Subsidized Ride Share Program

Initiative Background

While NiteRide is an amazing program that greatly contributes to the health and safety of students at the University of Iowa, they cannot keep up with the demand for late night rides on weekends. Also, weekend rideshare rates are often out of budget for many UI students, and as a result many students will choose to walk home at the expense of their safety. Therefore, the Subsidized Uber Rideshare Pilot Program will work as a supplement to NiteRIde to assist in ensuring that students get home safely on weekends without having to compromise their financial stability.

What steps have been taken to address the need on campus? 

Jillian Arnold has worked closely with Uber team members as well as senators Avery Dettbarn and Hannah Casey since August of 2023 to create a Subsidized Rideshare Program that will allow students who register a voucher for $5.00 off their Uber rides Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights from 10pm-3am within a 3-mile radius of Pentacrest. Legislation funding the pilot program was passes 2/6/2024 in USG senate and the next steps will be to get the form out to UI students to register for the program.

Initiative Implementation

When the program is implemented on March 1 the hope is that UI students will use their vouchers to get home from downtown Iowa City safely with also the hope to free up some of the demand from NiteRide so that they too can help more students get home safely.