By Dave Fidlin
Correspondent
After bucking a years-long trend late in 2019, Whitewater’s ride share program continued its downward trajectory through most of 2020 as a result of COVID-19.
City Manager Cameron Clapper and Finance Manager Steve Hatton briefly discussed the status of ride share in the year ahead at the Common Council’s last regular meeting Dec. 15. Behind the scenes, Clapper and Hatton have been solidifying plans for the offering in 2021.
Whitewater’s ride share program largely functions as a public transport service for people with physical handicaps, though it is available to all residents. An outside vendor, Brown Cab, has provided the city with the infrastructure through a contractual agreement.
In a memo, Hatton provided historical data on the ride share program, which is funded through a mixture of sources, including fares and grants. The city fills the gaps with funding within the municipal budget.
“Ridership has declined every year since 2012,” Hatton said. “October 2019 is the first monthly period that did not decline over the prior year. The program experienced growth in ridership through February 2020, before the impact of COVID.”
But as repeated pandemic-fueled calls of varying degrees to stay at home were made throughout much of 2020, the upward momentum in the service’s use was short-lived.
In his memo, Hatton wrote, “YTD (year to date) through October 2020, ridership is down 15.8 percent over the same period in 2019. Declining ridership has driven an increased reliance on local funding to support the shortfall in fare box and grant income to balance the ride-share budget.”
Since its inception, Whitewater officials have engaged in a competitive bidding process for contractors interested in providing the infrastructure for the ride-share program.
Whitewater’s current contract with Brown Cab runs five years and began in 2019. In the past two years, Brown was billing at a rate of $31.73 per hour. In the year ahead, the rate is increasing 1.3 percent, to $32.14 per hour.
Clapper said plans are in motion to dig deeper into the rideshare program and discuss finances as 2021 gets underway.
“We’re going to have further updates and further discussions on the program in the future,” he said.
