It’s been two years since UF Student Government began Uber Safe Rides, a service that hasn’t been working for students lately.
In 2017, SG partnered with Uber to create Uber Safe Rides, a service that allows students to Uber in a designated zone — UF campus, Midtown, the outskirts of campus by Archer Road and close to downtown — with a discount.
A new Uber Safe Rides code will reset on Wednesday night after students reported the code wasn’t working, said Scott Fox, the UF transportation and parking services senior director. It remains unclear for how long the previous code didn’t work.
Students can typically use the promo code for discounts from Wednesday to Sunday every week.
Leah Antovel, a 22-year-old UF public relations senior, said she hadn’t used the app since her sophomore year and doubted if it worked after unsuccessfully trying the code on Sunday. She asked on Twitter if it was working for other students.
“I was just curious,” Antovel said. “Do they still do it? Is there a new way to do it?”
Antovel said the code failed and the latest information she found was a 2018 announcement on One.UF, which said the student discount was cut from 50 to 25 percent.
The promo codes are time sensitive, Fox said. The codes periodically expire and are replaced, which hasn’t been done recently.
Although Fox said the service is intact, students like Antovel are still concerned for their safety.
“It doesn’t sit well with me,” Antovel said. “It was a safe way to get home at night, and Ubers are expensive at that time because so many people request them. It sets students up for unsafe situations.”
FILE - In this Friday, Aug. 16, 2019 file photo, the logo for Uber appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The Ride-hailing service is acquiring Cornershop as it tries to gain a foothold in the Latin American grocery delivery business. San Francisco-based Uber, whose $5.24 billion loss last quarter was its largest ever, has been expanding its offerings to include food delivery and other forms of transportation, such as scooters and bikes. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, file)
