What the GSA-Uber Deal Signals for Every Public Fleet, Not Just Federal Agencies

I think there’s something interesting happening with rideshare in the public fleet space that’s worth paying attention to, even if you don’t manage a federal fleet.

In July 2025, the General Services Administration renewed and expanded its rideshare agreement with Uber for Business. The new five-year Blanket Purchase Agreement covers federal employees and military personnel and, for the first time, allows contractors to participate with agency approval.

Now, if you manage a city, county, university, or another public fleet, it would be pretty easy to look at that and say, “Okay, that's federal. What does that have to do with me?”

I think it’s worth looking a little closer.

Because the interesting part isn't really the Uber agreement itself. It's what the agreement says about how public agencies are beginning to think about transportation capacity.

What actually changed with the GSA-Uber agreement?

The renewed GSA agreement expands Uber for Business coverage to more than 15,000 cities across 70 countries. It also adds international coverage for federal travel, including embassies and consulates, and requires users to book through Uber for Business profiles, giving agencies better compliance and reporting capabilities.

GSA has since reported that its rideshare program is reducing costs for participating agencies. GSA itself reported saving nearly $1 million in 2025 after removing more than 170 underutilized fleet vehicles as employees used the rideshare program.

That's important.

But from a fleet perspective, what interests me more is the larger idea behind it.

Public agencies have transportation needs that move up and down. Traditionally, when demand increases enough, our instinct has often been to add capacity to the fleet.

But adding capacity usually means buying another vehicle.

And once we buy it, we own that capacity whether we need it that day or not.

Why this matters to cities, counties, and universities

Federal procurement is obviously different from procurement at a city, county, or university. The federal government has enormous scale and the ability to negotiate agreements that most individual agencies aren't going to replicate.

But the underlying fleet problem is very familiar.

What do you do when you need more transportation capacity sometimes, but not all the time?

That's really a fleet right-sizing question as much as it is a transportation question. The goal isn't automatically to have fewer vehicles. It's to make sure the number and type of vehicles you have actually match the work your organization needs to accomplish.

I recently talked about this on The Fleet Success Show with Sebastian Reszka, who leads public sector sales at Uber.

One thing I appreciated about the conversation was that Sebastian wasn't positioning Uber for Business as a replacement for the motor pool.

That's an important distinction.

The idea is to put another option on top of the transportation resources you already have.

Your motor pool still handles the work it makes sense for the motor pool to handle. But when demand spikes above that capacity, maybe you don't automatically need another vehicle. You have another way to flex up and then flex back down when the demand goes away.

To me, that's the fleet conversation worth having.

What are public agencies asking for from managed rideshare?

Of course, telling a public fleet to “just use rideshare” misses most of the difficult questions.

Public fleet managers need controls. They need accountability. They need reporting. They need billing that finance can actually manage.

Those were some of the more interesting parts of my conversation with Sebastian.

Controls that make the program defensible. Agencies can restrict vehicle classes, establish time-of-day windows, limit destinations, and require employees to provide a cost center or trip justification when booking.

Those are the kinds of controls I would expect a fleet manager to ask about. If you're going to put public dollars behind another transportation option, you need to know how and why it's being used.

Billing that doesn't create another administrative problem. Rather than creating hundreds or thousands of individual expense reports, agencies can receive a single monthly invoice. Tax exemption can also be handled for tax-exempt organizations.

That's important because there's no sense solving a transportation problem while creating an administrative nightmare somewhere else in the organization.

Implementation that can happen relatively quickly. Sebastian told us that if his team's rollout takes longer than a week, “we're doing something wrong on our end.”

Obviously, every public organization has its own procurement, approval, and implementation requirements. But the larger point is that adding flexible capacity doesn't necessarily have to become a major technology implementation.

Where is managed rideshare already being used by public agencies?

This isn't limited to the federal government.

During our conversation, Sebastian pointed to Long Beach, California, and Portland, Oregon, as examples of city-level Uber for Business rollouts.

He also identified universities as one of the fastest-growing public-sector segments for Uber for Business.

That makes sense to me.

Having spent a lot of my career managing transportation at Fordham University, I know how unusual campus transportation demand can be. Faculty travel, student transportation, events, conferences, athletics—you can have very different transportation needs depending on the day and what's happening on campus.

And that's really the issue we're talking about.

If demand isn't constant, does all of your capacity need to be fixed?

That's also why utilization and availability need to be looked at together. A vehicle being available doesn't necessarily mean the organization is making the best use of that asset, and low utilization doesn't automatically mean the vehicle isn't needed. You have to understand the mission behind the numbers.

What should public fleet managers take from the GSA-Uber deal?

I wouldn't look at the GSA agreement and conclude that every public fleet should go sign up for rideshare.

That's not the lesson.

I'd look at it as another reason to question the assumption that every transportation need has to be solved with another fleet vehicle.

If your motor pool is consistently at capacity, maybe another vehicle really is the right answer.

But if you're running out of vehicles a few days a month—or during particular events, seasons, or other predictable spikes—I think it's reasonable to ask whether you need to own your way out of that problem.

That's what makes the GSA agreement interesting to me.

The federal government is a large, complicated, risk-conscious buyer, and it is using managed rideshare at scale. That doesn't prove the model is right for your organization. But it does suggest that rideshare has matured into something public fleet managers can reasonably evaluate alongside rental, motor pool vehicles, reimbursement, and other transportation options.

And I'd evaluate it the same way I'd evaluate any other fleet decision.

Look at the data. Understand the demand. Understand the controls. Understand the true cost. And most importantly, understand the mission you're trying to support.

Then decide which tool makes the most sense.

Because the goal isn't to have more vehicles or fewer vehicles.

The goal is to make sure the people we serve have the transportation they need, when they need it, while being responsible with the resources we've been entrusted to manage.

This article was inspired by a recent episode of our podcast. Check out the full episode for even more tips and tricks: