Her Campus Logo Her Campus Logo
placeholder article
placeholder article

Lyft: The Convenient App For Rides In Minutes

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UIC chapter.

If you need a ride downtown for a night out with your friends, a way to get to campus avoiding public transportation, or just a quick lift to do errands, the Lyft App is just right for you.

Lyft is a mobile app that conveniently connects you with local drivers around your area, wherever you may be. Signing up only requires your name, email, phone number, and a credit card that you can pay with. Although getting started sounds like tedious work, the app overall is easy to use in requesting a ride and paying for it in the end. What more, the fare prices are usually under $20, sometimes even lower than that, so rides are quite affordable.

Request

After setting up your account, every time you open the app, you’ll be greeted by a map with a blue circle indicating your location and car icons for Lyft drivers around the area. In addition, there’s also a tab where you can set up your pick up location and the type of Lyft car you can request. After tapping the pickup tab, you can type in your set destination and the app will connect you with a driver- it’s as simple as that. The nice feature of Lyft is that you can literally see where your Lyft driver is. I appreciate this because it lets me know if my driver is already on the way and how close they are to the pickup location so that I can anticipate their arrival. Furthermore, you’ll be alerted by text when your driver has arrived. Other great features is that Lyft has a picture of your driver, their name, the type of car they drive, and how many minutes away they are so that you are well informed at all times.

Ride

From my experience, the drivers are very friendly and will usually strike up a conversation with you so that there’s never an awkward silence. The driver also usually has a GPS on them so you don’t have to navigate them yourself, but they’re usually open if you choose to.

Pay

After reaching your set destination, you simply need to open the Lyft app to pay your driver. All you need to do is check how much the fare is, decide whether or not you want to give tip, and simply press the “pay” tab and you’re done!