You got off light rail at Lincoln Station at 7 a.m. and biked to your office in Lone Tree like a good multimodal commuter. But now it’s 4:30 p.m. and, as often happens in August, it’s raining.
Your options are grim. You could wait out the storm. Or you could pedal through and endure a soggy train ride home.
Or you could break out your phone, open your Uber app and let Lone Tree and its partners buy you a ride to the train.
The free Link on Demand ride service, developed in partnership with Uber, has been in testing for weeks, but now the city of Lone Tree is inviting the broader community — residents, workers and visitors — to get onboard.
Using Uber’s ride-pooling technology and 12-passenger buses that already are part of the city’s public Link shuttle service, Link on Demand allows any person with the Uber app to hitch a ride from any location within Lone Tree city limits to another.
Free rides will be offered Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., through the end of the year. All users have to do is swipe through the app’s ride options — from economy to premium to extra-seat Ubers — until they find Link on Demand. The technology matches riders headed in the same direction for maximum efficiency, and drivers do the rest.
Divya Sheshathri and her friend Mugdha Maneesh used the service on Tuesday to get from Sheshathri’s home on Park Meadows Drive to her husband’s office on the Charles Schwab campus. They used it again to get from Schwab to Park Meadows mall for afternoon shopping.
“It’s a very good service,” said Sheshathri, who does not own a car. “Without this it would be very hard to get around. We’re comfortable walking, but not in this hot sun.”
Schwab employees were tipped to the program last week. The company is one of the Lone Tree Link’s funding partners. Link service launched in 2014 and served 80,819 riders last year, officials say. But it operates on a fixed loop, carrying riders from Lincoln Station south on Park Meadows Drive to the home base of other partners, including Sky Ridge Medical Center and ParkRidge Corporate Center.
Soon that southern trajectory will be mirrored by RTD’s Southeast Rail Extension, which by 2019 will have created a light rail stop near the hospital. That new service led Lone Tree leaders to look for ways to better deploy the four Link shuttles.
During the Link on Demand pilot three shuttles will remain on the fixed route, while the fourth freelances. The new service will not increase the Link’s $550,000 annual budget, Lone Tree’s economic development director Jeff Holwell said.
Mayor Jackie Millet expects most of the Link on Demand use to be “micro-transit,” getting light rail users to their final destinations or commuters back to the station. But she sees many user groups that could benefit. The shuttles are outfitted with wheelchair lifts, making them accessible for seniors and people with disabilities. They also have bike racks, something that can’t be said for the average Uber.
“This partnership with Uber is the first of its kind in the nation,” Millet said. “I think for a community our size, this work is tremendous. Hopefully, what we’re doing here is going to be able to be duplicated by other communities around the country.”
Holwell has helped represent the city in the Smart Cities Collaborative, a program aimed at finding new ways technology can improve urban mobility. (Denver and Centennial are also members.) Through that, Holwell connected with Uber, the biggest name in the ride-sharing biz.
Uber officials are enthusiastic about the project.
“Not every city is going to have these resources, but I think there are a lot of cities and a lot of government entities that have resources that are maybe underutilized or not being utilized in the best way possible.” said Joe Sanfilippo, Uber’s Denver-based senior operations manager. “And Uber has the technology to help them do that.”