Low-cost ride-hailing makes inroads in rural US

Unable to drive due to a medical condition, Patricia Robinson had been missing doctor’s appointments and felt isolated without another means of transport near her home in the US state of North Carolina.

But today, thanks to an on-demand, public ride-sharing service that launched in the small city of Wilson in late 2020, she has a way to get to the doctor and ensure her two daughters can participate in school-related activities.

“It’s been a blessing for me to get from point A to point B,” Robinson, 35, said by phone. “(Before) I wouldn’t go nowhere. I would be stuck in the house, struggling, not being able to get my medication.”

Robinson uses RIDE, one of a number of affordable, on-demand «microtransit” initiatives that are expanding from major US cities to more rural parts of the country, from Wilson to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana.

Advocates say such services can play a key role in providing transport to vulnerable residents of so-called “transit deserts,” though past experiments have shown the programs can become victims of their own success by ending up oversubscribed.

“It’s revolutionized the way we do things in this whole region,” said Will Wright, transit operations director for Mountain Empire Older Citizens, an elderly care and transit agency in southwest Virginia, on the East Coast.

Wright’s group operates METGo!, a microtransit service that offers free rides in parts of rural Wise County, Virginia, where the poverty rate is estimated to top 20% - nearly twice the national rate.

“I expect it to continue to grow and continue and continue and hopefully we can get (service) in every little town that we have,” he said. “I think this is the breeding ground (for) how things will change in the future nationwide.”

The service in Wise, which launched last June as part of a pilot program, has transported more than 12,000 people within about six months – a figure Wright called “astronomical.”