Last week, council members were poised to allocate $475,000 to a Lextran pilot project, aimed at testing out whether the city could provide a publicly-funded individual ride service that could fill the gap between public transit and private ride-sharing services, such as Uber or Lyft.
But in the process, the council found that the United Way is already operating a similar but limited program called Ride United.
"The United Way of the Bluegrass will pay one round trip Lyft ride once a month, and it has to be related to medical appointments, job interview, career fair, or something like that," Civic Lex's Adrian Bryant explains.
It's a much smaller-scale service than the one being contemplated by the city and Lextran, but as Bryant notes, it's already up and running. And that has the council weighing the idea of putting its money toward the United Way model instead.
"[The council] will pick the microtransit discussion back up on Nov. 18 in the council work session, and they'll decide whether they want to give that $475,000 to Lextran or if they want to look more at Ride United, or if they want to do some secret third thing," he said.
Microtransit is being pushed by a coalition of local congregations, known as BUILD, which advocates for a variety of community-driven policy changes.