The time between when Uber matched a driver with a rider and when the car arrived grew 19 percent from the first quarter of 2023 to the same period this year, while the average price per mile rose 53 percent, according to an analysis released on Wednesday.
Len Sherman, an executive in residence and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, based the study on 37,500 trips completed by drivers in six American cities. The records came from GigU, an app that shows drivers how much they will earn per minute and per mile before they accept a ride.
Wait times increased in five of the six cities, including Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. Only in the sixth, Tampa, Fla., did they fall, and only slightly.
“You’re charging more for less, for degrading the service,” Mr. Sherman said in an interview with Business Insider.
An Uber spokeswoman said the analysis “relies on a number of inaccuracies, which we’ve publicly refuted.” She declined to address the wait-time and per-mile findings directly, and pointed instead to a January company blog post that called it “false” that Uber became profitable “by raising prices while taking an ever larger share” of fares.
The figures may understate the problem, Mr. Sherman said. Because the data came from drivers, they do not capture the time riders spend waiting to be matched at all, while Uber sends the trip offer to drivers nearby, often at different payout rates. That process can add minutes. “By definition, it’s an underestimate,” he said.
The study gives a sharper picture of how the service has changed for riders. Uber, once among the startups that burned cash to win users, has used upfront pricing to become profitable, often by charging riders more and paying drivers less, Mr. Sherman has previously contended. His earlier research found that Uber increased its take rate, the share of each fare it keeps, at the expense of its gig-worker drivers, and that its commercial insurance and operational charges varied widely across seemingly identical trips.
Mr. Sherman also pointed to the 2026 Axios Harris Poll 100, which ranks major companies by reputation. Uber placed 72nd this year, down from 58th in 2025, with declines on measures including trust, character and ethics.
With A.I. agents making it easier for riders to compare prices against Lyft or local alternatives, longer waits and higher fares carry a risk, he said. “This is a company that has acted in a way that clearly has lost the trust of their customers, riders, and drivers.”