Lyft or Uber with just a dumb phone/no app?

February 17, 2025 9:21 PM

I recently stopped using my Android phone and switched to a mostly "dumb" phone (Punkt MP02) for the typical reasons (reclaim attention, privacy, etc.). I'm not sure I'll stick with it, but while I do: what's the best way to use car transportation services if I'm out late at night, or in a new city, without a phone that can run an app?

Further details/circumstances: the other night I found myself out after the last subway train had already left my location (SF Bay Area) and so had to ask a stranger to look up bus routes for me back to my place. To avoid this in the future, it seems like the best thing is to sign up for GoGoGrandparent which would cost about $11 per month and a surcharge per ride. That pricing works for me if the service is actually reliable; have you or a loved one used GoGoGrandparent? How is it?

Is there a better alternative, short of carrying a second phone with me when I go out?

posted by mistersix to Technology (18 answers total)

This doesn't answer your lyft question but does address the scenario that you shared.

In the bay area you can call 511 for automated voice access to public transit schedules.
posted by zippy at 9:52 PM on February 17 [1 favorite]

I would suggest carrying a bus map or bus schedule. I also sometimes print out map directions prior to leaving for the night. And look up local cab companies and add them to your contacts so you can just call a cab.

You can offer people cash to order you a Lyft or Uber from their phone but this gets dicey late at night.
posted by blnkfrnk at 9:52 PM on February 17 [1 favorite]

Old school: put the phone number for Yellow Cab, or equivalent taxi service in your area, in the contacts on your phone. You can request a cab to your location by address, or often by an intersection ("I'm on the northeast corner of Main and Smith"). Whether it's more expensive than Lyft or Uber depends upon the service, and local taxi regulations (some cities have a rules mandating a uniform, fixed price from the airport to downtown for example)
posted by TimHare at 10:05 PM on February 17 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: About cabs: in the past, I've found them unreliable, at least in the Bay Area. I'm under the impression that if a cab's on the way to you but they get flagged down by another potential passenger, they're going to pick up that fare; bird in the hand and all that.

(I did realize after getting home the other night that I'd been a 10 minute walk from a hotel, and so maybe could've found a cab there.)
posted by mistersix at 10:24 PM on February 17 [2 favorites]

I support you in this, but honestly, these apps really just aren't accessible this way, I wish they were. It is a bit of a cop out but one option is to ask a friend to call one and pay them back. You could also schedule a ride while at home for when and where you expect to leave (i.e. 1:45 at Moe's Tavern), or some central location you can get to easily in the neighborhood. Otherwise it's not crazy to have the central dispatch number for taxis in your area in your phone - in some places it's a shared service where it just goes to whatever car/service is closest, so you don't even need to know a taxi type.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:55 PM on February 17 [1 favorite]

I don’t mean this as any kind of criticism of OP - but, this kind of learned helplessness is really the best reason to ditch your smartphone for the longer term - because finding your way around more or less independently is a critical adult skill that everybody should cultivate.

As a more direct answer to the actual question - you have to think like a person from the Old Days. Back in the misty depths of time, we still went out in the evening & we still got home at night, even without an app. How on earth??? Well, we looked at (or even carried) a street map. We learned what major landmarks could guide us home. We acquired a sense of direction. We booked a taxi in advance. We asked the door staff the way to the nearest taxi rank. We checked the bus timetable before leaving home.

All those methods are still working just as well as they ever did. I use them regularly myself.
posted by rd45 at 12:55 AM on February 18 [10 favorites]

Best answer: I have not tried it myself, but it looks as though you can call Uber to order a ride: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/call-to-ride/

As an aside: The reddit sub r/dumphones has a nice list of smartphone alternatives for people who need x app or functionality.
posted by ambulanceambiance at 2:31 AM on February 18 [14 favorites]

Regarding how cab drivers operate: my contrary impression is that in any NA city, cab drivers won’t stay employed long if they're ignoring their dispatching service. I find that cab companies now provide really accurate estimates on arrival times. I presume their running software on their end.
posted by brachiopod at 3:39 AM on February 18 [2 favorites]

As others have said - you've got to be prepared! Not sure if you have a camera on your dumb phone but taking photos of maps is way better than trying to find a paper copy for your pocket. And a failsafe if you're really somewhere you don't know - tee up a relative or friend in advance who could help from home! (My sister found me accommodation in Casblanca from her place in Bristol, all by text!)
posted by london explorer girl at 5:39 AM on February 18

Is there a better alternative, short of carrying a second phone with me when I go out?

