Lyft pickups fall into 17 clusters (DBSCAN, 1.5-mile radius, at least four pickups) holding 172 of 226 rides. The five largest: Mid-City / West Hollywood (27 rides, $379), Downtown LA (27 rides, $459, the richest at $17 a ride), the LAX / Westchester / Inglewood apron (22, $303), Santa Monica / Marina del Rey (18, $248) and North Hollywood / Burbank (15, $195). The home base around Covina, West Covina and Azusa produced only 12 pickups; most days started there before 7 AM and the first ride drifted one way into the basin. Uber's 70 pickups form just two clusters, Hollywood (12 trips) and LAX (5); the other 51 are scattered one-offs from Azusa to Seal Beach, which is the same fact as Uber's long empty legs seen from the other side. Cluster both platforms together, though, and 51 of those 70 Uber pickups land inside Lyft's own clusters, and an Uber pickup is as close to its nearest neighbour as a Lyft one is (0.45 vs 0.41 miles). Uber was not a different territory; it was a thinner line through the same one, plus Pasadena and Glendale.
The most frequent corridors are intra-city: Los Angeles to Los Angeles 78 times, Long Beach to Long Beach 11, then Santa Monica→LA, West Hollywood→LA, Culver City→LA and LA→Burbank at four or five each. On a 1.3-mile grid no point-to-point pair repeats more than three times. This is roaming work, not a route.
Nineteen drop-offs at the terminals were worth $504.27 (average $26.54 for 11.6 miles); eleven pickups there were worth $141.41 (average $12.86 for 5 miles, mostly hops to Inglewood and Westchester hotels). The airport is a paying destination, not an origin. The single largest fare of the fortnight was Bel Air to the LAX area on Oct 10: 26.8 miles, $101.78.
Between consecutive rides the car covered 352.6 empty miles on Lyft against 1,538 paid (18.6% empty) and 290.2 against 477 on Uber (37.8% empty). Uber pings arrive far apart: a median 1.9 miles from the last drop-off, a 90th percentile of 12.6, with four gaps over 23 miles. Interleave both apps and the empty share falls to 14.4%, the clearest argument in the data for running both. The drive from accept to pickup on Lyft was a median 0.92 miles and 7 minutes, 27.9 hours over the two weeks, and 88 of 225 rides were accepted before the previous passenger was out of the car.
Accepts peak in the 10 AM hour (33 rides, about $436, the best hour) with a second plateau from 1 to 3 PM. Lyft carries the early morning, 44 rides accepted before 9 AM against 13 on Uber, while Uber has the larger share after 7 PM. Pickups run a median seven minutes behind accepts, so on a pickup-time basis the 10 AM peak is 31 rather than 33 and the shape is otherwise the same; the chart shows both. The best day by the clock was Oct 18 at $51.80 per trip-hour, carried by ten Uber trips including a $46.13 run from Pacific Palisades to Downtown.