This year Cascadia Mobility, which runs PeaceHealth Rides, has submitted another contract proposal that would allow ASUO to subsidize student rides. If the deal doesn’t go through this time, students may have to start paying the full rate for PeaceHealth rides.
Normally, a PeaceHealth Rides member pays $15 a month for a free hour of ride time a day. They can forgo the membership and pay a $1 unlock fee followed by the normal rate of 10 cents per minute, according to the PeaceHealth Rides Website. University of Oregon students get a monthly membership for $8 a month. Those without a membership are exempt from the unlocking fee and pay the normal per-minute rate.
Cascadia Mobility, which has run PeaceHealth Rides since 2021, was tasked with operating the bike share program and making it sustainable after it suffered a loss in ridership during the pandemic. The program was abandoned by its original for profit operations company, Social Bicycles — now owned by Uber after a series of buy-outs — according to Cascadia Mobility CEO Brodie Hylton.
To lock down funding, Cascadia Mobility approached the ASUO Contracts Finance Committee in the fall of 2021 to propose a contract which would make up for the UO student discount on PeaceHealth Rides. According to Hylton, the deal fell through.
To make PeaceHealth Rides a sustainable program, Cascadia Mobility has to fill a $250,000 funding gap, Hylton said. $250,000 is also about how much money PeaceHealth Rides loses by providing discounts to UO students, who make up about 75% of riders.
In 2021, Cascadia Mobility proposed two contracts to the CFC according to CFC chair and ASUO senator Jenna Travers. The first being $250,000 and the second $400,000.
“Sustaining our current solid, contracted programs has to come before establishing new contracts. Even in a good year, we couldn’t have done that and stayed under 5%,” Travers wrote over email, referencing the maximum yearly increase to the Incidental Fee of 5%.
The Incidental Fee is a yearly fee paid by UO students and managed and spent by ASUO for services and programs that should benefit UO students.
Cascadia Mobility was able to secure partial funding after the deal fell through by appealing to the UO administration. UO transportation services paid $150,000 to Cascadia Mobility to help sustain the program for another year, Hylton said.
This time, Cascadia Mobility has provided two more options for a contract with ASUO. The first proposed option would cost about $198,000 and would pay for a student body-wide discount according to Travers. The second proposed option would cost roughly $134,000 and, instead of paying for all students, would pay for students who use the service regularly.
Before engaging in official contract negotiations, CFC is looking to quantify how many students use PeaceHealth Rides regularly. In addition to getting rider statistics from Cascadia Mobility, CFC has begun brainstorming at their weekly meetings ways to survey the student body about their use of PeaceHealth Rides.
“We have that hard data, and we’re really trying to get more of that qualitative side,” Travers said. “That’s kind of our first step… we’re still in data collection.”
CFC also has a number of contracts they consider high priority, in which they will focus on funding before agreeing to a contract with Cascadia Mobility, according to Travers.
“We have to get our other contracts done first before introducing other contracts,” Travers said.
CFC’s high priority contracts are with Lane Transit District, ASUO Legal Services and The Daily Emerald.
