during high-traffic hours.

Shuttle is part of the Lyft Line ride sharing option within the app; it’ll only be presented to you if you’re close to the routes that the company is presently testing.

It’d be great to see rivals like Uber – and regional players like Ola in India – give this a go. Commuters could benefit from a consistently-available ride for last mile connectivity while using public transport, for example.

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out for Lyft, and if it becomes more widely available across the US in the coming months.

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