Uber and Lyft Ridership Remains Low in Massachusetts

In an article for Streetsblog Massachusetts, Christian MilNeil describes the state of transportation network companies (TNCs) in the Bay State. “In the two years leading up to the pandemic, ridership on Uber and Lyft had been growing explosively; an analysis of the companies’ own data estimated that their drivers logged a staggering 23 to 25 million miles in the City of Boston – roughly 8 percent of all the city’s traffic – during the month of September 2018.”

Now, more than two years after the pandemic began, ridership on these services has not recovered. “Like the state’s transit agencies, Uber and Lyft have reportedly struggled with driver shortages, and customers are reporting longer wait times and higher prices. During the pandemic, substantial numbers of its drivers also pivoted from transporting passengers to transporting take-out meals and other deliveries.”

MilNeil writes that “The company’s reported gross revenue from passenger bookings in the last three months of 2021 was down by 16 percent compared to the same period of 2019 (from $13.5 billion in 2019, to $11.3 billion in 2021), in spite of considerably higher prices.” Meanwhile, the “value of the company’s bookings from deliveries in the same time period had more than tripled (from $4.4 billion in 2019 to $13.4 billion in 2021).”

Uber and Lyft are also recovering from an expensive legal loss after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a ballot initiative proposed by the companies that sought to emulate California’s 2020 referendum classifying drivers as independent contractors was illegal.