Uber for buses? What went wrong with “microtransit” 

Where I live they replaced one failing low-used route with an on-demand bus where you just call and wait to be picked up. It can either operate point to point in the neighbourhood or to fixed bus routes depending on demand. I suspect it was done just to scale back the diesel use on the line which winds it ways through very narrow residential streets usually with no passengers on it. Either that or you can walk 3 blocks south to the busiest traditional bus route in the city. Your choice. I personally always take the bus that arrives every 5-7 minutes during rush hour because of its frequency alone...

I’m not necessarily against microtransit especially when it’s replacing a terrible fixed route. In rural to suburban areas where a bus may only come once per hour and only have a few passengers. Having only to wait 20 minutes and the vehicle picks you up at your door is fundamentally a better service for that rider.

the 3 seconds of that 2014 montage broke my depression i needed that. my nearest big (small) city of Spartanburg, SC is looking to invest in city owned micro transit so I wanted to see what was tried elsewhere with success!

Another great primer on the economics of transit! Well done !

Pretty interesting stuff. In Denmark where I'm from we have a lot of the same issues. Transit is for many only seen as a welfare for those who cannot drive like children and the elderly, rather than a tool for everyone. Heck for all but children and the elderly the fares are so expensive that even for most in poverty its better value to get a car. Ticket costs here are on average twice that of North American cities. And we've been dealing with declining passenger numbers for over 2 decades, and service cutbacks, along with price hikes steeper than inflation over the whole period. It aint helped by the fact the local governments have restricted powers here and that the national government insists on a fixed farebox recovery ratio of 50% nationwide. If ridership and fares fall short, then municipalities and regional governments either gotta cut services to lower their expenses, or fund more themselves. But due to their overall budgets being capped by the state (even if they have additional money to spare), it then becomes a debate of cutting other welfare like education, eldercare, or special needs services to fund transit, which is widely opposed. Heck the current national government has put down an expert committee to look at reforming public transit to "attract more riders" but with the explicit statement that it must under no circumstance cost the state more than it does already. (yet this same government spends nearly 3 billion dollars annually on a commute tax rebatres which largely benefits drivers and encourages suburban sprawl and job sprawl and hinders walkable lifestyles) We've been pretty late to microtransit. Uber was banned from the Danish market shortly after they entered it in 2017 due to tax fraud and noncompliance with workers rights agreements. The closest weve really had to microtransit has been something called "Flextur/Plustur". But with its address to address or address to transit stop system, need to be booked 2 hours or more in advance, and extra steep prices, its more like just a subsidised taxi. But just today we finally got our first proper microtransit solution called Nærbus. A relatively standard DRT system. Only picks up at designated bus stops, but uses accessible minibuses, uses transit standard fares integrated with other buses and trains, and can be booked as little as 5 minutes in advance, depending on how close the bus is to you. Its currently on trial in the town of Haslev where its replacing all but the peak departures on 3 relatively infrequent bus lines in the area. And frankly I think this has the potential to finally reverse course and save transit here. Especially in rural settings where villages get a very sparse service, often just a few bus departures per day at peak moments. Microtransit like this could provide a service with low wait times and good connectivity to higher order transit like railways and express buses in the nearest larger town, where supermarkets and schools would be anyway, making for a good anchor for a microtransit system. And this I feel like is what we need given our massive obstacles. Its what we can do that allows rural communities and provincial towns to have a bus more than 3-5 times per day. And if they're succesful, well the might just kneecap themselves but the increased fares could then help fund a traditional bus line back to some villages which had lost it and otherwise no sight of it returning. Though Nærbus is just one of the things that the Government's expert committee is looking into. Another thing is volunteer buses, to serve a similar purpose. Think Dollar vans but run by local volunteer groups with the vehicle provided to the volunteers by the transit agency. Don't see as big of a potential there, but given that the Dutch can make it work, I hope it can work in some places here. It is certainly better than the one thing politicians seemingly have their most eggs in a basket with, which is sadly carpooling, acting like Carpooling is some sort of holy grail for public transit. Like I'd much rather have public transit go to funding Microtransit rather than subsidise carpooling where I won't even know if anything will be available.

I think about microtransit every day and didn’t know why they almost all failed but this made it make sense!

Great video. Also add public transit does a great job at being more accessible especially with how standardized the buses or whatnot are, which would be another factor microtransit may sturggle in imo.

Denver actually figured out how to make microtransit work. Microtransit in Denver is run in areas lacking fixed route service, and is often used as a feeder to mainline fixed routes.

There’s still some US counties that are offering microtransit - I was looking into this the other week (don’t ask why 😂) - and in Westmoreland County, PA (east of Pittsburgh) there’s a few microtransit routes that replaced hourly routes and they plan to expand on these in the future. So there must be some positives there. Most of their routes are of the hourly variety - so, as you note, if the service is that poor and likely generating poor ridership you may as well offer the better quality service.

Micro transit is so dumb. Just lay the tracks again and start restoring our lost trolley netowrks!

I have been to cities that seemed to have robust micro transit networks (Cairo, Istanbul etc.) with terms of vans waiting for people at transit hubs and whisking them away to their destinations.

Microtransit may be great to trial-run new routes, then again, proper planning may make the trial redundant.

Lmao I had a business idea of connecting Dublin, OH (wealthy suburb) to Downtown Columbus, Short North (Main entertainment center) and the airport with fixed routes. I would be faster than COTA and more comfortable. Starting off with a few 15 seat vans. Dublin-Columbus 2-3 times in the morning and Columbus-Short North-Dublin 2-3 times in the evening then Dublin-CMH airport-Dublin in between work hours and for night flights

This is so on point!

5:45 Maybe reexamine this assumption. I would start in a city with high rider density, such as CDMX or Bogota.

6:51 bwahaha! Didn't expect that

03:37 "unique circumstances re urban density or cultural perceptions" strongly disagree there - they are primarily a product of the policies implemented (like you said yourself in a prev video iirc)