Silicon Valley ride-share service offers free summer rides

An affordable micro-transit service just got cheaper for South Bay residents who might need an economic boost this summer.

Silicon Valley Hopper — a ride-share service that provides affordable transportation in Cupertino and Santa Clara at less than $5 a ride — is offering free rides to select locations through Aug. 31. Advocates said the service promotes equity with its cheap rides in costly Silicon Valley and gives needed transit to less connected parts of the region.

Free destinations in Cupertino include Main Street and the sports center, while Santa Clara stops include Central Park and its accompanying library, its community center and the youth and teen center. There is no data on how many rides residents have taken using the free service, but Cupertino officials plan to analyze that after the promotion ends.

The service has 13 cars and offers an alternative to the limited VTA bus lines that run through Cupertino, filling a gap for residents like Jean Bedord. About 10 VTA routes run through Cupertino, offering service to destinations such as De Anza Community College, the former Vallco Mall site and Stevens Creek Boulevard.

Bedord, who’s lived in Cupertino for about 30 years, said she’s used SV Hopper eight to nine times to get where the bus lines don’t reach easily, such as the library.

“We’re just too spread out as a city for it to be economically feasible to have VTA provide (full) bus service, and certainly not fixed rail or anything like that,” she told San José Spotlight. “The stops tend to be kind of far away. The VTA has a ways to go.”

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SV Hopper also offers wheelchair accessible vans on call that officials said have a faster response time than VTA’s paratransit option, which provides rides to disabled individuals who can’t use traditional public transportation.

VTA spokesperson Stacey Hendler Ross said SV Hopper helps students get to school in Cupertino, which wasn’t a primary focus when designing the transit agency’s service.

“If there is a convenient alternative transportation option that fills this gap, like micro-transit, which allows students to ride independently to get from home to school and back again, and encourages shared rides, VTA is supportive,” she told San José Spotlight.

SV Hopper, operated by New York City-based Via Transportation, began serving Cupertino in 2019, offering one-way rides at $3.50 and discounted fares for older adults, students and low-income residents at $1.75. Riders call a car using the SV Hopper app or its phone number and can receive rides throughout Cupertino and Santa Clara, after the pilot expanded.

The program is funded by a roughly $8.5 million transportation grant, with both cities contributing an additional $4.25 million. Cupertino will run the service until at least July 2027 per its contract. The service received about 54,000 rides last year, according to user data.

Santa Clara Councilmember Suds Jain said the program offers affordable transportation for people who may not be able to bike or walk longer distances.

“I use my bike to get on the bus and then I’m good, but a lot of people can’t do that,” Jain told San José Spotlight. “So this is a great gap filler.”

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But not everyone is fully supportive of the service.

Monica Mallon, transit advocate and a San José Spotlight columnist , said she wants to see more investment in permanent transit services, such as VTA buses, which would increase the ridership base.

“I personally do think that it’s more important to just invest in regular transit service, so that we’re not carving off parts of the VTA, the regular transit business or fragmenting the system even more,” she told San José Spotlight.

Cupertino Councilmember Kitty Moore, a supporter of the program, looks forward to SV Hopper expanding to other cities. SV Hopper is close to expanding to Sunnyvale , after its City Council unanimously voted to apply for grants in March.

“What we wanna see is that we’re expanding into other cities, that fully embrace this and then we need to figure out the long-term funding plan for it,” Moore told San José Spotlight.

Contact Annalise Freimarck at annalise@sanjosespotlight.com or follow @annalise_ellen on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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