Earlier than the solar might rise over Los Angeles Worldwide Airport on a current Tuesday, a whole bunch of Uber and Lyft drivers had fashioned a queue close by, stretching across the block. It was 5 a.m., and the ready recreation was about to start.
In a couple of minutes, the road of automobiles would file right into a fenced-off car parking zone, a mile from the arrival terminals. It’s identified formally because the Transportation Community Firm Staging Space, however drivers name it the “pen,” the place they wait to be matched with passengers getting off flights.
The spot was a main place to catch rides and earn first rate cash. However today, there appear to be few rides to go round. Veronica Hernandez, 50, parked her white Chevy Malibu at 5:26 a.m. and opened the Lyft app to test her place within the queue: 156th. It might be an hour and a half earlier than her first trip of the day.
“You’ve got good days and unhealthy days,” Ms. Hernandez mentioned, swiping by means of a display exhibiting her every day earnings on the app that week: $205, $245, $179. “Hopefully it’s a very good day.”
Like ride-hailing drivers throughout the nation, Ms. Hernandez has seen her pay decline in recent times, even because the demand for her work feels larger than ever. And with the price of gasoline and automobile insurance coverage rising, the already slim margins of gig work have gotten much less workable by the day, she mentioned. No place is extra emblematic of those issues than LAX, one of many busiest airports on this planet however some of the troublesome locations for gig employees to earn a residing.
“It was an actual solution to earn cash,” Ms. Hernandez mentioned. “Now you’ll be able to barely survive on it.”
Within the early years of app-based platforms like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, folks flocked to enroll as drivers. The concept of making a living just by driving somebody round in your individual automobile, by yourself schedule, appealed to many, from skilled chauffeurs on the lookout for further work to staff working within the service business who realized they might break freed from the 9-to-5 grind.
The important thing idea was that drivers could be unbiased contractors, accountable for their very own bills, with out medical health insurance or different worker advantages however with the pliability to work no matter hours they wished, with out having to join a shift or have a boss.
And within the early years, wages have been excessive. Drivers would often take house hundreds of {dollars} every week, as Uber and Lyft pushed development over earnings, posting quarterly losses within the billions of {dollars}. Then, after they grew to become public firms, profitability grew to become a spotlight, and wages steadily shrank.
Now, earnings have fallen behind inflation, and for a lot of drivers have decreased. Final 12 months, Uber drivers made a mean of $513 every week in gross earnings, a 3.4 % decline from the earlier 12 months, whilst they labored six minutes extra every week on common, in response to Gridwise, an app that collects information and helps drivers monitor their earnings. For drivers in Los Angeles, common hourly earnings on Uber are down 21 % since 2021, Gridwise discovered.
LAX launched the brand new system in 2019, in an effort to chop down on bumper-to-bumper site visitors on the arrival terminal. As a substitute of being picked up by Uber and Lyft drivers on the curb, passengers should stroll or take a shuttle from their terminal to a pickup spot known as LAX-it, subsequent to Terminal 1, which may take as much as 20 minutes. However the driver facet of the equation is one thing passengers hardly ever see.
That morning, contained in the lot, with a whole bunch of parked automobiles and the scent of port-a-potties, the temper was grim. Drivers waited for hours to snare rides — “unicorns,” they known as them — that might pay them a good wage of greater than $1.50 per mile.
By 10 a.m., the pen had devolved into chaos. Whereas round 300 drivers are ready within the digital queue at a given time, the car parking zone has solely round 200 spots. So, as new automobiles filed in, they double-parked in entrance of automobiles that have been already there, which wanted to go away the lot to select up passengers. The outcome: a cacophony of honking and yelling, drowned out solely by the roar of the jet planes overhead, which arrived about each two minutes.
Sergio Avedian, a gig driver and senior contributor to a ride-hailing weblog known as The Rideshare Guy, settled into the pen on a current Tuesday morning at 10:36. After discovering a parking spot, he opened the queue — 256th in line.
As he watched the Uber and Lyft apps, rides popped up that have been rejected by drivers greater within the queue. However the charges have been pitiful: $9.87 for a 13-mile journey, $19.97 for a 25-mile journey and so forth. He rejected all of them.
“We name this ‘decline and recline,” Mr. Avedian mentioned, decreasing his entrance seat.
