Here’s how to get a Lyft discount on New Year’s Eve

New Year’s is always a mess. It starts with such high expectations and then the ball drops, it’s midnight, and you have no way to get home without spending a small fortune on a hard-to-find taxi or surging ride-hailing trips.

While it’s near impossible to avoid a costly ride home soon after midnight or right when the bars and parties shut down, you have some cost-saving options.

First the obvious: If you haven’t downloaded the Lyft or Uber apps yet, you’ve got up to $20 of free rides waiting for you. But for the majority of us partygoers, those are well-used apps. So in several big cities across the U.S., Lyft is offering some discounts.

The entire state of Louisiana can get $5 knocked off fares with the promo code “RIDESMARTLA.” Same with Texans who can plug in “NYEPLAN18” in the app Dec. 31 at 8 a.m. through Jan. 1 at 4 a.m. for the discount.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, existing Lyft users can use the code “JOY18” for 20 percent off two rides to and from parties. As the county attorney general posted in a news release, the remaining $5 to $10 for a ride looks meager compared to the “$5,000 to $10,000 they might spend on a DUI offense.”

In a somewhat ironic partnership with whiskey maker Jack Daniels in Chicago, Lyft riders can get 25 percent off rides (up to $5 max) with the code “JDNYE18.”

In a nationwide safety campaign, Uber is teaming up with Mothers Against Drunk Driving to encourage ordering a cab, taking the bus, train, and, yes, ordering an Uber during holiday celebrations like New Year’s.

Ride-sharing app Via, which operates in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, is all about carpooling, so naturally for New Year’s they suggest piling in with strangers to cut down on travel costs. This same strategy can be applied to Lyft or Uber shared rides, but know that it’ll take more time to get where you’re headed.

Via also looked at its NYE data and found that traffic is worst at 9 p.m. and 1 a.m., which is just before and after the big moment. So try to get around at different times — the best time to call a car is 11:45 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. That’s great to know, but means you’ll probably spend the stroke of midnight in a car.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, a law firm offers an annual free ride up to $20 to help pull dangerous drunk drivers off the roads. It’s a whole rigamarole to register, but well worth it if you know you need to get somewhere after a night of drinking.

Also in the Bay Area mass transit options like the bus system are free, while trains are running late for fireworks shows and late-night activities to ring in 2019. In Los Angeles, Metro is offering free rides on  all bus and rail service from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Other cities like Seattle, Madison, Dallas, Sacramento plan to offer free transit trips for the holiday, as well.

Anything to keep inebriated drivers off the roads.

Happy 2019! Drive safely!