Ground transportation costs fluctuate

Over the summer, whether you wanted to rent a car or take an Uber, transportation costs climbed.

Rental car rates jumped 73% between July 2020 and 2021, according to the Consumer Price Index as agencies that had shed their inventory at the onset of the pandemic were hard-pressed to replenish it when travelers returned.

Now, with summer vacations ending, prices are returning to earth. I recently rented a car for a weekend in Los Angeles in September for $133, in line with pre-pandemic prices.

But Jonathan Weinberg, the founder of Autoslash, a service that searches for cheap rental rates, said that “the reasonable pricing expected in the fall and winter is not likely to last,” citing cars in circulation that are approaching high mileage levels and would need to be sold. Replenishing them may remain a challenge based on semiconductor supplies used in cars for things like brake sensors and parking cameras.

Ride-share platforms such as Uber and Lyft are more expensive this summer, too, in part because some drivers don’t want to return to the road, citing health concerns. To entice them, the services raised their fares through surge pricing used at high-demand times.

According to Rakuten Intelligence, which analyzes purchases from more than 1 million online shoppers, yearover-year cost growth for ride-sharing was up 26% in July 2021.

Until drivers come back, one way to avoid surge pricing is to try a service that doesn’t charge it. These include traditional taxis, which have their own apps, including Curb; the ride-share startup Holoholo, which operates on five islands in Hawaii; and Wingz, which offers airport rides and other services in more than a dozen U.S. cities, including San Francisco and Dallas.

Travel costs climbed this summer, but the delta variant is weighing on demand. We looked into how prices will fare in the future. NEW YORK TIMES