Half of driving Americans are still not using ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber. The ride-hailing market has substantial room for growth, with 50% of drivers surveyed saying they’ve never used a ride-hailing app.

One in 10 drivers surveyed said they were frequent users, with 12% of those users hailing a ride at least once a week or more.

But one region in particular lags behind the pack when it comes to adoption of ride-hailing services.

A regional breakdown of ride-hailing service usage shows that Americans in western states use apps like Uber and Lyft more frequently, while those in the Midwest used them less frequently. Further, 57% of Midwesterners were more likely to say they never ride-hailed before, followed by 50% of southerners.

Are rideshare users out of luck in small town USA?

MORE: How Has the Pandemic Affected Uber Drivers?

It shouldn’t be surprising that a region like the American Midwest would fall behind ride-hailing app usage. We’re not alleging that Midwesterners are less tech-savvy than the rest of the nation; when it’s not a pandemic causing Uber and Lyft driver shortages, it’s a geographic issue that makes vehicle ownership the de facto rule elsewhere.

While ride-hailing services are more feasible (and readily available) for the average resident in major urban areas like Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis, the rural Midwest is a land plagued by distance.

Anyone who grew up outside the sphere of a metropolitan area will tell you how widely distributed the folks and services beyond the suburbs can be.

If anecdotal evidence isn’t enough, the findings of this

Pew

survey released in 2019 detailed some of the issues that ride-hailing companies faced in these regions.

“Ride-hailing companies have made efforts to expand their services to rural and remote areas,” an excerpt from the report reads. “But lower population density, long travel distance and relatively low incentives for drivers are often cited as potential hurdles.”

The report notes the existence of a ride-hailing adoption gap between urban and rural Americans. A separate Pew survey conducted earlier that year found rural residents were much more likely than their urban counterparts to call the lack of access to public transportation a major problem in their area.

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Midwest cities—and ride-hailing prospects—are growing

Ride-hailing apps may become more feasible for many of these rural users, however, as many Midwest cities and their suburbs are undergoing a population boom. A

Manhattan Institute

report, also from 2019, shows that the five fastest-growing major cities saw population growth at 1.5X the national average between 2010 and 2018.

If you don’t think that will lead to a closing of distances for potential ride-hailing app users, urban sprawl would like a word with you.

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