Lyft Is Making It Easier to Travel with Pets — What to Know

Lyft is getting paws-itively pet friendly with a new feature easily allowing pets to come along on your next ride.

Starting Monday — which was National Dog Day — the rideshare app is launching Pet Rides to help to match pet owners with animal-friendly drivers, Lyft shared with Travel + Leisure. To access the new feature, which is available nationwide, riders will have to pay an extra $4, plus tax, which will be included in the upfront price.

Drivers will be able to opt-in to the service.

“At Lyft, we believe that everyone belongs, and that includes our four-legged family members,” Audrey Liu, the EVP of rider experience at Lyft, said in a statement shared with T+L, adding the feature will make it “easier than ever for pet owners to get where they need to go with their pets.”

Once the pet-friendly ride is complete, travelers will be able to rate the driver using paw prints, rather than stars. Lyft said the extra $4 fee will go directly to the driver.

To bring a pet, the animal must either be held in a carrier, on their owner’s lap on a blanket, or at their feet.

Of course, Pet Ride is only for pets and does not apply to service animals, which drivers are required to accommodate.  

Fellow ride-share company Uber similarly offers a pet-friendly service, called Uber Pet, which also includes an extra reservation fee in the total cost of the ride. Like Lyft, service animals are permitted without an extra charge.

Traveling with pets can be stressful regardless of how long the trip is, but there are a few essential tips travelers can use to make the journey easier from mapping out bathroom breaks if needed to having the best gear to make the trip a breeze.

This isn’t the first new service Lyft has introduced recently. Earlier this year, the company expanded a service allowing female and non-binary riders to specifically request other female and non-binary drivers in the app, called Women+ Connect; and last year, the ride-share app introduced an on-time pick up promise for rides scheduled in advance, paying customers if their car is late.