SCC-CIVIC-PG Track A: Community Based Ride-Hail Pilot: One Car, Multiple Opportunities

Decades of evidence suggests that car access provides significant advantages in the labor market. Yet for many, cars are financially out of reach. This project proposes to create a community-based ride-hail program to better connect communities with opportunities.

The project team's community partner organization, Vehicles for Change (VFC), will subsidize vehicles to low-income, car-less individuals living in Baltimore. In return, recipients will provide a number of weekly rides to other car-less Baltimore residents to access employment and essential services. The program expands VFC’s existing vehicle subsidy program and connections within the community.

This pilot will enable VFC to connect multiple people—rather than single households—to essential services for every car they distribute. If the project team can provide 50 cars for this pilot, the project can enable hundreds of residents to access jobs, healthcare, and educational opportunities. The project will evaluate the success of community ride-hail using original survey data of program drivers and riders, as well as a control group comprised of those on the waiting list to receive a vehicle from VFC.

Measures of success would include employment and earnings data—among others—for drivers, riders, and wait-listed individuals. Program evaluation will significantly advance knowledge by assessing whether the effects of car access could be “multiplied” by linking subsidized car ownership to a low-cost ride-hail service for other car-less people.

The goal of this project is to assess the viability of a community-based ride-hail program that connects low-income residents to jobs and other essential services. This project plans to evaluate the economic and non- economic benefits of this program for both drivers and riders. For drivers, the project team plans to employ a panel- survey to assess the short- and medium-term effects of participating in this program, and compare the results with a control group drawn from the community partners’ networks.

The team will augment the panel surveys with interviews with drivers and surveys of riders to provide a robust understanding of both qualitative and quantifiable effects of a community ride-hail program to inform best practices for scalable and transferable programs. This project is supported by the CIVIC Innovation Challenge program Track A. Communities and Mobility: Offering Better Mobility Options to Solve the Spatial Mismatch Between Housing Affordability and Jobs through a collaboration between NSF and the Department of Energy Vehicle Transportation Office.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.