Seminole County’s Scout public transportation service has reached its one-year mark with record ridership, more vehicles on the road, and ongoing concerns about long wait times.
County leaders said the point-to-point van service has grown rapidly since it launched to help fill transportation gaps, including areas where riders previously relied on LYNX bus routes.
“When we first kicked off, we were at like 400 riders a day,” a county official said. “So it’s grown leaps and bounds in just a year.”
Those increases reached a new high this week. County officials said more than 1,300 passengers used Scout last Friday, followed by another 1,300-passenger day Tuesday.
The county now has 49 vans operating across five zones and said the added vehicles and drivers are intended to help serve more passengers and reduce delays.
“Just in a few days, we’ve seen about 100 more average riders per day,” the official said.
Since January 2026, when Seminole County lost LYNX routes, Scout has completed more than 242,000 rides and served more than 270,000 passengers, according to the county.
The average Scout trip is 6.78 miles, and riders spend an average of 19 minutes in the vehicle. The bigger challenge is waiting for a ride.
County data shows the average wait time is about 48 minutes. In the busy Lake Mary district, the longest listed wait time was 313 minutes, or more than five hours. The most popular Scout areas include Lake Mary, Sanford, the Econ District, and the Brantley district.
“As we see congestion and the wait times creep up, they have discussions with the board about adding vehicles, adding drivers with the contractor,” a county official said. “And so that discussion is ongoing. As we see ebbs and flows in the service, we adapt to it.”
News 6 Seminole County Community Correspondent Serra Sowers tested the service with a trip from the SunRail station in Lake Mary to a Panera nearby. The app showed a 43-minute wait for pickup, though a driver was assigned quickly. The ride itself took 17 minutes, including one drop-off before the reporter’s destination.
In all, the trip took 57 minutes from booking to drop-off.
For comparison, an Uber for the same trip was listed at about $12 and would arrive in about 11 minutes. The Scout ride cost 50 cents to and from Sunrail stations with the help of rate subsidies. The county currently contributes an average of $16 per ride to keep set costs low.
County officials said Scout is still public transportation, meaning riders may share trips with others going in the same general direction.
“It’s still public transportation,” an official said. “And if there are multiple people from the same area going to relatively the same area, they are going to pick up those people and take them all together to their destination.”
County leaders said they will continue monitoring demand, wait times, and congestion as they consider whether to add more vehicles and drivers.