A new way to get Even! More! Ubers! is being trialled.
Night bus? Yeah, no, sorry, Uber.
Raining out? Uber.
Hangover? Definite Uber.
And this, friends, is why I have no money.
Yet now there’s more! Having identified a core market of impulsive, transit-shy uber-customers (sorry), the car-hire service has just rolled out a premium subscription service in five U.S. cities. [See also: a new passenger jet will fly London -> NYC in three hours.]
Ride Pass, as it’s called, is currently being tested in Miami, Austin, Denver and Orlando for about £11.40 a month, along with Los Angeles, where the exact same service costs £19. Subscribing basically makes your account ‘surge proof’, so your journeys will all cost the same whether it’s quiet or ‘sleeting at rush hour in a tube strike.’
Uber claims the pass saves about 15% on monthly journey costs, so if a hypothetical Austinite is spending more than (squints) £76 on Ubers a month, they should come out ahead.
Meanwhile, Uber’s Stateside rival, Lyft, has launched an ‘All-Access Pass’ which offers 30 x $15 rides a month for $299. (About £227 a month.) Could all-you-can-eat Ubez be where this is ultimately all going? For the sake of London’s traffic congestion, let’s hope not.
Admittedly there are no immediate plans to roll out the pass in London, but it’s surely only a matter of time until we’re all lured into adding yet another subscription service to our self-inflicted 1st-of-the-month direct-debit clusterfucks.
See also: the 26-30 railcard is here to stay!
Also published on Medium.