Pleading with your neighborhood Uber driver to let you and your nine drunk friends into the back of their Honda Civic may soon be a thing of the past. With the stratospheric rise of Uber and its competitors has come a new form of urban transportation known as “microtransit,” which falls somewhere between private car or taxi use and fixed forms of public transportation. Some have suggested that microtransit is the future of public transportation, linking those who need travel with cheap, on-demand mass transit. The rise of microtransit services could very well be a good thing, getting people out of their cars and into more efficient mass transit that could reduce congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. But the new services could also undercut existing public transportation services. By poaching wealthy customers, microtransit could create a two-tiered transit system where the less affluent are consigned to inefficient service. The road the industry takes is likely dependent on the degree to which it collaborates with existing public services and recognizes its own responsibilities to the public.
Microtransit services can be divided into two broad categories. Services like Chariot and Bridj operate commuter shuttles in certain areas based on demand while services like UberPool and Lyft Line allow a passenger to share a ride with others nearby who have a similar destination. Currently, most microtransit companies operate in only a few cities, but their backers hope that these services will one day do for buses what Uber did for taxis. While similar systems of informal ridesharing, like New York’s dollar vans, have existed for decades, new technology has made it much easier to realize the dream of flexible, on-demand transit. The results have been startling: The start-up platform Angel List’s public transportation category, for example, lists 177 projects and includes more than 1,000 ventures in the more general transportation category.
An example of both the growth of and potential problems with these new transportation services is Bridj, which currently only operates in the Greater Boston and Washington, DC areas. The emerging start up runs commuter shuttles from largely wealthy residential neighborhoods to downtown and back, hoping to gradually lure riders away from public transit or driving by providing slightly quicker, more comfortable service. For many microtransit start up, attracting regular riders is imperative to keeping prices low while still turning a profit, and directly competing with traditional public transportation is the easiest way to do this. Direct competition might not be such a problem if the companies’ operations alleviated existing transport inequalities. But right now, Bridj only serves affluent neighborhoods that are already well supported by public transit. And while there’s no doubt that microtransit, driven by its desire for regular customers, has the potential to improve transportation in underserved areas, there’s also no guarantee that this will happen.
Bridj’s service area in Boston epitomizes this misperception. Microtransit services often tout themselves as a means to increase urban mobility in underserved areas, but they usually have the biggest impact in neighborhoods already lush with transit options. Case in point: One of Bridj’s main routes transports commuters between Brookline and downtown Boston, a route already covered by the MBTA’s Green Line subway. Uber, facing similar criticism in its clash with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, asserted that it served areas lacking traditional taxis and good transit links. An analysis from FiveThirtyEight, however, concluded that both taxis and Uber primarily serve wealthy areas in Manhattan or outside the city, where public transit is already a good option. So far, it seems that microtransit isn’t expanding transportation options in a meaningful way, because it fails to reach those who need it most.
More than simply reflecting the status quo of transit access, microtransit firms could in fact worsen it. If the industry continues to compete directly with public transportation, in an attempt to appeal to high-income passengers, the competition could potentially lead to diminished public service. This could result in a two-tiered transit system with fast, frequent, and comfortable service only for those who can afford it. Such equity concerns also raise the specter of exclusivity. It’s not hard to imagine these services trying to avoid certain types of customers in order to appear exclusive, but it would represent an alarming failure, since “city streets and curbs are civic spaces that must be managed in the public interest,” as Eric Jaffe of The Atlantic put it.
Luckily, this worst-case scenario is far from inevitable. If microtransit services cooperate with existing transit agencies and accept their obligation to the public good, they have the potential to both solve the vexing “last-mile” problem and lessen current levels of congestion. The last-mile problem refers to the fact that many businesses and residences aren’t within easy walking distance of a stop or station. This gap is difficult for traditional transit operators to fill effectively, but microtransit services could easily address it, augmenting traditional transit networks by attracting new riders and making those services more accessible.
An integrated microtransit and public services network would have other positive effects. For one, such a network could encourage some of the three-quarters of Americans that take private vehicles to work to switch to alternate forms of transit. Although limited, the evidence so far suggests that microtransit is having an impact on car ownership. A University of California, Berkeley study that compared car ownership rates before and after the introduction of car-sharing programs found that people who use microtransit own significantly fewer vehicles than those who do not. Moreover, effective microtransit could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The jury is still out on the overall environmental impact of microtransit. If managed inefficiently, the services could actually make congestion worse, with shared vehicles covering more mileage than the private car trips they’re ostensibly replacing. However, if it can shrink the share of Americans commuting privately, microtransit could help reduce congestion and lower greenhouse emissions while simultaneously increasing efficiency for consumers.
Critical to microtransit’s successful marriage to other forms of transportation is cooperation with existing public transit agencies. There are already signs of progress on this front: One of the earliest microtransit services — Kutsuplus in Helsinki, Finland — is actually financed by the municipal government. Bridj has indicated that it will prioritize working with city governments, and it is one of the few start ups that has joined the American Public Transportation Association to open a dialogue with traditional city agencies. Another preemptive solution for clashes between microtransit and existing services would be the creation of public oversight bodies responsible for coordinating all the various services, similar to an entity that already exists in Denmark. Cities could also adopt a tactic pioneered by San Francisco and charge microtransit companies for the curb space they congest while waiting for or discharging passengers. These fees would price out excess traffic and keep the market down to sustainable numbers. Encouraging microtransit companies to fill the last-mile gap and creating a unified payment system could allow city agencies to subsidize less affluent riders while also creating the efficient, integrated network that urban planners have always dreamed of. The best practice would probably combine all of these measures, thereby fully harnessing the potential of microtransit to improve urban life for everyone.
Just as Uber, Lyft, and similar start ups shook the taxi industry, the new microtransit companies and services look poised to repeat the trick in the realm of public transportation. The possible impact of these new services is astounding, and, if managed correctly, they could transform urban mobility as we know it. Signs of progress are already evident. Dallas Area Rapid Transit has launched a feature in its ticketing app that allows riders to access Uber directly, simplifying connections at transit stations. Transit agencies in Los Angeles and Minneapolis will cover Uber fares as part of their “guaranteed ride home” programs. Seattle and Tampa are working to coordinate services with Uber and other microtransit companies in order to solve that pesky last-mile problem. If cities act now and work with the new microtransit services, they could improve access for their customers and perhaps even attract new riders. There are encouraging signs of progress, but there’s still a long way to go for microtransit to realize its full potential by cooperating — not competing — with existing methods of public transportation.
Art by Grace Zhang