Where Did They Put My Rideshare

David J. Danto

Travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD on

Where Did They Put My Rideshare October 2026

Once upon a time, there were airplanes at airports. We would get off the airplane, pick up our bags, walk outside, get into a taxi and go wherever we were going.

This seemingly primitive transportation system worked surprisingly well.

Today, of course, we have apps. We have GPS. We know exactly where our car is, exactly who is driving it, what kind of car it is and approximately how many minutes it will take to arrive. We have more technology devoted to getting us from an airport to a hotel than NASA had available to put people on the moon.

So naturally, we've made the process considerably less convenient.

The latest innovation in airport transportation seems to be making sure the car picking you up can't actually pick you up at the airport.

I've now encountered variations of this at San Francisco, at my home airport in Newark and, most recently, after arriving in Austin for a conference.

San Francisco sends domestic Uber and Lyft passengers Across the road into the parking garage and up to the roof. At Newark, depending on the terminal, you may also be headed toward a garage. And then there is Austin, where apparently they decided that since everything is bigger in Texas, the distance between your airplane and your Uber ought to be bigger, too.

I arrived there, picked up my luggage and began following the signs for rideshare pickup.

And walking.

Through the baggage claim area. Out toward the garage. Across to another part of the garage complex. Up an elevator. Across another pedestrian area. Eventually you reach a neatly organized rideshare pickup facility where the cars are assigned to numbered or lettered positions.

It is all very orderly.

It is also nowhere near where you just arrived.

Austin's airport itself describes the walk to its rideshare pickup area as typically taking five to ten minutes. In fact, the airport operates a tram for passengers who don't want to make the walk.

Think about that for a moment.

We moved the taxis so far away from the passengers that we needed to create another transportation system to transport the passengers to the transportation.

This is progress?

And here's the part that makes the whole thing even stranger.

The number of airline flights hasn't exploded over the last 15 years. According to Bureau of Transportation Statistics data, U.S. carriers are operating roughly the same number of annual aircraft departures today as they were around 2010. What has changed substantially is the number of passengers. Airlines are carrying roughly a third more people, thanks in part to larger aircraft and fuller flights.

So yes, airports have more people passing through them. And yes, Uber and Lyft changed ground transportation by replacing a relatively predictable stream of taxis with huge numbers of independently dispatched vehicles.

I understand the traffic problem.

What I don't understand is why the solution to the traffic problem so often seems to be making it the passenger's problem.

An airport is, fundamentally, in the transportation business. Its purpose isn't merely to land airplanes safely. The journey doesn't magically end when a passenger steps off the Jetway. Getting people conveniently into and out of the facility is part of the job.

Yet somewhere along the way, airport planners seem to have decided that curbside congestion is the metric that matters most.

Move Uber somewhere else. Move Lyft into the garage. Make passengers cross a bridge. Send them upstairs. Send them downstairs. Put the pickup zone three buildings away.

Look! We fixed the curb!

Yes. By removing the passengers from it.

For a 25-year-old traveler carrying a backpack, perhaps none of this matters very much. But business travelers aren't always 25 years old and carrying backpacks. We have roller bags. Sometimes two of them. We're carrying computers and equipment. We may have just spent four hours on an airplane. We may have mobility issues. And occasionally, as was the case when I arrived in Austin, it's about 90 degrees outside.

I don't particularly want to schlep two rolling bags through garages and elevators in Texas heat to reach a car whose fare includes all sorts of airport-related fees for the privilege of supposedly picking me up at the airport.

Especially when there are taxis sitting outside the terminal.

Maybe that's the real irony here.

Technology gave us an extraordinarily convenient way to summon a car. Airports responded by making the place where that car can meet us extraordinarily inconvenient.

I'm not arguing that every rideshare should be allowed to circle the terminal endlessly while its driver waits for someone who hasn't collected a suitcase yet. There are obviously legitimate congestion, safety and traffic-flow issues to manage.

But there has to be a better answer than, "Let's make everyone walk farther."

Use timed pickup zones. Use app geofencing. Limit how long vehicles can remain curbside. Create staging areas nearby and release cars only when passengers are ready. Technology created this problem and technology ought to be able to help manage it.

What shouldn't be considered an acceptable solution is moving the passenger farther and farther away from the transportation.

The whole purpose of an airport is to help people get somewhere.

Someone designing these distant pickup locations seems to have forgotten that.

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This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

All image and links provided above as reference under prevailing fair use statutes.

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