By Don Bradley
So, this Iris thing.
Not the flower, not Iris Dement.
IRIS as in Kansas City’s new micro-transit service. A car picks you up and takes you anywhere you want to go within the city limits. Sort of like Uber except rather than door-to-door it typically drops you at the end of the block.
And at $3 or $4 a ride, that little walk seems like a bargain.
“I take people to work, I take kids to school, I take people everywhere,” IRIS driver Lloyd said last week while taking a rider to the Plaza. “There’s this elderly lady I take to the library, she said Uber was breaking her, costing her like $60 every time she went. Hearing things like that makes this job worthwhile.”
Say you live in Hickman Mills and need to get to a doctor’s appointment in Waldo. Open the IRIS app, put in where you are, where you want to go and when you want to go there.
IRIS responds in seconds with “virtual” pick-up and drop off points, a pick-up and arrival time and the fee: $3. The system is set up that no walk is more than a quarter-mile and often much shorter.
Click “OK” and plan on the car or van, clearly marked as an IRIS vehicle, arriving at that spot right on time. Your ride may include other passengers.
Richard Cowart, director of mobility for Kansas City’s Area Transportation Authority, said IRIS was designed to provide on-demand service, to fill in gaps where buses or other transportation services may not be as accessible or handy.
Buses run on fixed routes and typically travel in a straight line.
“With IRIS, riders have the ability to go anywhere within the Kanas City region and get within a quarter-mile of their destination,” Cowart said.
Versions of IRIS are popping up in cities across the country.
In Kansas City, IRIS is set up with three zones: south, midtown and north. South includes pretty much everything south of the Plaza. Midtown extends all the way to the Missouri River. IRIS is also available in Liberty, Gladstone and North Kansas City.
The service runs from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week.
Fares are $3 within a zone, $4 to cross zones and free when the destination is an IRIS transfer station. Other rates apply for entertainment districts, such as Power & Light and Zona Rosa ($5) and KCI ($10).
Rides can be booked on the app, online or by calling 816-205-8221.
IRIS began slowly with only about one hundred rides in the first month.
“Now we’re doing about 25,000 a month and we’re getting 4.7 out of five stars,” Cowart said. “It’s been an amazing thing to watch grow.”
The Telegraph gave IRIS a shot last week.
We went on the IRIS app at about 1:30 p.m., provided a location in a neighborhood south of Red Bridge along Blue Ridge and said we wanted to go to the Country Club Plaza.
Within seconds we received an itinerary. The “virtual” pick-up point was less than a half-block from our location, at a bingo hall on Blue Ridge, and the car, a Kia sedan with “IRIS” on the side, arrived on time.
This was Lloyd the driver. He’d started that morning at 4 a.m. and was going until 4 p.m. Have to, he said, because drivers have to pay fees to drive for IRIS. Car fee, insurance and gas.
“The only way to make any money is a long shift,” he said.
He told a few stories about taking kids to school and the woman to the library. He likes the job: no bosses looking over his shoulder.
The car arrived at the Plaza destination on time.
This next part is key: if you know when you want the ride, book as early as possible. The return trip out south required an hour wait because it was late afternoon and that is peak IRIS time. But there are worse places than the Plaza to have to wait an hour.
The return trip was with driver Arletha. Again, the car arrived on time. It was Arletha’s first day and she had some difficulty with the IRIS software on the vehicle laptop.
No problem because Jay, a co-rider, was a regular and knew the system.
“I’ve been riding IRIS every day since January,” he said as he leaned forward and helped Arletha.
He lives out south in the Terrace Lake neighborhood and uses IRIS for his daily commute. One of his jobs is concert security. Partied once with Willie Nelson.
He talks up IRIS. No car, no car payment, no insurance, no gas, no property tax.
“Works great for me,” he said. “I love it.”
Arletha got us back to our destination right on time.
So, there you go. IRIS took us from a Ruskin-area bingo hall to the Country Club Plaza. On time and a short walk. Not bad for eight bucks.
And that’s how this IRIS thing works.
For more information about IRIS, go to
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