Uber enlists MV Transportation drivers to pick up disabled passengers

Uber is adding drivers from a specialist company to its app in a bid to provide more wheelchair-accessible vehicles (WAV) to disabled passengers in the US. MV Transportation specialises in providing on-demand transportation to people with disabilities and older passengers. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says there are not enough drivers on its platform who use WAVs. He believes the collaboration will allow riders in wheelchairs to be picked up within 15 minutes on average for trips in New York City, Bosto
November 23, 2018 Read time: 2 mins

8336 Uber is adding drivers from a specialist company to its app in a bid to provide more wheelchair-accessible vehicles (WAV) to disabled passengers in the US.

MV Transportation specialises in providing on-demand transportation to people with disabilities and older passengers.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says there are not enough drivers on its platform who use WAVs.

He believes the collaboration will allow riders in wheelchairs to be picked up within 15 minutes on average for trips in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, DC as well as Toronto in Canada.

“We’re aiming to see similar wait times for trips in San Francisco and Los Angeles over the next year, and together those eight cities account for half of Uber trips in North America,” Khosrowshahi adds.

MV CEO Kevin Jones says: “As the nature of transportation changes, we will work with Uber to ensure people with disabilities aren’t left behind.”

MV owns the WAVs, and its drivers are trained to secure wheelchairs inside the vehicles.

Uber intends to price WAV journeys the same as an UberX trip, which the company insists is its cheapest ride-share option outside of Uber Pool. The cost is determined by location, sometimes with surge pricing applied during peak times such as holidays or when there is bad weather.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Switching Atlanta onto MaaS
    May 9, 2019
    It’s easy to talk about MaaS in the abstract – but MaaS isn’t going to work if it’s just a theory. Colin Sowman speaks to one woman about the practical benefits - and difficulties - of getting out of her car and switching to public transit in Atlanta, Georgia One of the first goals of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) inventor Sampo Hietanen is that MaaS should persuade households they don’t need a second car. This is starting to happen - even in the car-dominated US. Last year, authorities in the state of Ge
    Read More
  • Robin Chase interview: Heaven and hell
    June 13, 2018
    A shared vision - or even much of a conversation at all - about what a better mobility balance looks like has been lacking…until now. Andrew Stone speaks to Zipcar founder Robin Chase about fairness – and the importance of not demonising cars
    Read More
  • Waymo trials commercial driverless taxi service in Phoenix, Arizona
    December 10, 2018
    Waymo has launched a driverless taxi service in Phoenix, Arizona, where riders will be charged for the journeys they take. In a blog post, CEO John Krafcik says the commercial self-driving service – called Waymo One - is available to early riders who have already been using Waymo’s technology. The company hopes to make the service available to more members of the public as it adds more vehicles and drives in more places, he writes. “Self-driving technology is new to many, so we’re proceeding carefully wi
    Read More
  • Zipcar founder: ‘Car-dominant city has reached its zenith’
    May 23, 2018
    Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase has called on urban authorities to embrace multimodal transport in a bid to improve mobility.“The value of a car-dominant city has reached its zenith,” she says in an interview with ITS International. “The city regulatory and physical infrastructure has been built on a personal car-dominant infrastructure. We have spent the last 100 years making car travel in cities the most convenient and cheapest way to the exclusion of everything else.” That creates problems, she
    Read More

Highlighted Content