Company Context

RideNow is a large ride-hailing platform operating in 25 North American cities with roughly 1.8 million monthly active riders and 220,000 monthly active drivers. In its top 8 cities, the company has strong rider demand but persistent supply shortages during weekday commute windows (7-9 AM, 5-8 PM) and weekend late nights (10 PM-1 AM). Leadership believes the biggest near-term growth constraint is not rider demand generation, but insufficient driver availability exactly when demand spikes.

Strategic Situation

You are the Head of Strategy for North America. The CEO has asked for a plan to increase peak-hour driver supply over the next 12 weeks without materially damaging unit economics. The problem is urgent because rider wait times and surge pricing have both increased for three consecutive months, and a key competitor, ZoomCab, has begun guaranteeing drivers an extra $6 per completed peak-hour trip in two major markets. RideNow must decide which levers to prioritize: higher incentives, better driver scheduling, product changes that improve peak-hour earnings, or operational interventions such as targeted reactivation and geographic repositioning.

Current Performance Data

Additional facts:

• A driver survey of 6,000 active and recently churned drivers found that 42% cite schedule flexibility as the main reason they do not regularly drive peak hours, 27% cite traffic/stress, and 18% say earnings are not predictably high enough.
• Internal analysis suggests that reducing average deadhead time by 5 minutes per peak hour would increase effective driver earnings by ~8%.
• Reactivated drivers historically cost $110 per driver and about 35% of reactivated drivers remain active after 8 weeks.
• Finance has approved up to $3M incremental budget over 12 weeks.

Your Task

1. Identify the key levers RideNow should use to increase driver supply during peak hours.
2. Size the likely impact of the top levers using the data provided and any reasonable assumptions.
3. Prioritize the levers based on speed, cost, scalability, and unit economics.
4. Recommend a 12-week action plan and explain what RideNow should test first.
5. Define the metrics leadership should track to know whether the strategy is working.

Constraints

• Total incremental budget is capped at $3M over 12 weeks.
• Engineering capacity is limited to one medium-sized product squad.
• The plan must show measurable improvement within one quarter.
• Leadership does not want to rely solely on blanket incentive increases that competitors can easily match.