Uber has launched the “Make My Train” functionality to help alleviate commuting stress and provide a more reliable commute.
Uber says one important theme that emerged centered around how stressful it could be for riders planning their morning commute when it involved multiple modes – like using Uber to request a ride to the train. According to Uber, riders were getting up early, bouncing between multiple apps and counting down the minutes to pull off a trip to make their train.
After digging into the data, Uber says it found that these weren’t just random anecdotes; many riders were doing this all the time. Throughout the night and the following morning up to 45 minutes before actually getting a ride, Uber saw users opening their Uber app and entering their train station as their destination to see how long were the ETA, how long it would take them to get to the train station given changing traffic conditions and, of course, whether the train was delayed.
Now when riders enter a train station on participating systems as their destination in their Uber app, they will automatically be prompted to “Make My Train.” This feature then allows riders to see train schedules at their station and to select the train they want to make based on real-time transit data. Riders then choose when they’d like to arrive at the station, confirm and Uber does the rest.
In the app it takes four steps:
- Enter in the station name as the destination;
- Choose which train;
- Select a target dropoff time (or use Uber’s recommendation); and
- Schedule a ride in the Uber app (except UberPOOL) and Uber will take them to the station.
On Feb. 7, Uber introduced the Make My Train for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) in New York and Caltrain in the San Francisco Bay Area. Uber says more than 300,000 people rider LIRR every weekday and more than 60,000 take Caltrain. More than 3,000 of these riders used the Uber app to connect to LIRR last month and more than 1,300 used it to connect to Caltrain, according to the company.
