# Anyway to avoid long rides in lyft?



## mguilday (Dec 14, 2018)

today was my first day and I was thinking I’ll just do a couple rides around my place and get a feel for it. I’ll start off by saying normally if I was trying to do this for at least a few hours the following would have been a great day but just looking for advice when I’m not looking for long rides and/ tolls.

Rookie mistake#1... didn’t have cash on me or a fasttrak for bridge toll

Rookie mistake#2... I thought I’ll just do one more ride and bam got a 44 minute ride to San Francisco so now I needed to do some rides out there to make the return drive worth it

Rookie question #1: is there anyway to tell the ride includes a toll before you accept? This was 44 mins so I didn’t get the long ride warning or if I did I didn’t see it.

Rookie question #2: I kept getting another ride a split second after dropping the person off over and over without even a second to think and it seemed to auto accept. Is the auto accept a setting?


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## InCredit (Oct 5, 2016)

Don't have any toll roads here in SE Michigan...BUT you need to log off of Lyft when you accept a passenger.

Otherwise you will get the "Auto Accept" or known as "Rider added"...or better yet they will do "Pick up updated...Rerouting" and send you to another passenger you never wanted to pick up.

Good luck and have fun.


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## mguilday (Dec 14, 2018)

Ahh got it so you just log out after each ride starts and log back in after. I’ll try that tomorrow. Thanks


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## Pax Collector (Feb 18, 2018)

Welcome to the forum. I'm a Bay Area driver so let me see if I can answer your questions.

First and foremost, Lyft only notifies you if the ride is to take longer than 45 minutes. You'll get a "Long ride, 45+" message displayed on the ping screen. And unfortunately, unless you have your destination filter set to a shorter distance, there's no way to avoid it.

As far as tolls, you are responsible for all tolls on your routes and the amount will be included in your fare. Best rule of thumb is if you cross a bridge, there will be a toll added to your fare. The good thing is, if you were to cross the Bay Bridge on both directions, you will get a toll added to your fare, even though you only pay a toll going west. Making sure you have FasTrack or at least cash is the way to go, as you can and will end up on a bridge some time during the day.

Your last question refers to what we call a stacked ping. Unlike with Uber that gives you the chance to accept or reject incoming pings, Lyft simply adds them to your queue so you can get to them as soon as you complete your current ride. You can avoid that by going offline after accepting a ride. Unless you're doing a Shared ride, that will stop all other additional riders from being added to your queue.

Hope this helps.


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## Fuzzyelvis (Dec 7, 2014)

mguilday said:


> Ahh got it so you just log out after each ride starts and log back in after. I'll try that tomorrow. Thanks


Also, when you arrive, you can see the destination on Lyft. If you absolutely can't take the ride, cancel. Just don't do it often or Lyft may deactivate you.

With uber the only way to know is to ask.


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## Gtown Driver (Aug 26, 2018)

mguilday said:


> Rookie mistake#2... I thought I'll just do one more ride and bam got a 44 minute ride to San Francisco so now I needed to do some rides out there to make the return drive worth it


The most rule abiding way to deal with having your last trip turn into a monster long trip is turn on the destination filter. Most often people get into a bad long trip when they want to get off work because they don't use the DF and let Uber/Lyft crack the whip on them with a 44 minute pool way out of their way. Turn the DF on, have it go towards your house (or even like 10 miles past your house cuz more money screw it) and then you'll end up making money on the way back to your house instead of towards your house. Uber's DF is a little more accurate, but you only get 2 before you run out.

Lyft gives you 6 DF's but it's very misleading. If you change the address, go offline, stop the DF or do anything other than be a huge ant and keep the DF running exactly as is you lose that DF. Meaning if you change or do anything you will start running out of DFs pretty fast. If you wanna DF home on Lyft you better be ready to do it. I use both Uber and Lyft so I'll just turn both DFs on and if Uber gives me a ping first I just bite the bullet and turn off the Lyft app and burn a DF there. Still usually have about 2 or 3 Lyft DFs by the time I get home on average. Since it seems you're only doing Lyft you might as well just pick your home address and go for it.

On Lyft yeah you can always hit arrive to screen without calling. If you're good with your words then yeah you can call to screen people but sometimes they may not pick up or want to text. On Uber acceptance and cancel rates basically don't matter anymore so I do what I do to avoid long rides there.


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## kingcorey321 (May 20, 2018)

lyft no longer tells us if the trip is longer then 45 minutes here in metro detroit . i think its a mistake now people will show up see the trip is an hour and they will cancel and the pax must wait for the new driver to show up to have them cancel. around here this is common i love long rides full time driver. a lot of these part time drivers will not take that long ride.


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## disp350 (Jul 16, 2016)

mguilday said:


> today was my first day and I was thinking I'll just do a couple rides around my place and get a feel for it. I'll start off by saying normally if I was trying to do this for at least a few hours the following would have been a great day but just looking for advice when I'm not looking for long rides and/ tolls.
> 
> Rookie mistake#1... didn't have cash on me or a fasttrak for bridge toll
> 
> ...


I'm glad you are already seeing the light from your first day. Sure would have been nice if this was told to you by Lyft before you started accepting rides. And curiously, how can anyone heading out to dive not carry and cash with them!! Not everything is credit


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## mguilday (Dec 14, 2018)

Thanks everyone. All this advice is super helpful. 

