Driver shortage makes hailing a ride harder in Santa Fe

Aug. 8—Calvin saved the day for a pair of young 20-somethings walking Santa Fe's streets at night.

Calvin, an Uber and Lyft driver from Santa Fe, was on the south side of town as midnight approached when he received the app request for a pickup of two young men walking down Airport Road.

"The [Santa Fe Regional] Airport closes at 11 o'clock," said Calvin, a software engineer by trade. "They said they got kicked out of the airport and were told to walk to the [nearby] gas station to try to get a ride."

But finding a ride isn't as easy as it used to be. That's in part because, as the pandemic began to subside, Santa Fe's tourist season collided with a ride-share industry that had been decimated during the past year's shutdowns and slowdowns.

For Calvin — who declined to give his last name — that has been a boon. As a member of the smaller pool of ride-share drivers in Santa Fe, he's busy almost any time he wants to be.

For potential clients, it can be a long, long wait.

"We have people in queues [to get a ride] all day," he said recently while taking a pair of New Mexican staffers on a round trip to the Santa Fe airport and back in his 2020 Toyota RAV 4.

Before the pandemic and the slowdown in business, he remembers pulling over to the side of the road and reading a book while waiting for a call for service.

Now, he said, "it's definitely better. I'm nonstop all day."

Tourists visiting Santa Fe are driving the local industry now, he said. So are people who want lifts to work, the grocery store, the liquor store, and restaurants and bars.

For those waiting for a ride in a city without enough drivers, the free-and-easy days of simply scheduling one via their phones have given way to the frustrating reality that demand is outpacing supply.

Which means long waits and, sometimes, seeking alternative modes of transportation.

Concierges at several downtown hotels said it's clear there are fewer drivers who can deliver guests to their desired destinations.

"When things shut down, ride shares shut down," said Molly Ryckman, vice president of sales and marketing for Heritage Hotels & Resorts, which runs the Inn and Spa at Loretto, Eldorado Hotel & Spa, Hotel St. Francis and Hotel Chimayó in Santa Fe.

Even now, she said, as businesses reopen and tourists flood the city, "we are seeing less ride-share services available for our guests."

Martha Méndez, front desk director at the Inn of the Anasazi, said there are not enough drivers for guests. She, like concierge Patricia Marie Palmer of La Fonda on the Plaza, have taken to getting individual drivers' phone numbers to reach them.

"We bemoan the lack of taxi service sometimes," Palmer said.

Those days are long gone in most places. In Santa Fe, the last cab company, Capital City Cab, called it quits in 2017 after 30 years in business.

Uber launched its services in Santa Fe in 2014; Lyft followed two years later. Drivers may, and often do, contract with both companies. Calvin said he can switch back and forth between the two to ensure he has a steady flow of customers.

The shortage of Uber and Lyft drivers in Santa Fe is mirrored in other cities around the country, according to recent national media reports. As fewer people traveled during the pandemic because of restrictions, there was a diminished need for those drivers.

"Tourists weren't here. Locals were not going anywhere, so business was cut back," said Bernard Mascarmis, who has driven for Uber for six years in Santa Fe.

Some drivers gave up their gigs because of fear of contracting the coronavirus, he said.

"A lot of people are not driving because [they] don't want to have infected people in their cars and get sick," he said.

For his part, Calvin understands the concern.

"People did not want to get into cars," he said. The pandemic, he said, "brought it all to a grinding halt."

Uber is aware of the problem and working to woo drivers back, company spokesman Javier Correoso wrote in an email.

"In 2020, many drivers stopped driving because they couldn't count on getting enough trips to make it worth their time," he wrote. "In 2021, there are more riders requesting trips than there are drivers available to give them.

"As a result, riders in many cities and states are experiencing higher than normal wait times and sometimes higher prices. Uber is working hard to get drivers back on the road in order to mitigate these problems."

Earlier this year, Uber announced it would spend $250 million on bonuses to lure drivers back to the business.

Efforts to obtain a comment from a Lyft spokesperson were unsuccessful.

Ryckman and Palmer said they are noticing more hotel guests driving to town, ensuring they always have a ride to parks, restaurants and the Santa Fe Opera.

Some regular travelers moving across the country said they have seen delays and other challenges in accessing a ride share.

"A lack of drivers is what they say," said one such traveler, Chris Werner, a Los Angeles resident who waited for an Uber at the airport Wednesday afternoon. A lighting designer who travels a lot, Werner has kept track of the problem spots.

"Some cities are great; some are terrible," he said. "San Antonio [Texas] and L.A. are pretty rough. Nashville [Tenn.] was pretty good. New York City is hit or miss."

He said he's seen Uber and Lyft service get "somewhat better" in the past two months as restrictions have lifted and more people have resumed traveling.

His wait for an Uber vehicle at the airport was between 10 and 15 minutes, which he deemed "not bad." He said when the wait gets to be between 20 and 30 minutes, "you know something's wrong."

Nearby, Gabrielle Roegner of Boston waited 20 minutes for an Uber at the airport. While that's "a little long," she said, it's worth it to ride in a comfortable vehicle.

Boston still has an active taxi service industry, she said, but "there's never any leg room in them. That's why nobody likes taxis."

Neither Werner nor Roegner — or several other passengers awaiting Uber rides at the airport — experienced a sudden price surge as they waited.

But it can happen.

That's another byproduct of the driver shortage on the Uber side, Calvin said. His ride for The New Mexican's two employees jumped up by $20 within a few minutes on a recent weekday morning.

"When there's not enough drivers, Uber charges a surge price," he said. He said Lyft has not yet initiated any such increases.

"We are seeing surge pricing during certain high peak times, but we also continue to see drivers return to the platform," Correoso wrote.

In general, Calvin said, fees have not otherwise gone up for riders as a result of the situation. He receives a percentage of the ride fee, though he often does not know what that is until his shift is over.

And it's not just privately owned ride-share companies that are seeing a decline in customers and service. City and state officials who oversee governmental ride-share programs said business decreased during the pandemic.

Thomas Martinez, director of operations for the city of Santa Fe's Transit Department, which offers free rides to senior citizens and those with disabilities, said the "pandemic definitely hurt our ridership."

Before the pandemic, city vehicles gave 150 to 200 rides a day. Since the pandemic, "we're right around 35 to 40 percent" of that figure, he said — about 40 rides a day.

On the state level, a roughly 3-year-old worker ride-share program in several of the state's larger cities saw a decline in business, too. According to the state Department of Transportation, the agency provided 104,861 trips in the 2020 fiscal year. In fiscal year 2021, which ended in June, that figure dropped to 87,736 trips.

"Since many large employers teleworked during the pandemic, ridership decreased by 16 percent," spokeswoman Marisa Maez wrote in an email.

On July 1, state officials lifted all pandemic-related restrictions, making some in the ride-share business hopeful that business will return to normal.

But with the nation's vaccination rate still hovering around the 50 percent mark and COVID-19 variants threatening to spread, it's unclear how quickly the industry will get back to full speed.

One thing Calvin has noticed since the lifting of restrictions is an uptick in requested rides to and from bars. The vast majority of those customers, while heading home, are not unruly, he said.

But he's not staying in the business. He recently got a job offer as a software engineer and plans to jump back into that business in mid-August. He'll keep driving for a little while, he said, until the new paychecks start coming in.

"It's a fun job," he said. "I get to listen to music, meet new people and most people want to talk with me. But I won't need to do this anymore when I get my new job."