Bill W:
Chad G:
Story Idea #092 – Why Can’t Gig Drivers See How Many Other Drivers Are Active? Driver Visibility, Opt-In Profiles and Marketplace Transparency
Gig platforms constantly tell drivers something about demand: busy zones, surge areas, expected wait times or incentives designed to attract more people onto the road.
What drivers generally cannot see is the other half of the marketplace: supply.
How many other drivers are active nearby?
That information could change a driver’s decision about whether to work, where to position, or whether a “busy” message actually means there are plenty of orders relative to available drivers.
We want to explore why platforms keep driver supply largely invisible and what could reasonably be shared without compromising privacy or enabling harassment. One option is simple aggregate counts by zone. Another is an opt-in system where drivers who want to be visible can appear through limited profiles without exposing exact locations.
There are obvious trade-offs. Exact real-time locations would create safety and privacy concerns. Aggregate information could influence driver behaviour in ways that make supply swing rapidly from one area to another. Platforms may also consider dispatch data commercially sensitive.
Those are reasons to investigate, not reasons to abandon the question.
A marketplace is easier to evaluate when both sides can see something about the market. Drivers make decisions about their time, fuel and vehicle expenses based on signals supplied almost entirely by the platform.
We will compare what DoorDash and Uber disclose, ask what supply data they already use internally, and look at whether other labour or marketplace platforms provide participants with more visibility.
The larger question is transparency: if drivers are independent economic actors expected to decide when and where working is worthwhile, what information should they reasonably have about the competition for the available work?
