ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Orlando city leaders are making changes to their Ride DTO service. The program offers affordable rides throughout downtown and free rides for seniors.<\/p>\n
Monday afternoon, the Orlando City Council approved a three-year contract with Freebee to provide Ride DTO services. That\u2019s the same company that provides Scout rides for people in Seminole County.<\/p>\n
Dave Harris is familiar with the Ride DTO app. He uses the service almost every day for $1 per ride.<\/p>\n
\u201cI live downtown on Lake Eola, and it goes everywhere downtown,\u201d Harris said. \u201cSo I\u2019ll take it to church. I take it to the bar, so whatever I\u2019m doing, I\u2019m using DTO usually.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neil Ferris has driven for Ride DTO for five months. He says many senior citizens enjoy the free rides and rely on the service.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pick up a lot of places like Magnolia Towers and Kinnerack, and I take them to Publix, and I take them back whenever they call back,\u201d Ferris said.<\/p>\n
The Ride DTO program launched nearly two years ago, and the city says it has provided about 50,000 rides to 72,000 riders. The current contract with Circuit Transit is set to expire soon.<\/p>\n
Justin Eason, Assistant Director of the Downtown Development Board, says Freebee will have five vehicles a day on the roads, the same as the current setup.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new provider will be bringing larger vehicles, all of which will be air-conditioned, and one of which will be ADA accessible,\u201d Eason said.<\/p>\n
Eason says survey results show riders want to use Ride DTO in the evenings, so the city is expanding hours from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to cover 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.<\/p>\n
Harris says that will be great if he is at a restaurant for dinner.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Right) now I have to either walk home or take a Lyft,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n
City leaders say Freebee will officially take over the Ride DTO program this December. Users will be able to use a mobile app or call a phone number to hail a ride.<\/p>\n
Circuit Transit, Inc. sent Spectrum News a statement for this story. It said: \u201cSince launching Ride DTO in 2024, Circuit has become incredibly popular among residents, workers and visitors. The service has moved thousands of passengers per month and helped establish an affordable, all-electric transportation option in downtown Orlando.\u201d<\/p>\n
It goes on to say, \u201cWe appreciate the support Ride DTO has received from the community, and we\u2019re proud of the efficient and cost-effective service design implemented in the area. The downtown service stood out as one of the stronger services in the state, from a cost-per-rider perspective, while also creating jobs and reducing emissions. We\u2019ll continue to keep in touch with the City regarding future plans development.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Orlando city leaders are making changes to their Ride DTO service. The program offers affordable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2173,2175,1337,115,1335,139,141,140,2180,729,2177,835],"class_list":["post-399989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-traffic-transit","tag-app-traffic-and-transit","tag-keith-landry","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-topic-latest-traffic-transit-news","tag-traffic","tag-traffic-and-transit","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}