BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto City Council wants to pay Uber and Lyft to give rides to low-income residents as a way to replace the city’s own ride share service, called Link.
“We want to focus on our most vulnerable with a voucher-type program,” Mayor Vicki Veenker said tonight (March 2).
A $4 or $5 subsidy for Uber and Lyft could be cheaper for the city than Link, Councilman Keith Reckdahl said.
Riders would also get shorter wait times and 24-hour service from the companies, and the city could target low-income residents using the same vetting system as its recreation programs, Reckdahl said.
“I suspect that’d be a more sustainable way of providing public transit,” he said.
Link started in March 2023 with a VTA grant and provides 3,011 to 6,072 rides per month, Chief Transportation Official Ria Hutabarat Lo told council.
But Link costs $26 per ride — $1.2 million per year — partially funded by grants, $4 fares and a contribution from Stanford.
The city is facing budget cuts starting on July 1, so council tonight asked for information on a voucher program before making any decisions.
“I suspect we’ll be cutting things we like more than Link,” Reckdahl said.
Councilman Ed Lauing said he likes the idea of subsidizing Uber and Lyft, but some elderly or disabled riders wouldn’t be able to use their apps.
Lauing said he wants to work with the Avenidas Senior Center to expand its ride service, which has about a dozen drivers and offers $5 trips.
Councilman Pat Burt said Uber and Lyft can’t take wheelchairs, and Link has two vans that can. He pointed out that 57% of Link riders make less than $100,000.
Burt said he wants to talk to Stanford officials about expanding their free Marguerite shuttle service — a move the university has resisted.
“We’ve never received an explanation, just a ‘no,’” Burt said.
After trying Link a few times, I started calling it Palo Alto Stink. At $26 a ride, it’s a ripoff. I got a ride all the way to Cupertino yesterday for that much and Link refuses to go even ten yards past the Palo Alto city limits. Not only that but you have to walk, if you can, to a meeting place to get picked up. Drivers not terribly friendly either.
Why do I have to pay for other people’s rides?
We all pay several sales taxes to VTA. Why isn’t that money being used to give free rides to Palo Altans? Why is the city in the transportation busines when the county said they would provide this service?
Uber and Lyft are a horrible idea. Besides not taking wheelchairs or not being able to use their apps, not everyone is comfortable taking Uber or Lyft. It’s internet hitchhiking. You’re getting into the personal vehicle of any Tom, Dick or Harry who decides to pick you up. It should be against anyone’s better judgment. Are budget cuts worth risking lives? A shuttle service is common sense.
Actually, Lyft and Uber drivers are much more at risk than passengers. They’re a great service and in San Francisco they finally replaced the dysfunctional system of taxi cab medallions which artificially restricted the number of cabs. Uber and Lyft also made the wasteful BART connector to the Oakland Airport instantly obsolete although that didn’t take much. BART threw $350 million at a project that no one uses to pacify construction unions.
I am an Uber driver and I and all uber drivers are consistently background checked .i am also a share holder. It’s better than you think .
How right you are Cassandra. Everyday I pick up the paper and see how another Lyft or Uber passenger was murdered by their driver. We must have had 100 dead since the beginning of the year So why on earth would we want to save several million a year with all these murders!
I have driven with Uber for 4 years. I have a 4.99 rating out of possible 5.0. My other ratings are equally high. My car is nice, clean & I am polite to all my riders. My background & record is clean & safe for any rider. There are many others driving like me. Both riders and drivers have been murdered. Not one is acceptable, I agree, but the percentage of negative incidents is very low considering the over million drivers in the system.
The government doesn’t care about safety of passengers, they basically said that in the article when they said their doing it because it’s cheap. Driver’s don’t like discounted rides because it comes out of their fares. Every week Uber sends us a weekly breakdown of fares and fees, and part of that breakdown is a section labeled “Discounts given to passengers” and how much Uber took out of our fares for discounts THEY gave passengers.
“Burt said he wants to talk to Stanford officials about expanding their free Marguerite shuttle service — a move the university has resisted.”
Why should Stanford be forced to help out the city with every hare-brained idea from Council? Council treats Stanford like it’s a piggybank it can rob whenever it wants money.
@FM – Burt and others feel like they can ask Stanford to contribute because on any given day Stanford is a city of about 15,000 people. Unlike Palo Alto’s neighbors to the north and the south, Stanford does not contribute to the system of roads that facilitate the free flow of people around Palo Alto and between Palo Alto’s neighbors to the north and south. Stanford purposely hobbles the free flow of traffic with traffic calming measures which turn Stanford into a giant plug in the flow of traffic between Hwy 101 and Hwy 280 that funnels traffic through roads that are maintained and serviced by the city of Palo Alto. Stanford’s residents and employees use Palo Alto’s roads for anything and everything, but there is no practical way for Palo Alto’s residents to use Stanford’s roads for anything except going to a location on the campus.
Answer: The last thing council wants to do is cut back on spending. We all hate Stanford, right? Make them pay for it.
The crazy people who go around harassing people and yelling at the top of their lungs aren’t just the homeless. I live on Cowper Street in Palo Alto, a pretty nice neighborhood, and a wealthy family bought their adult son a house. They also give him a robust allowance. He doesn’t seem to have a job other than a fake charity he claims to run. (He said once he was in the Obama administration, but I doubt that.) He will stand in his front yard, and howl and scream like a banshie. He often walks around with soiled and smelly clothing. If a young mother is walking her 4 or 5 year old, he will confront the child for no reason and bring him or her to tears. Somehow he’s able to function at a high enough level to moderate some social media site, where he attacks people he hates in the community. I guess the company that owns that site isn’t aware of his mental illness. His parents are well aware of his problems, but they are just glad he’s not around them. Police say they can’t take him to the hospital on a 5150 unless it appears likely he will take somebody’s life or his own. So we have to put up with him in our neighborhood.
Is that Howard you’re talking about?
Next let’s address the always empty SamTrans busses that roam the city.
Stanford’s full sized Marguerite busses are also roaming the streets with only a few passengers that could easily be handled by a smaller ride-share vehicle. Driverless ride-share vehicles will also make Caltrain obsolete but Caltrain bum-rushed taxpayers into the electrification project before Caltrain’s demise became obvious even to people living in the Boomer Bubble.
Why does the council want to replace the city’s ride-share service with Lyft and Uber vouchers?
They don’t have the money. Read the story.
I take Uber to San Francisco Airport from Palo Alto a few times a year and it’s about $70 to $75 a ride. Coming home, though, is a different matter. I usually use American Airlines and the taxi stand is right outside baggage pickup in Terminal One. It’s very convenient after a long flight but it’s $130 and up for the ride.