Lyft to let riders make additional stops during a trip
Lyft announced on Monday that it will soon add a new feature that will allow riders to add in extra stops during their journey to pick up friends or stop off at a shop. Lyft is hoping the new feature will help its services stand out in a crowded market, especially as roughly 5% of riders already manually update their trips with extra destinations. Uber does not yet offer such a feature.

Lyft said Monday that its riders will now be able to program multistop journeys and remove stops mid-ride if plans change.



Riders will no longer have to "hack" the system by manually updating their end destination before the first drop off, a workaround passengers have turned to so people sharing a ride can be dropped at different destinations. The program begins rolling out today, the company said.

The goal for Lyft is to streamline routes for passengers and drivers and make the whole system run more efficiently. Greater efficiency means more rides and more fees for Lyft, which takes a commission of up to 25 percent from each ride.

It is a feature that Lyft hopes will give it an edge over rival Uber. With all the data Lyft and other ride-sharing platforms — including Uber, Grab and Didi Chuxing — are gathering, each will continue to add more features that leverage those data troves to make operations run more smoothly and lure more customers.

