# No surge in Omaha.



## OmahaVW (Mar 17, 2019)

When the flat surge was first put in place in Omaha there were surge zones all over most of the time. For the last three or four days there’s been no surge whatsoever anywhere. The only exception has been a dollar or two surge at the airport. A pax told me this was due to the flooding? Could that be the case? Other passengers have said it’s nearly impossible to get a ride, yet there are no surges anywhere. Customer service just read me a canned line on general ratios.


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## RuberOmaha (Jun 5, 2018)

I agree Uber has shut off Surge. I had no surge onSat of St Pats weekend. Are they doing this in other cities or is Omaha special.


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## OmahaVW (Mar 17, 2019)

It’s the state of emergency due to flooding. I’m told we’ll be notified when it ends


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## mstreeter1 (Mar 24, 2019)

Thank you for the explanation. As soon as I saw this thread the light bulb went on. I have seen the exact same thing. This weekend there was a Justin Timberlake concert, plenty of people at the bars afterwards, and multiple passengers telling me they had a hard time getting a ride. Yet there was no surge any time except at the air port. Another thing I notice is that ride requests are often further away than usual.

I knew there was a state of emergency and I knew that Uber is required to shut down surge in a state of emergency but I didn't put two and two together. I just figured they were using Omaha to experiment with dialing back on Surge. It's actually kind of fascinating to see first hand the effect that surge vs. no surge has on driver supply and demand, and how it affects the behavior of riders and drivers.


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## OmahaVW (Mar 17, 2019)

So do you think supply has gone way down without surge? That's my purely anecdotal conclusion. Further pickups, rider complaints, and an airport que that is most often empty.


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## mstreeter1 (Mar 24, 2019)

In my opinion both have changed for the busy times. Supply has gone down due to the missing surge incentive and demand has gone up because more riders get fee quotes that are within their acceptable range. We can only speculate on which has changed the most. I'd guess that for non-surge times it's pretty much business as usual, but some drivers might choose to drive during more convenient hours if they can still stay busy. 

I'd guess also that they haven't yet seen a lot of drivers quit altogether yet. If it were longer term I'd expect to see some drivers quit. It will be interesting to see if surge is higher than normal when they turn it back on and see if they raise the referral bonus. Those could be hints as to whether or not it impacted the number of driver accounts.


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## OmahaVW (Mar 17, 2019)

Any updates to surge returning to Omaha? I can't seem to find where and when the state of emergency will end.


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## RDWRER (May 24, 2018)

Some places have laws that say the customers can’t be price gouged during a declared State of Emergency and surging qualifies under those laws. The problem is that it’s so dangerous to drive during those emergencies that passengers are just left stranded completely.

One could argue that Uber should surge for the drivers while charging the passengers less to help any evacuation efforts but that would cause serious legal ramifications for Uber if a driver were to get hurt or killed in an area under a declared State of Emergency when they were only there in the first place because of that surge. ?‍♂


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## OmahaVW (Mar 17, 2019)

The issue is now there are lots of people waiting due to the lack of drivers. The airport que is always empty. I can't imagine even 1% of the riders at this point are at all effected by the flooding a few weeks ago.


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## FLKeys (Dec 27, 2018)

OmahaVW said:


> The issue is now there are lots of people waiting due to the lack of drivers. The airport que is always empty. I can't imagine even 1% of the riders at this point are at all effected by the flooding a few weeks ago.


Has the area dropped the state of emergency?


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## OmahaVW (Mar 17, 2019)

Ni


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