The Pinellas County Suncoast Transit Agency (PSTA) is turning to Uber to help low-income, unemployed residents overcome barriers to employment.
Starting in August, PSTA will kick off a one-year pilot program that will help low-income, unemployed residents with a low-cost transportation alternative.
With this new program, riders can request up to 23 free rides per month between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Rides must be to a place of employment or residence.
The program is intended to provide needed transportation for low-income workers in jobs that require late transportation like overnight shift work or those who work in the hospitality industry.
Riders can use the service once per month during daytime hours if there is a qualifying circumstance like an emergency medical appointment or a sick child who needs to be picked up from school.
“We are solving age-old transportation barriers with technology, innovation, and Uber,” said Brad Miller, PSTA chief executive officer.
The one-year pilot program, called TD Late Shift, is the latest collaboration between PSTA and Uber.
The $300,000 grant-funded pilot demonstration, awarded by the Commission for the Transportation Disadvantaged (TD), follows up on a program launched earlier this year when the two transportation providers launched Direct Connect, a six-month pilot program that connects people to bus stops for a subsidized rate.
PSTA is expanding that program to span across the entire county offering unlimited, on-demand Uber and Taxi rides for approximately $1.
“Uber is excited to partner with PSTA to give thousands of disadvantaged Pinellas County residents access to safe and reliable transportation,” said Tom Maguire, Uber general manager.
“At Uber, we’ve always believed that ridesharing complements public transportation. We look forward to continuing to work with PSTA on innovative solutions in the Tampa Bay region.”
“This is what the future of transportation in Pinellas County looks like,” said Miller. “It’s multimodal, high-tech, and on-demand.”
PSTA was the largest of five grant recipients chosen to demonstrate bold and innovative solutions for TD customers. The goal of this specific pilot is to develop and implement a model that can be replicated statewide and show a need for more robust funding of similar programs long-term.
“Expected outcomes go beyond simply providing rides to customers during non-service hours,” said Miller. “We are hopeful to be able to show a direct local economic impact by creating new opportunities for unemployed residents who were previously unable to get jobs because of a lack of transportation.”
PSTA is the public transit provider for Pinellas County, providing more than 14.9 million rides per year. PSTA operates nearly 40 bus and trolley routes with a fleet of 210 vehicles.
The free Uber service will be available to Pinellas County residents earning 150 percent or less of the federal poverty level who do not own or have access to a car or rides from family members. Income levels qualifying are $17,655 or less annually for a single person or $36,375 for a family of four.
The Transportation Disadvantaged Program is a coordinated state-wide effort which groups riders together for a shared ride service. Transportation services are available in all 67 Florida counties for those who are eligible and have no access to transportation. Federal, state and local agencies join together to provide necessary transportation to medical appointments, employment, educational and other life sustaining services.
According to a new University of Minnesota study, the mismatch between unemployed workers and job vacancies is a serious problem and it appears to have worsened since the turn of the millennium. The biggest concentrations of unemployed workers lack fast or frequent transit service to some of the richest concentrations of job vacancies.
The new study analyzes such employment mismatches in the Twin Cities seven-county metropolitan area and examines the potential of a new approach that integrates transit planning and workforce development.
“Transit plays a crucial role in connecting the unemployed with job opportunities, but it could be even more effective if efforts to get the unemployed to those job vacancies were better coordinated with efforts to give them the skills they need for those job vacancies,” said principal investigator Yingling Fan, who conducted the study with research fellow Andrew Guthrie. “Our research lays out an approach to reconcile those mismatches by coordinating transit planning, job training and job placement services.”