Ride in minutes, or now hours with Lyft's new scheduled pickup

Today via their blog, Lyft announced its plans to add scheduled rides as a new option to its service. This gives Lyft a solid advantage over their main competition, Uber, which does not yet allow users to schedule rides in advance.

While on-demand rides are still the primary function of Lyft, they noted that this new development is in response to user feedback, and it is always nice to see a company taking such feedback seriously. In addition to giving users peace of mind that they will have a ride whenever they need it, this new feature also gives Lyft’s drivers a bit more of a steady, pre-scheduled way to make a little extra money. 

The way it works is quite simple: when scheduling a ride, just tap the clock icon next to your pickup location and that will allow you to schedule a ride up to 24 hours in advance. This restriction is to prevent all the rides from being taken weeks in advance, which would defeat the purpose and spirit of Lyft. And you need not worry about missing your ride, because Lyft will send you a notification when your ride is en route.

Lyft’s scheduled rides will begin testing in San Francisco, and will roll out to other locations later in the summer. To Lyft users out there, is this something you are excited for? And to other on-demand ride users, is this enough to make you want to use Lyft or a competitor like Uber? Let us know in the comments.