Yes. Public transit. Here are two vignettes to illustrate the possibilities:

1. When I used a simple, non-smart mobile phone while living in medium-sized European cities in the 2000s and 2010s, I looked up public transit options between my home and destination in advance and wrote them on a little piece of paper I kept in my wallet. After a while I started to memorize possible routes and times. This was what everyone did, it seemed. This meant needing to know what time it was (which my phone or my watch provided) and the location of the stops where I would get on and off (which I had written down and probably passed on the way!), as well as the fare (which was usually a prepaid ticket but sometimes was cash). I needed to leave wherever I was in time to make the bus; most other people did this as well, and it was not just socially acceptable, but unremarkably so. Taxis were around and could be summoned by text, but were often found at ranks in the center of town and were comparatively expensive, and only really worth using with a bunch of friends. In five years, not once did a bus not show up, and perhaps only once or twice did I miss my stop; in those cases I just got off at the next one and walked or got the next bus back the other way.

2. Last weekend, I took Metrolink, southern California’s regional rail system, from home south of LA to Oceanside, north of San Diego. I used a $10 weekend day pass, purchased at a machine at the station, and wrote down the times of my trains home on a paper in my wallet. I then used that paper day pass to transfer to the North (San Diego) County Transit District’s bus 101, which follows the coast all the way down to the start of the Blue Line trolley at UC San Diego and, crucially, runs every half hour all day long. I spent a blissful day enjoying the little towns along the coast, stopped at the University Town Center mall for some shopping, went to a beach or two, and then got the bus back to Oceanside station for my train back home. The total cost of the trip was that same $10, since the day pass allowed for transfers all day long, not just when you got off the train the first time. All of the NCTD buses I took also had a paper “rider’s guide”, with every transit service schedule they offer, for the taking on board. One last thing I have to mention is that each NCTD bus stop had a text-message-based “when is the next bus? service you could use, in which you could text the specific bus stop’s code like 12345 to a number like 67890 and get back a message like this:

Stop: Camino Del Mar & 13th St
Route: 101 - Oceanside - Utc/Va/Ucsd
To: Utc Transit Center
20 minutes

In your case, you are asking about somewhere urban enough that the same systems will work as well or better than my examples did: these days, the Bay Area has the Clipper card for integrated cashless fare payment, the main systems other than BART like Muni, AC Transit, SamTrans and VTA all run some kind of night service and have a good-to-excellent level of text-message-based service-provision integration, and there’s a cultural expectation that transit use isn’t something to be ashamed of. I am not sure from your question if public transit hasn’t been part of your thinking around late-night travel options, but all the workers doing the night shift in big cities aren’t all driving or taking app-based car services to get to the airports or the warehouses or the laundromats, you know?

For a little inspiration and to show you what’s really possible with public transit, check out this archived San Francisco Chronicle article from February 12, 2025, reporting on two transit nerds, one of whom was YouTuber Miles Taylor at Miles in Transit, and their successful 24-hour challenge to ride each of the Bay Area’s 27 Clipper-accepting transit systems. I followed their journey on Bluesky here; you’ll note they use their smartphones a lot, but there is also plenty of use of the system’s pre-printed schedules as PDFs, as well as a lot of just…asking the driver or operator. Adam, another YouTuber, has a lot of public transit videos, including one he’s releasing right now on getting from San Francisco to LA entirely by public transit — not Greyhound or Amtrak, but normal public buses and trains. (Including Salinas to King City to Paso Robles for $4!).