I’ll be joining Uber too and I definitely want to have more full time days on the weekends but yesterday was just for me to mess up and learn the ropes so to speak. I ended up waking up and got a $9 tip from that long ride which probably won’t happen for a while if ever again so all in all it turned out to be a $60 2 hour shift with gas and tolls coming out to $14, maybe round it up to $20 for good measure. I think telling people it was my first day helped with tips. On 4 rides I got two tips, one being from a shared. Wish they would tell me which person tipped but I guess that’s just another quirk about these apps.

The cash thing was me just not thinking about the fact that anyone can put any address on the map and I have to go there or be the bad guy and cancel. Thought I was going to be able to see at least generally where I’d be going and cancel or decline immediately. I’m thinking for the most part I’m just going to have to use destination filter at end of shift and if not just be ok with driving for 2 more hours than whatever time it is at the moment.


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## DieselkW (Jul 21, 2015)

Welcome to ride share and the forum.

Rookie mistakes can be alleviated by reading as much as you can on the forum. I drive Lyft only, it's just my personal choice. 

The longer rides are actually rare, at least in my Indianapolis market. If you want to avoid them in the future, don't wait at the airport for a ping, you could end up in San Luis Obispo with an empty seat return trip that way. 

Whatever you might want to know, it's been discussed... use the search bar at the top right.


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## SRGuy (May 17, 2016)

Contact bay area Fastrak they used to waive th ticket if you were a new user.


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## mguilday (Dec 14, 2018)

That still exists so I signed up and don’t have to pay the $25! Thanks for that suggestion. 

Used a lot of the advice I got here after work today for 3 hours and had a much easier time. Must be having beginners luck cause everyone seems to be tipping, like over half which from reading on here seems rare. I think they can tell I’m nervous so they feel bad or something but hey I’ll take it. 

Signed my wife up too, sorry for the extra ant but we just can’t pass up some part time cash.


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## The Entomologist (Sep 23, 2018)

The 45 min trip warning is being updated slowly or has been removed everywhere in the US, either way your best bet is to tell the rider to GTFO if you aren't up for the ride, Lyft penalizes short trip avoidance, long trips aren't really in their scope of *****ing.


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## 155839 (Jul 28, 2018)

I assume they are removing the Long Ride warning because they want drivers to know as little as possible before deciding whether to accept or decline. Plus, with the new earnings plan, where almost all rides now pay less to the driver, the worst affected are long rides with little or no traffic. Those went from being the best rides to being the worst.
Since the earnings rate change, I only accept long rides during rush hours, or during a 3-ride streak on Uber when I'm forced to or lose the bonus (Lyft's 3-ride streak bonuses suck, so I don't even do them). Otherwise, long rides just aren't worth it anymore.


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## Lyfted13 (Jul 26, 2017)

Idk what’s up with you guys, but I am still getting long ride notifications...


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## 155839 (Jul 28, 2018)

Lyfted13 said:


> Idk what's up with you guys, but I am still getting long ride notifications...


Most people still are. But, apparently, they're experimenting with removing it in some areas.
And, personally, I think they'll eventually try to do it wherever they can.


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## Willjohnsdrive (Dec 3, 2018)

Caught an 80 mile ride this morning, no warning....


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## SwiftRides (Jul 13, 2018)

Lyft has a destination filter for arrive on time. I set that to my home and then set arrival time to the max available time. This will give you shorter rides. Then I edit the time every 45+ minutes and increase it, if I want to keep driving longer.


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## Larry$$$ (Aug 27, 2018)

Just set


mguilday said:


> Thanks everyone. All this advice is super helpful.
> 
> I'll be joining Uber too and I definitely want to have more full time days on the weekends but yesterday was just for me to mess up and learn the ropes so to speak. I ended up waking up and got a $9 tip from that long ride which probably won't happen for a while if ever again so all in all it turned out to be a $60 2 hour shift with gas and tolls coming out to $14, maybe round it up to $20 for good measure. I think telling people it was my first day helped with tips. On 4 rides I got two tips, one being from a shared. Wish they would tell me which person tipped but I guess that's just another quirk about these apps.
> 
> The cash thing was me just not thinking about the fact that anyone can put any address on the map and I have to go there or be the bad guy and cancel. Thought I was going to be able to see at least generally where I'd be going and cancel or decline immediately. I'm thinking for the most part I'm just going to have to use destination filter at end of shift and if not just be ok with driving for 2 more hours than whatever time it is at the moment.


Just set Last ride option on before drop off so nothing is added before drop off. If you want to stay in town..set Destination mode to arrive on time options..first one. Set for Max time to get more rides.. Usually most ride you get will be short rides.


mguilday said:


> today was my first day and I was thinking I'll just do a couple rides around my place and get a feel for it. I'll start off by saying normally if I was trying to do this for at least a few hours the following would have been a great day but just looking for advice when I'm not looking for long rides and/ tolls.
> 
> Rookie mistake#1... didn't have cash on me or a fasttrak for bridge toll
> 
> ...





mguilday said:


> today was my first day and I was thinking I'll just do a couple rides around my place and get a feel for it. I'll start off by saying normally if I was trying to do this for at least a few hours the following would have been a great day but just looking for advice when I'm not looking for long rides and/ tolls.
> 
> Rookie mistake#1... didn't have cash on me or a fasttrak for bridge toll
> 
> ...


Use Last ride option before drop off. No rides added before drop off.

Use destination mode Arrive on Time option..set Max time to arrival. Most rides will be short and close.

I did this yesterday and got 20 rides in 3.5 hrs. Just all in Oakland.. Piedmont.Berkeley area.The drive is so easy compare to SF.


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## Dredrummond (Jun 17, 2016)

Cancel


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