The beaches and bustling streets of San Diego met Uber on June 6th of 2012, just in time for summer. Since then, we’ve been working to make Uber the most reliable way to get around. The Uber platform allows safe and reliable rides to happen at all hours of the day, supporting and extending San Diego’s public transportation system.

We enable this in two key ways:

  1. Gaps in public transportation become hubs for Uber. We go where bus and rail routes don’t run.
  2. We complement public transit, making it easy for people to take advantage of the existing public infrastructure.

This means that people in San Diego aren’t just using Uber to get a ride on nights and weekends, but also to commute to school and work and to connect them to the existing public transit infrastructure, making the city that much more accessible to residents, commuters and tourists.

To gauge how people have incorporated Uber in their daily commutes, we looked at one week-day worth of trips that started or ended within 1/4th of a mile of a transit stop. What did we find?

Trips near transit stations accounted for 30% of

Uber trips that started or ended in San Diego.

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We’re expanding transportation options to people in places who didn’t have alternatives otherwise. Many of these locations lie outside the range of public transportation including San Diego MTS and NCTD (Coaster).

Below you’ll see how Uber covers much more surface area, from often-traveled areas to underserved areas that were previously difficult to get a ride.

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With rates cheaper than taxis, economic barriers of a ride available anywhere, slowly diminish. This means that fewer people need to own cars—and those who can’t afford a car can still count on a reliable ride within or outside of the current public transit system.

We’ve come a long way since our 2012 launch. In the new year, we will continue to provide greater access and availability across San Diego County, that riders and drivers can count on for years to come.