MARTA / Uber Partnership Promises to Bridge Gaps
MARTA provided these screenshots demonstrating how vouchers will work inside the Uber app.
A couple of weeks ago, in time for Election day, MARTA announced the launch of a pilot program with rideshare giant Uber to provide rides on E-day and beyond. The timing of the announcement and the text of MARTA’s press release paid homage to the agency’s history and its role in Atlanta’s historically disenfranchised communities. It also showed a glimmer of hope in the promise for a return to normal: a quotidian future with daily transit trips, the usual inconveniences, and the inevitable escape hatch that ride hailing apps can provide during breakdowns. But this time, MARTA has a plan for you.
It’s a common experience; you’re leaving work, waiting for a train and hear the announcement that ‘Due to such-and-such emergency, service is suspended…’; and with that, there’s a flurry of smartphones and passengers leaving the platform – all summoning their Ubers and Lyfts. They’ve got places to be and decided that saving their time is worth the money. There are trade-offs that riders make when deciding how to proceed with their journey, recognizing that hailing a car is not always a financial decision that can be taken lightly. There’s also a satisfying implication that MARTA has chosen to bear some responsibility for the service interruption and to provide a little restitution in the form of a voucher.
To take advantage of these new perks, riders will grab voucher links from the service’s website: ItsMARTA.com, the @MARTAService Twitter account, or through MARTA’s “MyCommute” alerts system. A “deep link” from any of those platforms will open the Uber app to a page with the details of the voucher (including its value, based on the nature of the outage) for the user to review and claim. A geo-fence will ensure that only affected customers can use the vouchers. Customers can elect to take their Ubers directly to their final destination and apply the voucher credit to that trip or simply bridge the service gap entirely for free lending major flexibility.
MARTAConnect will be available to customers impacted by planned or unplanned service disruptions on the rail system that require supplemental bus transportation. Planned disruptions include state of good repair work such as scheduled track maintenance, and unplanned disruptions include situations such as a power outage or a trespasser on the tracks. During these disruptions, MARTA will provide an Uber subsidy so customers may travel to the next rail station that isn’t impacted and continue their trip. The value will range from $3 to $10 and be geo-fenced to the station or stations impacted. If a customer chooses to take Uber to their destination rather than return to the rail system, they will be responsible for any cost beyond the value of the subsidy.
–“MARTA Launches Pilot Program with Uber” 10/27/2020
Bearing in mind that this benefit will only be deployed for rail system interruptions in which a bus-bridge is called for, the program is a step in the right direction in addressing customer satisfaction when issues occur in an otherwise reliable mode of transportation.
