Case study: how Wellington County enhances mobility options for rural townships

Home to 7 towns and townships, Wellington County is located in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. It’s also home to the Wellington Multicultural Festival, the Wellington County Museum and Archives, and an award-winning workforce. What it didn’t have was fixed-route mobility services. So county leadership acted, creating a solution in 2019 for its vibrant community: Ride Well. 

Today, Wellington has integrated Uber into its public transit platform to enhance this vital service,  available to more than 107,000 residents. Let’s take a closer look at our first API integration in Canada.

Wellington County is a collection of 7 municipalities spanning 2,600+ square kilometers of urban hamlets and rural farmland. Over half of its population resides in rural areas. Before Ride Well, residents relied on local taxi companies to meet their public transportation needs. But increasingly high demand in this vast service area with low population density prompted the county to create a transit option that was uniquely tailored and highly flexible.

In October 2019, Wellington County launched Ride Well, an on-demand microtransit program providing door-to-door service throughout the county and connections to neighboring city center Guelph. Powered by leading microtransit technology partner RideCo, the service runs from 6am to 7pm, 7 days a week. Riders can schedule, request, and book rides directly through the Ride Well mobile app, website, or over the phone.

While the Ride Well service was initially successful, its limited driver pool in dedicated vehicles posed a significant challenge in the face of increasing demand. Unexpected events like driver illness led to schedule disruptions, missed rides, and lengthy wait times. The result? Diminished trust, a poor rider experience, and farebox recovery loss. 

Wellington County was dedicated to enhancing this vital service for its riders while managing costs to ensure its sustainability. Expanding the program without increasing rider co-pays or compromising service quality posed a significant challenge. The county needed a solution that would improve wait times and on-time performance, grow its driver pool, and meet its community’s growing transportation needs—while keeping costs under control. 

Enter Uber.

Since June 2024, Wellington County has used Uber’s platform to provide rescue and overflow rides for Ride Well. The service has seen consistent growth since the partnership.

Rescue rides are necessary when Ride Well’s dedicated vehicles are unavailable due to unexpected events. Before partnering with Uber, Wellington administrators would contact a local taxi company to provide support, which often led to lost fares and extended wait times up to 2 additional hours. In some cases, this meant leaving senior riders stranded for long periods during evenings and inclement weather. 

Those days are over. With the Uber API integration, program administrators can now seamlessly cancel the delayed ride, request an Uber ride on the customer’s behalf instead, and notify the rider that a trip has been requested with Uber. Riders reach their destinations, the agency retains fare revenue, and the entire process occurs all on one platform—an improved experience for riders and transportation coordinators.

The same integration also allows riders to request Uber rides directly within the Ride Well app. When a rider enters their pickup and destination details, Uber and RideCo’s back ends communicate to display a variety of optimal transportation options, including Ride Well’s dedicated vehicles and Uber rides. Riders without the Ride Well app can request rides over the phone through Wellington County’s call center. 

By combining dedicated vehicles and non-dedicated services , the county has built a dynamic, flexible fleet that better serves its riders and their diverse needs and expectations. The single-app experience turns Ride Well into a one-stop mobility shop for Wellington residents, offering more options to get where they need to go.

Since integrating with Uber, Ride Well’s overall ridership has quadrupled. In fact, Wellington County has seen consistent month-over-month ridership growth, as well as a 50% increase in new riders.

The new Ride Well program has made a significant community impact. By providing truly flexible transportation options, it offers locals increased access to senior care programs, employment opportunities, medical centers, and more. 

Wellington County residents can now rely on seamless, efficient connections throughout their community and to neighboring urban centers. This vital and beloved service has become more accessible, promoting mobility freedom and empowering its riders to make informed, spontaneous travel decisions.

In leveraging the Uber platform, Wellington County expanded its family of services with minimal operational burden. That kind of ease leaves plenty of room to focus on the future of Ride Well—and expand. 

In the years ahead, Wellington County plans to introduce additional areas and zones through Uber’s API integration with RideCo, aiming to meet growing rider demand. As Ride Well continues to bring stress-free mobility and flexibility to the community it serves, Uber is proud to support this growing program.

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