With a little research, you’ll discover that there are a lot more providers of public transit service at night than you might think. Happy travels (and good luck with your simpler phone lifestyle)!
posted by mdonley at 7:01 AM on February 18 [5 favorites]

if you’re anywhere near a hotel (the fancier the better for this) someone at the desk will usually call a cab for you.
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 7:33 AM on February 18 [2 favorites]

Learn the main routes home and key elements of the schedule e.g. when they reduce the frequency to once per hr or stop stopping at certain stops. And of course the time of the last service. As a rule, having to wait an extra hr is more pleasant in the venue you were at than at a station/stop.

Be aware of the time and know when it's time to leave to catch the service you planned to catch. If your trip entails a bus, make sure you're at the bus stop a couple of minutes early because buses may be slightly ahead of schedule when there is not much traffic and not many people travelling.

Most hotel receptions will call you a taxi if there isn't one outside or have a number for you to call one.

Research numbers for taxi services and save them in your dumb phone. While your ride share driver may be working for multiple companies and cancel your pick up if a more appealing option presents itself dispatchers will tend to get somebody to you.
posted by koahiatamadl at 7:36 AM on February 18

Best answer: I have used the call function for Uber and it was a little convoluted -- partly because I was in a difficult-to-navigate area and they couldn't just pin me on the GPS. But it was fine.

Back in the misty depths of time, we still went out in the evening & we still got home at night, even without an app.

LOL that was not always my experience, just for the record. I got home a lot of the time and clearly am alive today to tell the tale but definitely ended up in a lot of really unfortunate places and had to make some super unsafe choices a lot of the time back then as well.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:40 AM on February 18 [8 favorites]

Response by poster: As a more direct answer to the actual question - you have to think like a person from the Old Days. Back in the misty depths of time, we still went out in the evening & we still got home at night, even without an app. How on earth???

OK boomer. Seems like you're creating a question I didn't ask but you want to answer.

I have not tried it myself, but it looks as though you can call Uber to order a ride: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/call-to-ride/

Thanks ambulanceambiance. I'd searched for something like that for Lyft because that's what I've typically used; should've looked for an Uber alternative. It looks like it's not 24 hours as of now, but that answers the question.

I have used the call function for Uber and it was a little convoluted -- partly because I was in a difficult-to-navigate area and they couldn't just pin me on the GPS. But it was fine.

Thanks Hardcheese for providing advice based on experience rather than theory. Based on the rest of your answer, it seems like you've been in situations similar to mine, where plans were disrupted by circumstance (some self-created, because that's life).

9 times out of 10, I can take the public transport I originally planned on, or know the second-best alternative. Looks like I now have another good alternative.
posted by mistersix at 11:35 AM on February 18 [20 favorites]

I'll just say I've taken a few cabs in the Bay Area in the last few years and they worked fine. Maybe I just got lucky?
posted by latkes at 6:10 AM on February 19

Response by poster: [multiple suggestions of calling a cab]

I'll just say I've taken a few cabs in the Bay Area in the last few years and they worked fine. Maybe I just got lucky?

Just to clarify: after midnight, you call cab dispatch, and you get picked up - how soon?

I will go ahead and store some cab company phone numbers along with the Uber-by-phone number.
posted by mistersix at 11:59 AM on February 19

I have not called a cab after midnight so I don't know just adding the little data point I did have. Good luck! I think it's awesome you're going smart phone free!
posted by latkes at 2:08 PM on February 19

Hey, I sympathize! I use an ancient phone that just does what it needs, and I don't use Ub/Lyft apps, but I do feel kinda vulnerable if I might get into a situation where I might need one in an emergency. And I feel like some of the helpful suggestions here don't quite solve the problem. From my experience, traditional cab companies were imperfect in the past, and are even less perfect and reliable now.

I don't have a perfect suggestion. (In my case, I might have to bite it and go with a smarter phone. A good friend gifted me their old iPhone, which I've played with taking photos, but I've put off on re-installing the chip because my old phone goes a week between chargings, and this one would be daily charging, and I'm lazy. I should just do it.)
posted by ovvl at 5:45 PM on February 20