Fryft hours reduced, starting at 7 p.m.
Student Transportation Fee rose from $117 to $146 per semester amid hour cuts.
By COLIN STILLMAN
USC has pushed back the start time of its free, shared Lyft program to 7 p.m. for the Fall 2025 semester, according to a website announcement from USC Transportation. In the 2024-25 academic year, Fryft began at 6 p.m. The time change is only at the University Park Campus, and the program still begins at 5 p.m. for the Health Sciences Campus. The program as a whole continues to end at 2 a.m.
USC’s Fryft program provides shared Lyft rides to University students within an area around the University, with the goal of giving students consistent travel options at night. Students may travel to — or from — anywhere within this radius.
This year, the mandatory Student Transportation Fee, which subsidizes the program, rose in cost from $117 to $146 per semester.
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Due to the service reduction, there is now a wider gap between sunset and when Fryft begins. By mid-September, sunset will fall before 7 p.m. The University previously temporarily reduced Fryft’s start time to 8 p.m. in July, citing “rider usage trends … largely due to extended daylight hours.” However, this announcement stated that regular operating hours would resume in the fall.
“We review the program each year to ensure it is meeting both the needs of our students and the intended purpose of the program,” the University wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan. “Based on that annual review, we are adjusting the starting time of the service from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.”
The University said it does not anticipate additional changes to Fryft this year.
Mayra Bazan Gonzalez, a junior majoring in philosophy, politics and law, said the service reduction means she must wait longer to run errands.
“It bums me out that they pushed it back an hour,” Bazan said. “It means that I have to wait an additional hour to go get groceries.”
This is not the first reduction to Fryft’s benefits. In early 2023, the program also reverted its coronavirus-caused single-rider system to a shared Lyft program to ease costs. The current changes to USC’s free, shared Lyft program come amid a rising operating budget deficit for the University, which rose to $200 million in 2024-25 despite significant cost-cutting measures.
