The public sector has many critical and under-appreciated transportation needs. Multiple departments often support access to essential services, each with distinct transportation requirements. Agency staff also travel locally for meetings and events, as well as nationally for conferences and training. Yet agencies frequently depend on specialty transportation providers and taxi services that are inefficient, costly and difficult to manage.
An agencywide rideshare program, based on the popular service that people use in their personal lives, offers a more cost-effective, governable option. Using an online dashboard, administrators can control employee usage and permissions, and enforce policies. The mobility data is audit-ready. And beneficiaries of agency transportation have a more convenient way of getting from here to there.
Agencies “pay the price with [transportation] modes that are less efficient, less user-friendly and overall less reliable because [managers] lack visibility, … especially when you start spreading [tools] across departments [and] lack a central repository of truth,” said Nick Brown, Uber’s Senior Program Manager for Proposals.
In this video interview, Brown discusses the public sector’s status-quo approach to providing transportation services and the benefits of a modern alternative. Topics include:
- Specific drawbacks of the methods that agencies typically use
- Best practices for implementing an agencywide rideshare approach
- Real-world benefits of agencywide rideshare systems on residents and staff