In the summer of 2011, Alex Esposito and James Mirras aimed to address a very specific need when they started Hamptons Free Ride, an electric shuttle service that ran in a fixed loop through East Hampton, connecting the parking lots in town to Main Beach.
Over the last 14 years what started as a “hometown side project” has developed into Circuit, an all-electric, on-demand “micro-transit” solution that operates in more than 40 cities and towns across the country, and demand for the service continues to grow.
“We had always had this idea of doing a shuttle to Main Beach,” said Mr. Esposito, who grew up in East Hampton and attended East Hampton High School with Mr. Mirras, “and we decided to bring it to life in an ad-supported capacity.”
The operation was entirely self-funded; they bought three neighborhood electric vehicles (N.E.V.s) — essentially elongated golf carts — and struck deals with advertising partners that paid to have their products and services displayed across the sides of the cars, which covered operational costs and enabled them to offer the service to riders for free.
Over the next few summers they added routes in Montauk and Southampton, and then expanded down to South Florida, where they established their first year-round route, and then out to the West Coast. By 2015 the co-founders had both quit their “day” jobs and were working at their company full time, and the business model shifted as the company began to work with different cities to solve their own localized parking and transportation issues.
“East Hampton is unique in that it was the first market, but it is also one of the only ones that is still fully subsidized by advertisers,” Mr. Esposito said, explaining that most of their revenues now come from service contracts with cities and different properties, and that the cities that allow for advertisements on the cars receive a share of the revenue from the advertising partners.
In 2016 they introduced an integrated app that enabled individuals located along their established routes to request pickups, and in 2019 rebranded the company as “Circuit” to reflect their evolution from “beach shuttle novelty” to “a bigger part of the transportation puzzle,” and started to raise outside capital to continue their growth.
As electric vehicle technology continued to develop, Circuit introduced a range of vehicles into their various market to address the specific needs of each area. A service established last year in the Brentwood-Hauppaugue area (using a $7 million grant to provide clean transportation solutions to underserved communities, awarded through the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority) uses electric vans and sedans. This year, they introduced their first autonomous vehicle to their service in West Palm Beach.
Mr. Esposito attributes a lot of their success to the fact that they have remained focused on what they are good at. They are not trying to compete with Uber, or with public buses. Rather, they focus on increasing accessibility to existing transit hubs — the parking lot, train station, and Hampton Jitney stop, in the case of East Hampton — functioning as “the glue that keeps all these other forms of transit together.”
“Somebody might be more willing to take the train from Montauk to East Hampton if they know that there’s a shuttle on the other side that can get them to the beach, or to the movie theater,” he said. “We might actually reduce the likelihood that somebody will use their car to go from Montauk to the movie theater in East Hampton, and that’s where the impact goes beyond just that one mile that we’re providing.”
Chris Martinez, who is from Amagansett and is now spending his second summer as a Circuit driver, said during a ride Monday that the rhythm of his days really “depends on the weather — it can be sporadic, where you’ll get a flash of ride requests, and then nothing for a little bit, and then again you’ll get five at a time. In the morning it’s pretty much all locals, and I would say by 11 or 12 o’clock-ish you have some visitors. A lot of people use it specifically to go to Main Beach.”
The service runs daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. throughout the summer season, and between 9 and 10 a.m. the Circuit cars are allowed to drive through Herrick Park, which gives locals the option of parking their cars for free in the daily long-term lot off Lumber Lane and then catching a ride into town before work in the morning. It operates on demand via its own app, with pickups on a fixed loop, and can take up to five riders at a time.
“Driving is a lot of fun because you get to interact with people from all over the country, sometimes all over the world, and everybody has a new take on the area,” Mr. Martinez said. “Some people are duly impressed, other people come from similar areas and they’re not quite as impressed; but most everybody that comes through here finds something that they love about the area.”
Circuit remains focused on its key markets of South Florida, Southern California, and the New York Metro area, and has recently added routes in Washington, D.C., Dallas, Boston, and Bellevue, just outside of Seattle. It provides all of the vehicles, and its drivers are employees of the business, allowing for a level of quality control across Circuit’s services.
“What’s interesting is that wherever cities are growing, traffic and parking are getting worse,” Mr. Esposito said. “I think we’re solving a problem that a lot of cities have, so it’s been exciting to see the demand and interest from the different cities we work with.”