For the past four years, Barbara Henninger, 78, a longtime Berkeley resident, has taken advantage of the city’s free rides program to go to the beach, grocery stores, and sometimes to the Berkeley Adult School, where she took a ceramics class. The program used taxis, Ubers and wheelchair-accessible vans and worked on a voucher system.
Earlier this year, however, the city significantly cut back the benefits senior and disabled participants received through the free transportation service, due to what it said were surges in applications and ridership costs. And, since then, Henninger has reverted to driving her car when going to a farther destination, walking if she’s going downtown, or boarding AC transit for shorter distances.
She gave up using the restructured program when she saw the new out-of-pocket cost. “I can’t pay $4 every time I want to go somewhere,” said Henninger, who lives on a $1,230 monthly retirement benefit, which covers the $900 per month rent of her apartment on Channing Way.
New rides system exclusively uses third-party app GoGo
This month, the Berkeley Rides for Seniors and the Disabled (BRSD) program switched from offering a free taxi voucher program to exclusively using a third-party app called GoGo. Users order up a ride with Uber or Lyft by calling a toll-free phone number. GoGo claims on-demand rides arrive in 15 minutes or less, and users need to pay a $4 copay per ride…