By Mary Hladky
Boca Raton City Council members want a downtown circulator service. And they want it now.
Then-Deputy Mayor Monica Mayotte and Council member Yvette Drucker on March 25 unloaded their frustration that even though they have pushed to hire a company to ferry people around the downtown ever since the Brightline station opened in late 2022, city staff has yet to contract with a provider.
Adding insult to injury, Boynton Beach announced that its electric vehicle circulator service, provided by Circuit, would launch in the eastern part of the city on March 23.
Dozens of other South Florida cities also have implemented such service.
“What is causing the delay?” Mayotte asked. “Why are we still sitting here with no circulator service?
“This is one of my frustrations that I think we are missing big opportunities,” she added. “So this needs to be done as quickly as possible.”
City officials said in October that they would request proposals from interested companies in November and hoped to award a contract in January. Drucker noted that the city is now months behind schedule.
“All these other cities are going right through us and we are behind,” she said. “I don’t understand. We are Boca Raton and we are better than that.
“Other cities that are much smaller than the city of Boca Raton with much less staff get things done a lot faster,” she said.
When it appeared that staff was moving slowly, Drucker herself invited three companies — Freebee, Circuit and Via Transportation — to make presentations. Those took place in July and September.
Responding to the complaints, City Manager George Brown said city staff has almost completed the process.
The city received proposals from six companies and selected one, although Brown did not name it.
A contract is being negotiated that will be ready for a council vote sometime this month, he said. Service would start about six weeks after that.
Drucker, however, wants to approve a contract at the council’s first meeting this month, April 9. “It had better be a damn good selection,” she told Brown.
Drucker and Mayotte both asked why the city didn’t simply use a contract negotiated by another city as a template rather than do all that work over again.
Many cities have piggybacked on another city’s contract.
Brown said other city contracts did not provide the flexibility Boca Raton wanted to expand or reduce service based on demand.
He defended the staff’s work, saying it took only two weeks to draft the request for proposals.
It has taken four months to almost complete the work when six months is usually required.
“How do we get these things moving through the process a lot faster?” Drucker asked. “How do we make it more efficient?”
Brown said the city has hired a consultant to advise on how the city can improve the procurement process.
Companies that provide circulators operate similarly, tailoring their services to whatever a city wants. How much they charge depends on the size of the service area and what the city asks for.
They typically offer electric vehicles and customers use an app to book a ride. Some cities provide the service to their residents for free, but many charge about $2 per ride.
In October, staff proposed the initial service area would run from Glades Road to the southern city limits, and east of Interstate 95 to Fifth Avenue/Royal Palm Way.
The maximum wait time would be 10 minutes.
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