CLOSE AD ×

Lyft partners with Amtrak to address "last mile" transportation challenge

Wheeling and Dealing

Lyft partners with Amtrak to address "last mile" transportation challenge

Ridesharing company Lyft is partnering with Amtrak to help bring train passengers to and from the train station, according to an announcement made yesterday.

Train passengers can now directly hail a Lyft car from within Amtrak’s mobile app. The partnership is an effort to address the first-mile/last-mile public transit problem, which arises when a potential rider is further than a comfortable walking distance to the public transit stop.

Rather than walking to a subway stop and taking the subway to a transportation hub, the ride-sharing industry has marketed themselves as a seamless end-to-end travel for those first and last legs of trips. These car services have long fought for drop-off and pick-up access to airports (and have largely succeeded). Train stations now present a new opportunity for first-and-last-mile service.

Lyft, one of U.S.’s major ride-hailing services, claims that it reaches 97 percent of all Amtrak riders and 80 percent of the U.S population. “As a fixture of American travel, Amtrak makes it simple and convenient for passengers, something Lyft feels passionately about as well,” said David Baga, chief business officer for Lyft, in the press release.

This is not the first partnership that Lyft has rolled out. Just in the past month, it joined forces with Disney for in-resort transit and with Taco Bell for mid-ride taco stops. It also partnered up with Google’s Waymo, a self-driving car company, to roll out autonomous cars. The company’s latest aggressive initiatives have pushed its growth past that of its main competitor Uber.

The partnership is in effect now and new users to Lyft can redeem the code ‘AMTRAKLYFT’ for an additional $5 discount on the first four rides.

CLOSE AD ×