Paratransit MBTA announcement.jpg

Joshua Boissoneau, a former Spaulding Rehab patient, talks about a successful paratransit pilot program that Gov. Charlie Baker said Tuesday is expanding. (Gintautas Dumcius/MassLive.com)

(Gintautas Dumcius/MassLive.com)

By ANDY METZGER

A pilot transit service used by a couple hundred riders with disabilities will be made available to all MBTA customers who qualify for The Ride, Gov. Charlie Baker announced Tuesday.

Use of subsidized trips via Lyft and Uber - app-based ride-hailing services - proved to be popular and made life easier for those who participated in the pilot that launched in September, Baker said.

"We've come to see this as an enormously powerful tool," said Baker, who told those gathered at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital that Ride administrators calculated the ride-hailing alternative had saved passengers 5,600 hours of transportation time.

The governor made the announcement alongside Joshua Boissoneau, a user of the pilot service who works at the health care facility and said he would not go back to the traditional Ride service. Boissoneau represented the 10,000th ride on the pilot, arriving at Spaulding on Tuesday afternoon.

Transit users with disabilities have long complained about the burden of scheduling a trip the night before their travel through the traditional Ride service, and the time it takes to get from one location to another on the traditional service.

James White, chairman of the Access Advisory Committee for the T, said the pilot was "tremendous," and said there was "a lot of great feedback" about it.

"This is just one of a number of different programs that we're trying to utilize to save the state money," White told the News Service.

MBTA Acting General Manager Brian Shortsleeve said there were about 200 people using the pilot program on Tuesday, and there are about 30,000 eligible Ride users who would be able to sign up soon.

"No one has to use it but if you want to use it, it's a supplement of the existing service," Shortsleeve said. Expenditures on The Ride are about $10 million over budget in fiscal 2017, and Shortsleeve said he hoped use of the new service would "reduce the overall cost of the Ride."

The MBTA's per-trip subsidy of the new paratransit trips has been $9, compared to $31 for the traditional service, according to the administration.

Tom Maguire, Uber's general manager for New England, said its pilot with the T was the first in the nation's history where Uber had partnered with a government entity to provide on-demand paratransit service, and there has subsequently been interest in Philadelphia and Broward County, Florida.

People who are blind, those who use a wheelchair to get around or have some other disability that affects their mobility have had challenges over the years making use of the MBTA's system of trains and buses, though officials have taken steps to make it more accessible.

The reconstruction of Government Center Station last year capped work to make 80 MBTA stations accessible, though stations remain inaccessible along the Green Line and commuter rail. The MBTA also promoted Blindways, an app developed by The Perkins School for the Blind that helps blind riders find their way to a bus stop through crowdsourcing.

Lyft said it had covered 18,248 miles through the pilot service and the average passenger rating has been 4.9 out of 5 stars.

"This innovative, first-of-its kind program has significantly reduced wait times and generated incredibly positive feedback from customers," said Lyft Boston General Manager Tyler George.