How can you optimize drivers’ waiting time at Uber?
- Matthew Shun
Just to make sure that I understand correctly the question, I can think of 3 types of waiting time that I can think of Ride request to Ride Start:-
- Ride Request to Ride Acceptance Timing
- Time it will take for driver to reach destination
- Driver Waiting for Rider
I think we are trying to optimize the “Time it will take for driver to reach destination(Point 2)”.
I think this is directly dependent on the driver who accepted the booking, hence, time to reach source place is furthur dependent on three factors :-
- No of drivers available nearby
- Distance between Driver & Rider
- Avg. Speed b/w driver current location to source location (Source location is current location of rider from where ride will start)
Optimize No of driver available:-
- Increase No of Drivers on platform
- Driver availability across Time Periods(P0):- We need to optimize drivers availability across different time periods i.e. better incentives for drivers when Avg. waiting time is high to be available during those periods
Distance between Driver & Rider:-
- Offer Rides to Drivers who are nearby(P0)
- Demand/ Supply Graph for various neighbourhoods(P1) :- We can predict demand supply graph for various neighborhoods based on the data and using ML to predict the demand with thier likely destination. If a driver has completed a ride, driver should be asked to move to those neighbourhoods.
- Push Uber Pool if lesser wait time is possible(P2):- While booking a cab, we can also show the wait time if Uber Pool is used apart from showing the Money Savings being done by user.
- Another Use Case:- Let say a user has booked a cab from Society ABC to reach WeWork Building C at 9AM and there is another user who is having same Source / Destination or nearby source/ destination -> We can show a pop-up to this user if he wants to share the ride with another riders’ profile and thier journey.
Avg. Speed b/w two places:-
- Guidance to reach Exact Location(P1) :- Rider to share the guidance for driver to reach its location easily so that driver does not get directed wrongly even though driver is nearby
- Integration with “Park+” type parking Apps(P2):- In gated societies, where there is a proper checking process, once a cab has been booked – this information gets shared on such parking apps automatically to save time during manual car checking/verification process
I think above solutions can be implemented to optimize driver’s waiting time. I have also mentioned in brackets priority with which I will pick up these tasks(P0 means highest priority)

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