About 30 cities have found ways to partner with Uber, Lyft, and other new companies to
Jon Orcutt, director of communications and advocacy at the Transit Center. “The whole idea of First Mile Last Mile is really overblown,” says Orcutt. “It misses the point that most people that use transit most often live and work near it.”
Christopher Kopp of the transportation planning firm HTNB. “However, I think the potential here is that they’re a way forward.”
In February Uber reportedly offered its fixed-route “UberHOP” rides for just $1 in Seattle, a significant savings over buses. In May, as Washington, DC was preparing for more subway shutdowns due to maintenance, Uber announced it would expand its UberPool program throughout the agency’s service area, pitching itself as a congestion-reducing alternative to the city’s faltering transit system. Uber’s popularity in the city apparently got the attention of a DC transit official, who said that “the need for late-night service is lower since people are using [ride-hailing] services.”
Jon Orcutt, director of communications and advocacy at the Transit Center. “The whole idea of First Mile Last Mile is really overblown,” says Orcutt. “It misses the point that most people that use transit most often live and work near it.”
Altamonte – FLMartz settled on a 20 percent subsidy for any trip within Altamonte, and 25 percent for rides to and from the city’s commuter rail station. Martz foresees the yearlong pilot costing taxpayers less than a hundred thousand dollars, far cheaper than building a new bus system. Nor does it involve navigating the regional transit authority or negotiating with potentially unionized public employees. UBER RIDERSHIP WITHIN ALTAMONTE EXPLODED, RISING TENFOLD. Just weeks after the March launch, the neighboring, more affluent suburb of Maitland began considering an identical pilot program. By July, it and three other cities in the northern Orlando area had approved copycat Uber deals, bringing more than a hundred thousand of the region’s residents into the sphere of Uber-run public transit. Interest in Martz’s deal was not limited to central Florida, either. Martz said transit officials from Los Angeles, Boulder, and Boston have called him for information on the partnership. During my time in Altamonte, the government-backed Ubers worked just as intended. The two-mile ride to city hall came out to around $4 — two dollars more than the local bus system, but taking a fraction of the time. UNLIKE TAXIS, UBER ISN’T REQUIRED TO PROVIDE SERVICES FOR DISABLED PASSENGERS
More than half a dozen residents I spoke with in Altamonte had been shut out of the city’s new transit system for various reasons — some lacked credit cards or smartphones, while others were disabled and would have difficulty getting in a regular car. Unlike taxis, Uber isn’t required to provide services for disabled passengers.
At a bus station near the freight area of the Altamonte Mall, I spoke with a homeless man who has no credit card or smartphone, a wheelchair-bound woman waiting for the bus, and a man with a severely cracked Motorola LG onto which he’d downloaded an Uber app that could not get past its undulating loading page. Like Harrold, they were all effectively left behind by the city’s new transit system, and would take the Lynx bus home that day.
Some transit advocates fear that such stories will become more common in a world of Uberized public transport. “Quality public transportation is just that — public — and it’s the fundamental reason transit agencies are required to make an effort to reach out to people with disabilities, people without bank accounts, and people without smartphones,” says Jacob Anbinder, a spokesperson for the TransitCenter, a foundation dedicated to improving urban mobility. “As Uber finds itself entering into contracts that require it to act as a provider of public transportation, the company will have to adapt to serve this same broad market of riders.” Uber acknowledges its services aren’t as accessible as they could be, but says it is fast evolving. Andrew Salzberg, head of Transportation Policy and Research at Uber, pointed to experiments the company has launched to deploy fleets of wheelchair-accessible Ubers, and noted that in Pinellas County, Florida, Uber is testing a call-in dispatch service for low-income residents who will be able to access the system with or without smartphones. “We’re not at the final answer to these problems,” Salzberg told me, “but we’re getting to the right places through a bunch of initiatives.”
Cities like London, Vancouver, and Los Angeles are already building integrated mobility authorities capable of managing the impact and opportunity of current and future modes of transport. Broadly speaking, these institutions are moving from being road builders and transit operators to orchestrators of transportation outcomes. And places like Mexico City are laying the foundation for new ways of thinking about transport equity by declaring affordable access to transportation as a fundamental right that guides how they manage and fund their transport system.
