[AmeliaIslandUber]

I dropped at the Hyatt this afternoon around 2:30. As soon as I went back online I got a ping for a pickup 15 minutes away on Edgewood. Accept, cancel, a duh, no way. She pings back, so I let that go and log out. I flip on the rider app and see that there are no cars downtown or even anywhere on the map. Nearest car was more than 10 mins. So, I sit offline watching the rider app waiting for it to go massive surge.

What I see is driver after driver come online after a drop and immediately get snapped up. It would go no uberx available for a few seconds, then someone would come online and again immediately get snapped up. It was at least every 10 seconds that would happen. I'm thinking massive surge coming. Never happened.

I finally go back online and see the entire city is orange, but no surge anywhere. That was the case most of the afternoon. By evening it seemed to be back to normal though.

Thinking they were trying out a new (and bad) surge algorithm this afternoon.

 

[AmeliaIslandUber]

It would take everyone working in concert to generate a surge. You can predict it though. Just about every time I drop I flip on the rider app and see how many cars are around me. If I'm in a concentrated area, like downtown or the beaches and I see the remaining cars disappear I will log out of the driver app and wait for the surge to start. Yesterday was one of those classic cases were it should have surged, but never did. In fact, I didn't see a single surge all day till the evening. Normally you get a lot of surges Monday during the day. I think that's because a lot of drivers take Monday off as it's the beginning of the pay period.