To go the time, teams of drivers smoke cigarettes and play playing cards. Some nap of their automobiles or watch YouTube movies. Others wander round hawking cellphone chargers and car-cleaning merchandise. Sometimes, arguments get away amongst varied teams — typically alongside racial strains — when competitors for scarce journeys grows fierce.
A separate economic system exists within the pen to feed drivers. Exterior the car parking zone are taco vans, however inside, some girls promote Chinese language meals from the trunks of their automobiles, buying and selling plastic bowls of wonton soup for money.
Some drivers have taken out their frustrations by scribbling curses in opposition to Uber and its executives on the partitions contained in the port-a-potties, lamenting the hourslong rides that end in no suggestions, or the times they’ve been locked out of their accounts with no clarification.
Sitting within the trunk house of his Toyota Sienna, Andreh Andrias smoked a cigarette as he refreshed his Uber app. Mr. Andrias, a 57-year-old from Iran, mentioned he might make $3,000 every week earlier than bills driving for Uber earlier than the pandemic, however that has since declined considerably. He flipped by means of his most up-to-date weekly earnings on his cellphone: $1,670, $1,700, $1,053.
“It’s important to handle the household,” mentioned Mr. Andrias, who has a spouse and daughter, and greater than $7,000 in automobile and hire funds to make. “Proper now, I can not.”
The New York Occasions first requested Uber in regards to the situations of driving at LAX in 2023, and the corporate mentioned it was conscious of constant issues. However not a lot has modified within the years since.
Uber mentioned that a wide range of elements have been accountable for decrease wages, and that its take price — the % of every trip’s fare that it retains for itself — had not elevated in Los Angeles. Legal responsibility insurance coverage prices, the corporate mentioned, have skyrocketed, and now account for 43 % of the rider’s fare.
The corporate additionally mentioned a $4 surcharge for ride-hailing drivers at LAX, together with the brand new pickup system, had considerably lowered the demand for rides on the airport.
LAX’s public relations division didn’t reply to a request for remark.
C.J. Macklin, a spokesman for Lyft, mentioned the corporate was working with LAX to develop a brand new holding lot for ride-hailing drivers, which might be constructed as a part of the airport’s new, $5.5 billion building challenge, which features a gentle rail between terminals and is meant to scale back site visitors.
“A 12 months from now, LAX will look fully totally different, and we’re excited for a smoother, sooner expertise for drivers, riders and the whole metropolis,” Meghan Casserly, an Uber spokeswoman, mentioned in a press release.
Within the lot, there was a pervasive sense of sluggishness; the discontent and hours of ready appeared to lull drivers into inaction, even when a seemingly first rate trip chimed on their telephones.
“There’s drivers who actually don’t know what they’re doing, they usually find yourself on the lot simply because they don’t know any higher,” mentioned Pablo Gomez, an Uber driver who frequents LAX. “They dropped off a passenger, it mentioned to go to the lot, they usually’re like, ‘OK.’ They don’t even know what they’re ready for.”
Driver advocates like Mr. Avedian and Mr. Gomez attempt to assist drivers strategize and take advantage of their time. However Mr. Gomez additionally empathizes with drivers who maintain praying for a windfall. He was a compulsive gambler, he mentioned, and driving for Uber feels related.
“The wasted time is a part of that psychology of the addict. You’re simply chasing that trip, that rating,” he mentioned.
At 2 a.m., when the pen closed, some drivers left to search for a parking spot elsewhere within the neighborhood, the place they might sleep of their automobiles till the lot reopened at 5. Others hoped to catch one remaining trip within the course of house, which for a lot of was over an hour away.
Ms. Hernandez was sitting on the hood of her automobile on Tuesday when it hit 11 p.m., her time to move house. She watched as provides popped up on her cellphone in opposition to the wallpaper of her two youngsters, ages 25 and 26. In between rides, she checked her electronic mail, hoping to listen to again from jobs she lately utilized for at a health care provider’s workplace and a warehouse.
Lastly, a trip appeared that might take her close to her house in Montebello, a 50-minute drive east. It was solely $28 for a 27-mile journey — removed from a unicorn — however she accepted.
“It’s not the perfect price,” she mentioned. “However it’s important to make it price your time.”
