Earlier than the solar may rise over Los Angeles Worldwide Airport on a latest Tuesday, lots of 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 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 primary 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 could be an hour and a half earlier than her first journey of the day.
“You’ve good days and dangerous 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 superb day.”
Like ride-hailing drivers throughout the nation, Ms. Hernandez has seen her pay decline lately, even because the demand for her work feels better than ever. And with the price of fuel and automotive 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 the earth however probably the most troublesome locations for gig staff to earn a residing.
“It was an actual solution to earn cash,” Ms. Hernandez mentioned. “Now you may 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 getting cash just by driving somebody round in your personal automotive, by yourself schedule, appealed to many, from skilled chauffeurs searching 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 can be unbiased contractors, accountable for their very own bills, with out medical insurance or different worker advantages however with the flexibleness to work no matter hours they wished, with out having to enroll in a shift or have a boss.
And within the early years, wages have been excessive. Drivers would often take dwelling 1000’s of {dollars} per week, as Uber and Lyft pushed development over income, posting quarterly losses within the billions of {dollars}. Then, after they turned public corporations, profitability turned a spotlight, and wages steadily shrank.
Now, earnings have fallen behind inflation, and for a lot of drivers have decreased. Final yr, Uber drivers made a median of $513 per week in gross earnings, a 3.4 p.c decline from the earlier yr, whilst they labored six minutes extra per week on common, in line 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 site visitors on the arrival terminal. As an alternative 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 may take as much as 20 minutes. However the driver facet of the equation is one thing passengers not often see.
That morning, contained in the lot, with lots of of parked automobiles and the scent of port-a-potties, the temper was grim. Drivers waited for hours to snare rides — “unicorns,” they referred to 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 consequence: 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 the founding father of a ride-hailing weblog referred to as The Rideshare Man, 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 mentioned, reducing his entrance seat.
To cross the time, teams of drivers smoke cigarettes and play playing cards. Some nap of their automobiles or watch YouTube movies. Others wander round hawking telephone 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 financial system exists within the pen to feed drivers. Exterior the car parking zone are taco vehicles, however inside, some ladies 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 towards Uber and its executives on the partitions contained in the port-a-potties, lamenting the hourslong rides that end in no ideas, or the times they’ve been locked out of their accounts with no rationalization.
Sitting within the trunk area 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 may make $3,000 per 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 telephone: $1,670, $1,700, $1,053.
“It’s a must to deal with the household,” mentioned Mr. Andrias, who has a spouse and daughter, and greater than $7,000 in automotive and hire funds to make. “Proper now, I can not.”
The New York Occasions first requested Uber concerning the situations of driving at LAX in 2023, and the corporate mentioned it was conscious of continuous issues. However not a lot has modified within the years since.
Uber mentioned that quite a lot of components have been accountable for decrease wages, and that its take price — 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 mentioned, have skyrocketed, and now account for 43 p.c 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 development mission, which features a gentle rail between terminals and is meant to scale back site visitors.
“A yr from now, LAX will look fully totally different, and we’re excited for a smoother, quicker expertise for drivers, riders and all the metropolis,” Meghan Casserly, an Uber spokeswoman, mentioned in an announcement.
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,” mentioned Pablo Gomez, an Uber driver who frequents LAX. “They dropped off a passenger, it mentioned 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 take advantage of their time. However Mr. Gomez additionally empathizes with drivers who preserve 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 journey, 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’d sleep of their automobiles till the lot reopened at 5. Others hoped to catch one remaining journey within the course of dwelling, which for a lot of was over an hour away.
Ms. Hernandez was sitting on the hood of her automotive on Tuesday when it hit 11 p.m., her time to move dwelling. She watched as gives popped up on her telephone towards 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 not too long ago utilized for at a physician’s workplace and a warehouse.
Lastly, a journey appeared that might 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 perfect price,” she mentioned. “However it’s important to make it price your time.”
