Earlier than the solar might rise over Los Angeles Worldwide Airport on a latest Tuesday, a whole bunch of Uber and Lyft drivers had shaped 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 parking zone, a mile from the arrival terminals. It’s recognized 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 chief place to catch rides and earn respectable cash. However lately, 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 verify her place within the queue: 156th. It might be an hour and a half earlier than her first journey of the day.
“You have got good days and dangerous days,” Ms. Hernandez stated, swiping via a display screen exhibiting her every day earnings on the app that week: $205, $245, $179. “Hopefully it’s 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 fuel and automobile insurance coverage rising, the already slim margins of gig work have gotten much less workable by the day, she stated. No place is extra emblematic of those issues than LAX, one of many busiest airports on the earth however one of the tough locations for gig employees to earn a residing.
“It was an actual technique to earn cash,” Ms. Hernandez stated. “Now you possibly can 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 being profitable just by driving somebody round in your personal automobile, by yourself schedule, appealed to many, from skilled chauffeurs in search of additional work to workers working within the service trade who realized they might break freed from the 9-to-5 grind.
The important thing idea was that drivers could be impartial contractors, answerable 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 repeatedly take dwelling 1000’s of {dollars} per week, as Uber and Lyft pushed development over earnings, posting quarterly losses within the billions of {dollars}. Then, once they grew to become public corporations, profitability grew to become a spotlight, and wages step by step shrank.
Now, earnings have fallen behind inflation, and for a lot of drivers have decreased. Final yr, Uber drivers made a mean of $513 per week in gross earnings, a 3.4 p.c decline from the earlier yr, at the same time as they labored six minutes extra per week on common, in accordance with Gridwise, an app that collects information and helps drivers observe their earnings. For drivers in Los Angeles, common hourly earnings on Uber are down 21 p.c since 2021, Gridwise discovered.
LAX launched the brand new system in 2019, in an effort to chop down on bumper-to-bumper 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 referred to as LAX-it, subsequent to Terminal 1, which might 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 odor of port-a-potties, the temper was grim. Drivers waited for hours to snare rides — “unicorns,” they referred to as them — that will 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 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 referred to as The Rideshare Guy, settled into the pen on a latest 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 stated, 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 numerous teams — typically alongside racial strains — when competitors for scarce journeys grows fierce.
A separate financial system exists within the pen to feed drivers. Exterior the parking zone are taco vehicles, 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 lead to no ideas, 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, stated he might make $3,000 per week earlier than bills driving for Uber earlier than the pandemic, however that has since declined considerably. He flipped via his most up-to-date weekly earnings on his cellphone: $1,670, $1,700, $1,053.
“It’s a must to care for the household,” stated 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 circumstances of driving at LAX in 2023, and the corporate stated it was conscious of constant issues. However not a lot has modified within the years since.
Uber stated that a wide range of components have been answerable for decrease wages, and that its take charge — the p.c of every journey’s fare that it retains for itself — had not elevated in Los Angeles. Legal responsibility insurance coverage prices, the corporate stated, have skyrocketed, and now account for 43 p.c of the rider’s fare.
The corporate additionally stated 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, stated 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 development challenge, which features a gentle rail between terminals and is meant to cut back visitors.
“A yr from now, LAX will look utterly completely different, and we’re excited for a smoother, quicker expertise for drivers, riders and the complete metropolis,” Meghan Casserly, an Uber spokeswoman, stated 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 respectable journey chimed on their telephones.
“There’s drivers who actually don’t know what they’re doing, and so they find yourself on the lot simply because they don’t know any higher,” stated Pablo Gomez, an Uber driver who frequents LAX. “They dropped off a passenger, it stated to go to the lot, and so they’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 profit from their time. However Mr. Gomez additionally empathizes with drivers who preserve praying for a windfall. He was a compulsive gambler, he stated, and driving for Uber feels related.
“The wasted time is a part of that psychology of the addict. You’re simply chasing that journey, that rating,” he stated.
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 journey within the path of dwelling, 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 go dwelling. She watched as gives popped up on her cellphone in opposition to the wallpaper of her two youngsters, ages 25 and 26. In between rides, she checked her e-mail, hoping to listen to again from jobs she just lately utilized for at a health care provider’s workplace and a warehouse.
Lastly, a journey appeared that will take her close to her dwelling 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 most effective charge,” she stated. “However you must make it price your time.”
