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.

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Lyft is improving its ride-hailing app to conform to the way people want to use it, especially when dealing with group trips. The company is adding support for multiple stops so you no longer need to tell the driver there’ll be a new stop or manually change the end destination.

This feature is supported on most of Lyft’s ride options, including its classic, Plus, and Premier offerings. You can enter the first stop into the app, and if there are additional stops to make, just tap the “add” (+) icon and enter in another drop-off location. Then, tap the “request a ride” button. You can easily remove a stop by tapping on it and selecting “remove stop.”

We’ve all encountered this situation when taking Lyft or Uber rides: You get into a car with your friends and then tell the driver that there’s one stop to make before you get dropped off. Lyft appears to be taking the headache out of this common occurrence, so that drivers are better prepared and can plan trips more efficiently. They’ll now be given route information ahead of time, instead of dealing with a verbal request and needing to understand where the spontaneous drop-off location is in the city.

Of course, knowing this information in advance could impact how drivers respond to trips, perhaps opting for multiple destinations in an effort to get paid more, especially with surge pricing in effect.

Multiple-stop scenarios aren’t new to Lyft, which has previously released other features to facilitate group trips. The service has a split fare option so other riders can pay their share of the trip, just as Uber does. Now with multi-stop support, the whole experience is managed within the app, eliminating the need to calculate how much someone is owed later on.

Lyft bills this feature as a way riders can focus less on logistics and instead just sit back and relax when they’re in the car.