Transit Desperately Needs Innovation. Why Pick on Microtransit?
On-demand van programs are frequently dismissed as too costly and inefficient. But they can have a role to play in bringing riders back to public transportation.
The Denver Connector is one of several on-demand mobility services offered in US cities, often in partnership with public transit agencies.
Photographer: Hyoung Chang/Denver Post via Getty Images
Once hailed as an innovative urban mobility solution, these days microtransit sometimes feels more like a punching bag. Critics often decry the concept as too expensive or too difficult to scale. These naysayers also claim that microtransit — which typically consists of a publicly offered on-demand flexible route service in vehicles smaller than a bus — will eventually need to look more like fixed-route transit or limit trips. Even when transportation pundits concede that microtransit makes sense in certain parts of some cities, they argue that those are sprawling places where transit shouldn’t be heavily subsidized anyway.
These arguments aren’t new. Many seem to be constructed to take down microtransit rather than assist transit agencies in figuring out solutions to boost ridership numbers that have been falling for decades on a per capita basis. As transit agencies across the US work hard to recover from the pandemic, a more nuanced perspective may be helpful. In fact, these criticisms raise important questions for public transportation with implications beyond microtransit alone.