Surge pricing no more! Uber rolls out 'upfront fares' in US and some parts of India

Leading cab-aggregator app Uber has said that its riders in the US and in some parts of India will now get to see 'upfront fare', so that they can know how much their ride is going to cost.

The upfront fare will be calculated based on the distance, expected travel time, traffic situation, surge and tolls wherever applicable.

The move will also help the US-based firm address ‘surge pricing’, its only weak spot, which has earned it quite some wrath from users and governments alike.

"We moved to upfront, per trip fares--just like airlines and hotels--two years ago when we launched uberPOOL... So in April, we began slowly introducing upfront fares for regular uberX trips in cities across the US and more recently in India, with more to follow," said a blogpost from Uber product managers Arundhati Singh and Dennis Zhao.

In India, Uber users from the cities of New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai have already started seeing the new upfront fares, and it would take the company a few months to roll out the features globally.

The new feature would ask the riders to enter their destinations, so that Uber can calculate the fare in advance and reflect it before bookings are done.

"Knowing how much a ride will cost in advance is clearly something riders appreciate: today uberPOOL accounts for over 20 per cent of all rides globally. And we now want more riders globally to benefit from this feature," the blogpost said.

Image source