Chris Persaud, Palm Beach Post
Updated ·4 min read
Palm Beach County’s public transportation agency, Palm Tran, will replace service on three of its bus routes this summer with rideshare app services, using the money saved to improve other routes.
The bus service will cut two routes — one in north county that includes the Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens, another in the Wellington area — and part of a third in Boca Raton, replacing them with Uber and local taxis in a new program it calls Bus Link. The cost to passengers will remain the same as regular bus fare: $2.The agency is cutting or trimming those routes due to low ridership and will spend the money saved improving more popular ones, a spokesman said.
Previously: Palm Tran looks to cut high costs with a new Uber-type paratransit service
Palm Tran will cut these routes
The agency will eliminate Route 21, which takes passengers on a zig-zagged trip of more than 50 minutes between the Gardens Mall and the Mangonia Park Tri-Rail station.
Route 52 will also be cut. It connects the Mall at Wellington Green, the Royal Palm Beach Super Walmart on State Road 7, Palms West Hospital and Palm Beach State College’s Loxahatchee Groves campus through a 40-45 minute trip along State Road 7, and Okeechobee, Royal Palm Beach and Southern boulevards.
Palm Tran will prune the part of Route 92 in Boca Raton east of Interstate 95, along with a segment connected to the Town Center Mall. The route runs mostly along Palmetto Park Road, connecting the Sandalfoot Square strip mall on its west to the U.S. 1 and Hillsboro Boulevard intersection in Deerfield Beach.
Bus service on those routes will be replaced with Uber and taxis in late August or early September, agency spokesman Evan Henderson said."Palm Tran identified those as not productive as some of our other routes," he said, and that made them ideal for testing Bus Link.
Also: Uber-type service in Glades communities served nearly 9,000 customers in August, county records show
How passengers can use Uber to get to and from former bus stops
Anyone within 2.5 miles of bus stops that Palm Tran will stop serving can use Uber to go anywhere within 2.5 miles of other stops along the former route. Passengers can tap a special button in the Uber app to keep their fare at $2, Henderson said.
Palm Tran will give Uber up to about $424,000 to provide the service. The agency will save an estimated $2.4 million in part from cutting service on the three routes, staff told county commissioners in February. Those millions will go to running more buses on other routes.
Palm Tran will improve these routes
Frequency along Route 3, which runs along Military Trail, will increase to 20 minutes per hour, up from 30, during peak hours on weekdays and from 60 minutes to 30 on Sundays.
Route 20, a winding 45-minute journey between the West Palm Beach Tri-Rail station and the Gardens Mall, will improve frequency from every 60 minutes to every 45.
Route 40, which connects the West Palm Beach Tri-Rail station, the Wellington mall and Belle Glade, will get buses between the train station and mall every 30 minutes mid-day. Buses currently service that area during morning and afternoon rush hour.
The remaining part of Route 92’s frequency will increase to every 45 minutes from its current 60.
Palm Tran officials talked with rideshare company Lyft but did not end up agreeing to a contract with them, Henderson said. The agency did not respond to a request for more details.
Palm Tran staff have been crafting the Bus Link program since September 2023 through a series of workshops and public hearings across Palm Beach County.
Palm Tran provides Uber-style service in the Glades
Rideshare-style service is nothing new to Palm Tran. The agency has been contracting since August 2023 with Virginia-based door-to-door transportation company UZURV to provide Uber-like on-demand rides to people who can’t use regular Palm Tran buses and vans independently.
Palm Tran in February 2022 replaced regular service in the Glades in rural western Palm Beach County with its app-based, Uber-like Go Glades program. More than 10,000 people ride it, the agency's December performance report shows.
Chris Persaud is the data reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at cpersaud@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: 3 Palm Beach County bus routes will be cut, replaced with Uber, taxis
