By David Larson

Public transit has long suffered from a popularity paradox — urban voters enthusiastically support its existence at the ballot box but avoid it like the plague when they travel. There are exceptions, like the New York City Subway and DC Metro light-rail systems, but North Carolina’s main transit systems aren’t among them.

Charlotte’s CATS bus system, for example, lost about 75 percent of its ridership in the decade between 2012 and 2022, according to the Charlotte Ledger, even as the city’s population has boomed. This trend was certainly exacerbated by COVID, but it started well beforehand.

In 2022, when WFAE showed the collapsing numbers to the mayor and to city council members who wanted to increase the funding, they didn’t believe the ridership could have fallen from 24 million to 6 million. Councilman Malcolm Graham incredulously asked, “Where did all the people go?”

Two years later, the ridership has recovered some, but the budget has gone up too, to $261 million from $110 million. WFAE reports that in 2014, the city spent $3.70 per passenger to move 30 million people, and 10 years later, they’re spending $16 per passenger to move 16.5 million people.

N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore, for his part, dismissed a recent Charlotte transportation budget of $13.5 billion because it spent so much on buses and bike lanes, saying ” bus ridership after COVID is at abysmally low levels” and that they “need to be looking at road construction” instead.

At less than $4 a person, a bus system seems reasonable. But more than quadruple the price per passenger for a system fewer and fewer use, and it might be time to look for alternatives.

And Tar Heel ingenuity being what it is, many municipalities have basically said, “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just pay for their Uber, or maybe run an on-demand system similar to Uber ourselves?”

Progressive magazine the American Prospect recently ran a headline on this that read, “North Carolina Fuels a Microtransit Revolution.” Sure, there is a Canadian town that did away with their buses and contracted with Uber. Some towns in Minnesota have done the same. But North Carolina has multiple “on-demand microtransit” systems across the state, as can be seen in the chart from N.C. Department of Transportation below.

On the NCDOT’s dedicated page to this growing trend, they say:

On-demand microtransit is similar to private on-demand services, rideshare allowing riders to book and pay for trips online, whether using personal computers or personal mobile devices connected to the internet. Riders are typically picked up at their preferred origin and taken to their preferred destination (curb-to-curb service).

The dark blue stars on the map, as well as a few entire counties in the Wilmington area, have advanced to the revenue phase. But others are coming online now in earlier phases of planning or exploration.

One city that stood out early, and which has been highlighted frequently as a success story, is Wilson. The small city of 50,000 an hour east of Raleigh sidelined its bus service in 2020 for on-demand vans instead, contracting with a New York company called Via. In the Associated Press feature on its experiment, it notes that as transit ridership has plummeted in other cities, Wilson has seen skyrocketing interest from their citizens, who pay a flat $2.50 rate for a ride anywhere in the city.

The AP quoted one rider named David Bunn, 64, who used to walk 5 miles to get groceries, despite two broken discs in his back, because of the inconvenience and wait times of the bus system.

“I don’t have to walk everywhere I want to go now,” said Bunn. “They come pick me up, they’re respectful and they’re very professional. It’s a great asset to Wilson and a great service to me.”

The city said a lot of the users are headed to jobs they would otherwise not be able to get to. They also said there was a social stigma of riding the bus that isn’t there with Via.

Gastonia is another recent adopter of on-demand microtransit, making the decision this January. The city, just west of Charlotte, decided to phase out its buses and go all-in on the new model.

The mayor, Richard Franks, said in a press release, “We saw a need to provide on-demand microtransit transportation to our residents as our city continues to grow. This move away from fixed-route buses will provide cost savings and will increase accessibility for everyone in our community.”

While small cities were the first to jump on board, more urban areas are now jumping on board. In the Triangle, municipalities like Morrisville, Cary, Rolesville, Wake Forest, and Knightdale are making moves to incorporate microtransit.

And the Charlotte CATS system, whose bus ridership issues we highlighted earlier, is even jumping on the bandwagon. The Mecklenburg municipalities highlighted in gray in the chart below may see microtransit systems available as early as late 2024 or early 2025.

Much of the planning for these systems is in early stages and a lot could change, but overall, it’s an exciting trend. On-demand microtransit solves many of the intractable problems of traditional transit systems.

Take, for example, the notorious “last-mile” problem, where people are able to get generally in the area they need to be, but have to walk or take a taxi for the remainder. This is no longer an issue with door-to-door service.

Also, there is the perennial problem of government waste, with inefficient, sprawling systems of trains and buses eating up budgets without much accountability. Most of the microtransit systems seem to operate through contracts with companies. That has at least two benefits. First, the government doesn’t have to build and maintain any infrastructure beyond the already-existing road system. And second, there will be competition to get the contracts, which will incentivize companies to perform well and keep prices down.

There are already many companies lining up to offer municipalities this service. Uber has an entire section of its website dedicated to their public transportation voucher system, as well as a 50-page report on their “Public transportation 2030 vision.”

If on-demand microtransit catches on across the country and replaces light rail and buses, North Carolina will have had a major role in the story. Considering our role in flight, it wouldn’t be the first time we helped revolutionize transportation.

David Larson is opinion editor of Carolina Journal where this first appeared.