Por Margie M. Palmer

Ride-share services are great — for people who can access them. Lyft and Uber are exclusively app-based, but the reality is that 73 percent of Americans over the age of 65 do not own a smartphone.

In the absence of owning a smartphone, it’s been impossible for seniors to access on-demand rides.

Until now.

Patrick Henry High School grad Amy Stice said she’d long been searching for a transportation solution for her 92-year-old grandmother, which is how the idea for Arrive came about.

“I was trying to find a solution that would allow my grandmother to feel as if she was still taking care of herself and would get her out of her own car. I was hoping something like Arrive would come to exist, but that never happened,” Stice said.

Last summer she got to talking to fellow Patrick Henry grad and longtime friend Elizabeth Legg, and the two decided to create a service that would bridge the technology gap.

Leg said she’d been working in the small business world as an entrepreneur and had already been looking for what would be next.

“I agreed that we should definitely do this because the idea made a lot of sense. We were both committed to getting it going,” Legg said. “I felt there were a lot of independent elderly grandmothers who could use this service.”

How it works

Arrive is a members-only concierge service that helps to connect seniors to Lyft and Uber. It’s currently staffed by Stice and Legg and it serves as an intermediary between the rider and established on-demand ride services.

For a bronze plan, members pay a one-time sign-up fee of $30, and a $5 monthly membership fee and each ride costs $3 over the cost billed by the ride service. Arrive maintains detailed records on each member, including their favorite destinations, so ordering a ride is easy and members never need to worry about looking up addresses in advance of requesting a trip.

The silver plan costs $50 per month and get unlimited access to an Arrive concierge, four neighborhood rides — and ride that is five miles or fewer — a month and no sign-up fee. The gold plan offers to additional neighborhood rides.

“During our initial conversations with our users, we help them build out a profile and they can add in destinations that they regularly visit,” Legg said. “That way, when they call in, they can say ‘I want to go to the doctor’s office’ and based on early conversations, we already have that information saved. They don’t need to worry about finding the address or telling the driver where to go.”

The toll-free concierge line — 1-866-ARRIVE-8 — is open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific time, seven days a week. Arrive is able to dispatch rides in any market served by Uber or Lyft, and they’re even able to help members schedule rides in advance. Every dispatched ride is monitored by an Arrive concierge.

“We’re handling the technology on behalf of our members and we provide them unlimited access to our concierge line,” Stice said. “We’re using Lyft and Uber to dispatch and watch the rides. We monitor all the rides and we handle the billing.”

As for Stice’s grandmother? She’s among those who are giving the company praise.

Her son frequently helps her with transportation, she said, but when he travels out of town, getting around has been a challenge.

“[Arrive] was very easy to use and I’m sure I’m going to use it again,” said Allied Gardens resident and Arrive member Louise Bergseid. “They phoned from the curb when they got here so I didn’t have to stand outside in the cold and they dropped me right at the entrance to the store. I think this is a very good service and think a lot of older people who don’t drive will use it.”

For more information on Arrive Ride Services, visit arriverides.com.

—Margie M. Palmer is a San Diego-based freelance writer who has been racking up bylines for over a decade. Reach her at [email protected].