The RideShare Gap: One Wilmington Community Uses Rideshare for Convenience, Another Survival

Poet Delthea Simmons had a license, a car on its last legs, and a hometown she loved. What she didn't have was reliable transportation—so she organized her shopping, her work, and eventually her exit from Wilmington around rideshare apps. In this episode, Shoresides asks whether her story is part of a pattern. Lyft driver Jayce Esterline estimates that 60% of pickups on Wilmington's Northside are people getting to doctor's appointments, work, and groceries. And ride data pulled by Lyft's Sarah Conlisk, reviewed with Anna Casey of Cape Fear Collective, shows riders in Wilmington's lowest life-expectancy neighborhoods using the apps as basic transportation infrastructure—while riders in the highest use them to get to the airport.

Lyft provided ride data for this story; Uber did not respond to our inquiries.

Credits
Produced by Rend Smith, Aaleah McConnell and Nick Magrino. Ride data and analysis courtesy of Sarah Conlisk, data storyteller at Lyft. Photo by Day Camposeco.

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This story was produced in partnership with the Coastal Journalism Hub, a collaborative focused on health and wellbeing in New Hanover County.