The economics of a plant that does not generate a profit becomes more and more questionable with every upgrade of the plant.
Don’t know about DC specifically - but a lot of those 1960’s-1970’s era jitney services were private entrepreneurs, unregulated and non-union. Stakeholders in the public systems ended up using enforcement to stamp them out.
There was a lot of talk in transit circles in the earlier days of Uber/Lyft about them replacing transit systems, especially low-ridership coverage routes. The problem was that private ridesharing is very expensive and very attractive compared to low-frequency bus service. So the economics didn’t really work out. When Uber started rolling out Pool, there was some slight renewed interest - but the economics of Pool were still difficult, and they never were able to resolve some of the geographic problems in door-to-door shared rides.
So the examples btresist noted are more the exception, rather than something likely to take off before autonomy. Wilson, NC (the city in the NPR article) was paying about $21 per ride for their awfully infrequent (once per hour) bus service in a small town. That’s just so expensive for so little range of coverage that you can see how a rideshare system could work. The Arlington program works because it’s fairly restrictive - limited numbers of rides, all shared (potentially), no door-to-door service (riders have to walk to a shared pick-up point and from shared drop-off points), limited hours of operation and no Sunday service, etc.
Autonomy narrows the cost gap in providing private car service compared to buses, so a broader range of transit systems and routes can be replaced at equal or lower cost.
But the point is that even with those limits, microtransport appears to be very popular; successful enough that the city wants to extend and expand the program. Given that this is a city of 400,000 that has continuously refused to support a bus system, this seems pretty remarkable.
Surprising that the home of the Dallas Cowboys is embracing socialistic transportation.
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Not all that remarkable. If you look at the ridership figures in that article, the ViaArlington service is barely used. 470K rides over four years is only about 300 rides per day. Basically it provides the equivalent of round-trip service for about 200 people. Not all that much more than a pilot program, and likely not costing the City very much money (but making some decent money for Via). Hire the right lobbyists, and you can get stuff like that through.
I fear this might just be rent-seeking behavior on the part of Via. The cynic in me suspects that there were some federal transit funds that were “left on the table” because Arlington lacks a bus system, and Via crafted a bespoke - and little-used - transit system to extract those funds. It’s a win-win for Via and Arlington (Via gets money, Arlington gets a few of their citizens some federally subsidized Uber rides), but it’s not really much of a viable transit alternative. Usually it’s streetcars that are the utterly useless transit option that extracts federal transit dollars - but this might be another one.
The peril of MaaS for incumbent transit systems is that it might actually make economic sense for a broader range of areas. Having a personal driver for door-to-door rides is ridiculously expensive compared to all but the most inefficient transit systems, but an autonomous car can lower the cost gulf between them.
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After writing my post, I decided to look into the financing for the Arlington system - and I must have strong Google Foo this morning, 'cause it was super easy to find:
The $30.2 million, two-year contract includes $22 million for the citywide Via rideshare service, as well as $180,000 for a student transportation program funded by the North Central Texas Council of Governments, $4 million for the Arlington RAPID autonomous vehicle service, and up to $4 million for potentially serving destinations in neighboring cities.
Funding for the $22 million citywide Via rideshare service will come from a mix of Federal Transit Administration funding, which will cover approximately 40% of the cost, and City funding, which will cover approximately 60% of the cost. Nearly $5 million in funding for the service is expected to come from fares that are collected as well as advertising revenue.
So, yeah - $22 million. They basically identified about $10 million in federal funds, the City matched, and they’re pulling in about $5 million in fares and ad revenue.
The system is definitely growing from the “replace our old bus line” alternative it used to be. Still, it looks like they’re running at about 600K rides per year these days (per this news report from a week ago), which still puts the cost per ride at well over $20 per trip. Which is really expensive, though likely cheaper than citywide bus service would be.
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That’s a bit unfair since the $22M is for the next two years. It does not represent the money spent in the past year for the rideshare program upon which that 600K ridership estimate is based.
A better comparison might be the 2019-2020 period when the rideshare budget was about $4M. Don’t know what the budget was for the last year but suspect it was closer to $4M than $22M.
"Arlington City Council approved a $4.05 million contract renewal for Via Rideshare that includes expanded service to southeast Arlington on Tuesday.
The renewal is for an additional year, and it will provide 13 additional vans, bringing the total number to 28, according to a city council staff report. The city will fund $2.1 million of the $4.05 million."
Arlington City Council approves $4.05M Via Rideshare renewal contract, expansion
A similar microtransit program in Sarasota FL (your part of the country) states that average cost/ride has declined to about $13.
>"The service immediately surpassed all ridership expectations. It reached 250 rides per day in a matter of weeks (after projecting only 70-80 per day) and now sees 620+ daily rides with more growth expected — all of which has been organic. Wait times decreased to below 16 minutes on average from 60+ minutes on the previous fixed route buses.
**
> Additionally, cost per ride has significantly decreased in several service zones compared to the previous fixed routes. In 2019, ridership on the fixed routes in the North Port zone generated a cost/passenger ranging from $26.81 to $29.32. With OnDemand, the average cost per ride has decreased to $13.37 (as of January 2022)."
https://ridewithvia.com/case-study/ondemand-by-sarasota-county
Anyone who has traveled in Mexico knows about colectivos.
It is an urban version of the second class “chicken” bus that run between Mexico cities. Both are culture immersion experiences.