Seattle Drivers Protest a "Flooded" Rideshare Market — What It Means for NZ Drivers

🚗💬 By The Rideshare Guy | Rideshare News

Ever feel like you're just... waiting? Watching five other driver dots circle the same three blocks while your app stays quiet? 😤 Turns out it's not just us.

Over in Seattle on 26 February, Uber and Lyft drivers held a proper protest outside Uber's own engineering offices, chanting through megaphones about a "flooded" market. 📢 They were backed by a new report from Drivers Union (30,000+ Washington rideshare drivers strong) showing "empty miles" — the unpaid kays we drive around with no passenger — have risen for three straight years, while driver numbers are growing almost SEVEN TIMES faster than trip numbers. 📉 Do the maths on what that does to your hourly rate.

Drivers Union president Takele Gobena summed it up: "a flooded market, clogged streets, and lowered earnings." Uber's response? Called the report's sample "extremely small, unrepresentative," and blamed Seattle's driver pay regulations, saying fares rose 40% and demand dropped as a result. 🙄 Classic move — when drivers complain about oversupply, point at the one policy that actually protects driver pay.

Here's the bit that should worry us in NZ: we don't even HAVE pay regulations to argue about. 🇳🇿 Uber, Bolt and DiDi can sign up as many drivers as they like here, any day, with zero cap and zero transparency on how many of us are chasing the same jobs. Noticed longer gaps between trips in Auckland or Wellington lately? This Seattle report is basically describing what's probably already happening here — just with actual data and a union behind it.

📊 POSITIVE or NEGATIVE for NZ drivers? Negative, no contest. Seattle drivers have an organised union with hard numbers, and it STILL hasn't moved the platforms to cap sign-ups. We've got no Drivers Union NZ, no NZTA interest in driver saturation, no leverage at all. ⚖️

NOW: nothing changes overnight — it's a US story. FUTURE: if nobody here tracks driver numbers against trip numbers, we're flying blind while platforms keep flooding the market, because more drivers means shorter wait times, happier riders, and more bookings — for THEM. Our earnings are just a cost of doing business to Uber, Bolt and DiDi. 💸

Something to chew on next time you're sitting in a rank for 40 minutes wondering where all the rides went. 🚕

Sources:

GeekWire, "In Seattle protest, workers call on Uber and Lyft to stop adding new drivers to 'flooded' market," Kurt Schlosser, Feb 26, 2026: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/in-seattle-protest-workers-call-on-uber-and-lyft-to-stop-adding-new-drivers-to-flooded-market/