- April 16, 2026
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The last bus off Longboat Key left years ago.
When Route 18 was canceled by Sarasota County in 2020 and the Longboat Key Shuttle was suspended by Manatee County, public transportation on Longboat Key took on a new look.
Now, instead of sitting on a bench waiting for a big blue bus to pull up, Longboaters pull out their phones and order up a Breeze OnDemand ride.
Across the region, more than 1.5 million people have used Breeze OnDemand since it launched in 2021, and ridership has grown each year.
The service is broken into three service area zones: Downtown Sarasota/Lido Key/Longboat Key, Venice/Englewood and North Port. Rides must begin and end inside each zone for the OnDemand service.
Within the barrier island/downtown zone, tens of thousands of riders use the service, and ridership has remained steady. In 2023, there were 26,958 riders. In a hurricane-ravaged 2024, that number decreased slightly to 26,300. Last year saw the most riders with 28,926.
Much like an Uber, Breeze OnDemand rides can be requested using an app on a smartphone. When a ride is booked, the first name of and picture of the driver, vehicle description and license plate number are displayed. A map showing the current location of the vehicle and an ETA is shown.
The biggest difference between Uber and Breeze OnDemand, though, is the price to the rider.
A short Uber from Sips Coffee Shop to Christ Church, for example, was $20 on a recent Thursday afternoon. A Breeze OnDemand costs $3 for the same trip.
Affordability and convenience is a big reason Longboat Key resident Phillip Zweifach uses the service.
“It’s the same as an Uber. You have an app, you request it, you put the address in and it says the car will be available in 20 minutes,” Zweifach said. “Usually it’s terrific.”
Usually.
Finding a ride isn’t always a given. On the morning of Thursday, April 9, rides weren’t available for hours on the barrier island. A message that said “Sorry, we couldn’t find a ride” was repeatedly displayed.
Zweifach and his wife have had similar struggles.
The couple has a weekend tradition of walking from their Seaplace condo to Spike ‘n Tees at Longboat Key Club. The walk back has become more and more fatiguing, and they were excited when they learned about the Breeze OnDemand service, which has become the way back for their weekend routine. But on multiple occasions, there were no rides back available through the platform.
“On four occasions, three Sundays and one Saturday where we called Breeze, we got a message that there was no car available, period,” Zweifach said. “We were stuck and we had to walk back. I would have to say that it worked 10 or 12 times, and then four times there was no response.”
Sarasota County provides Breeze OnDemand through a third party company called Via Transportation.
“Sarasota County and the OnDemand service provider, Via Transportation, aim to achieve maximum efficiency within a set budget,” a statement from Breeze states. “If a vehicle is not available to be dispatched to a customer within 30 minutes of a request, the customer will receive a "no seat available" message.”
Breeze said Via assigns vehicles to OnDemand zones based on ridership trends to meet demand, and that the platform had a 95% met demand rate “for much of 2025.” But the demand rate has slid recently.
“Sarasota County is aware that in recent weeks, there has been an uptick in unmet demand,” the statement reads. “We are in very frequent conversation with Via Transportation and are working to help them overcome a temporary vehicle shortage.”
Despite the hiccups, ridership remains steady for the OnDemand service, although a bit lower in the high traffic period of season. An Observer request for ridership data revealed that the service provided 1,736 rides in January, 1,342 rides in February and 1,193 in March in the Downtown/Lido/Longboat zone.
For the first couple years of Breeze OnDemand, service was split at the county line. That changed in 2024 when, with a nudge from Longboat Key town leaders, both counties signed an agreement.
“There was a challenge for riders traveling between the two counties to meet at a designated location and transfer between our service and Manatee County’s Longboat shuttle service, which was a reservation-based service where riders had to plan their trips in advance,” said Jane Grogg, director of Breeze Transit. “The town of Longboat Key championed the partnership, asking both counties to come together for a single transportation solution for the entire island.”
An interlocal agreement was signed and OnDemand service became available across the county line on Longboat Key in late January 2024.
Sarasota County spent $417,547 to provide the service in 2025. Grogg said Sarasota County pays Via Transportation by the hour for the service, which operates from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sundays.
Manatee County pays Sarasota County $29.68 per ride that starts, ends or is entirely in Manatee County limits. Transit Planning Manager Chris DeAnnuntis said since the partnership began, 13,114 rides have been Manatee County trips.
“Breeze renegotiates this contract every year. Originally, when we started this service, the cost was $30.67 per trip and it’s gone down over the past couple years,” DeAnnuntis said. “I will say that the residents and the political body in Longboat Key wanted this, and this is what was provided. Longboat Key puts a lot of tax dollars into both Manatee and Sarasota, and this is what they wanted, so this is what they got.”
Back to 2018.
Route 18 was an important route for employees.
A Longboat Key Chamber of Commerce survey held after news of the coming service cut spread revealed that bus service was used widely by those who worked on the island. At the Longboat Key Club alone, 50 employees reported using the bus to get to work.
But the route was also a highly subsidized one with lower than average ridership. According to a 2019 presentation by SCAT to Sarasota County Commission, Route 18 had 30,205 total riders in the 2018 fiscal year with a subsidy of $14.25 per customer trip.
The elimination of Route 18 was part of a larger cost-saving shakeup of SCAT that included the removal of several other routes in North Port, Venice and Englewood. The OnDemand zones filled the hole the removal of those routes left.
“There were about 14 or 15 routes of the 30 some that had so few riders for the amount of time they were operating that it seemed out of balance. This overall analysis across the entire county led to the elimination of 14 routes,” Grogg said. “The funds that were previously spent on that were then allocated for a contract to allow us to provide on demand service in specific areas, and the areas targeted were those areas where we previously had bus service and no longer did.”
Data suggests some who once used public transportation to get to and from Longboat Key have resorted to other methods. In 2019, Route 18 had a ridership of 37,782. OnDemand service, by comparison, saw ridership of 28,926 in 2025.
“When I look at the different dynamic of a bus service versus an on-demand zone, I see sort of mixed results. Some positives and maybe a con,” Grogg said. “The ridership when we were operating route 18 in 2019 was about nine or 10 thousand passengers more than the 2025 ridership in the on demand zone.
“But part of the question is: is ridership your goal or is your efficiency of delivering the service your goal? Route 18 had a one-hour frequency, so you had to wait an hour between every bus no matter what. In the on-demand zone, you request a trip and a vehicle is dispatched to your area. Our target is to do that within 30 minutes.”
Sarasota spends less annually to provide OnDemand service ($417,547) than it did to pay for Route 18, which cost $454,704, but the cost per passenger is higher for OnDemand ($16.71) than the bus ($12.03) as more vehicles are on the road. But that’s the price of convenience.
“I think that those that use the service have expressed their appreciation for it. The town of Longboat Key has provided very positive feedback in that transportation service for their town,” Grogg said. “The flipside to that is I would say one of my personal approaches toward work is continuous improvement. We’re always exploring for more ways to get the best bang for our buck.”
