Sarasota County’s on-demand Breeze transit service gains thousands of riders

An increasing number of Sarasota County’s public transportation riders rely on a system that looks a lot like a private ride-sharing service but with one big difference: who pays for most of the ride’s actual cost.

Since the summer of 2021, the county has operated an on-demand transit service alongside its slimmed-down fixed-route bus and paratransit network. And the on-demand component is gaining traction of late, county documents show.

Breeze on Demand logged more than 300,000 trips in fiscal year 2023 in its four service zones, two in South County and two in downtown Sarasota and its adjacent barrier islands. That’s up about 50,000 rides from the year before, nearly a 20% gain.

In comparison, the overall Breeze system, which was rebranded from Sarasota County Area Transit in 2022, gained 5.2%, to 2.18 million trips in 2023.

"We've had quite an increase from the launch in June of ‘21,’’ said Transit Director Jane Grogg. “Like that first month in all of our zones was about 4,800 trips. That's in all four zones. And the last month, October of this year, we had 30,000 trips in all of our zones. So quite an increase."

Breeze on Demand operates 39 minivans and SUVs in North Port, Venice/Englewood, Siesta Key and downtown Sarasota/Lido Key/St. Armands Key/Longboat Key. For a $2 fare, riders can use a smartphone app, computer or make a telephone call to request a ride within the boundaries of each zone, often within minutes.

Rides can be door to door or connect with a Breeze bus stop or transit center for onward travel. A ride isn’t always solo or nonstop, because ride requests can be bundled into a single vehicle, but the price difference when compared to Uber or Lyft can be astonishing.

On a recent weekday, a mid-morning ride from the 1900 block of downtown Sarasota’s Main Street to the Longboat Key Club Moorings ranged from $23.98 to $35.62 on Uber, depending on service level.

But, in a presentation made to Sarasota County Commissioners and Longboat Key Commissioners in October, Grogg said the county’s cost for such a downtown-to-Longboat ride could, at times, approach that of a private car ride. Trips in Venice and North Port tend to cost the county less, she said, on the average about $12-$14. Regardless, the $2 fare remains the same.

Grogg said the geography of the two southern zones contributes to higher efficiency. The Sarasota-area zones tend to have fewer options and can include more empty runs in which no paying passengers are aboard.

"Batching trips together, it's a ride-share service, is easier to do when you have more roads as options and connectivity to put those trips together that helps it be more productive overall," she said. “I would say that's one thing. The two northern zones have significant bridge connection points. So that means everything has to, on the two sides of those bridges, funnel together."

Breeze’s budget in 2024 will reach $40 million, about $27 million of that coming from county sources – including fares – and the remainder from transportation grants from state and federal sources, with similar spending projected into 2028’s fiscal year, county documents show. The county’s overall budget for the current fiscal year is $2 billion.

Grogg said Breeze will continue fine tuning the coordination between on-demand and fixed routes and will work to market the service as a comfortable, easy-to-use system to drive costs down by adding riders. When the on-demand service was launched in 2021, she said, efforts focused on informing existing riders how a trip once made purely on buses could now be accomplished. Attracting new riders wasn’t an initial priority.

Now, that’s changing.

“We will be turning our focus to intentionally doing more awareness marketing," Grogg said, "to try and attract new riders, in addition to our existing customer base."

In planning for the on-demand service, the county first looked at underperforming bus routes and eliminated them, going from 29 to 14 of the most popular. With those savings, leaders launched the on-demand service, something that was a bit of a novelty at the time.

"It’s certainly an innovation that many transit agencies are starting to adopt," Grogg said. “Some of them use it for different purposes: more first mile/last mile; connecting people to regular routes or rail. And then we're seeing it in other communities that have more of a semi-rural type setting where bus service doesn't make sense because there's not enough people."

The county’s remaining bus routes generally ply the streets of Sarasota and its neighborhoods.

Another links North Port and Venice, another links Venice to downtown Sarasota. The most traveled, route 99, connects downtown Sarasota’s transit center to Bradenton’s transit center via Sarasota-Manatee International Airport, the Tamiami Trail college campuses and State College of Florida’s Bradenton campus.

Operation of route 99 is shared by the two counties and, with additional state funding to operate every 20 minutes, is the most used. The route linking North Port and Venice, route 9, is also a popular one, Grogg said. The free-to-ride Siesta Key trolley racks up the most riders.

Starting soon will be a dedicated service that will connect SRQ to several downtown hotels and condominiums once the trolley-style buses arrive and can be outfitted. Service is expected to begin around the first of the year. It will cost $1.50 at first, then rise to $2.

Manatee County is about six months away from deciding on a potential return to a fare-based system after shifting to free service for its bus routes in 2022. Ridership is up and at least one county commissioner favors making the free rides a permanent fixture.

Grogg said in the last fiscal year, Sarasota County’s fares added up to about $2.4 million, and county leaders haven’t shown much interest – aside from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic – in going to a free-to-use service.’’

“So, when you add it all up, it's not nothing," she said. “And we'd have to find a way to cover that difference. Does that fall to the responsibility of the general taxpayers of the community or are there other ways to increase revenues for that amount?"

Grogg said the rebranding of Breeze, from the previous Sarasota County Area Transit, is underway and vehicles should start getting new looks in the next few months – starting with the new airport trolley, followed by eight new buses that are still arriving.

The shift is intended to foster a new look and level of customer service to help attract riders and perhaps explore other new services, Grogg said.

"There's always potential for continuous improvement and collaboration with partners in the community," she said. “It seems like an exciting time to continue to explore those and see what's next."

Eric Garwood is the executive editor of the Community News Collaborative. Reach him at ericgarwood@cncfl.org.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota County’s on-demand transit service gains thousands of riders