Just found this ad through APTA‘s members-only Knowledge Gateway, from Passio Technologies. Ignore the words. Look at the picture.
But that’s not a photo of microtransit. That is a photo of an elite fixed route commuter bus called Leap that existed in San Francisco for a few months in 2016-17. I wrote about that project here. You’ll recognize the bus from the video at that link. I wonder what the folks at Passio were thinking.
Here’s what they were thinking:
It’s hard to find a photo of “successful” microtransit. Virtually all microtransit vehicles are empty most of the time, and then occupied only by 1-2 people the next plurality of the time. But if there are only 1-2 people in the photo, people will ask “how is that better than Uber?” So they picked a transity photo that still looks “special,” i.e. “not just a bus.” And they found the Leap photo.
I noticed that, too! Oh the irony…
I wonder if you could improve ridership just by introducing an engaging or competitive element to bus services. Say you have 3 bus routes each with a 60 minute round trip time with layover. All depart at xx00 each hour. Then you have one additional bus, and an ongoing online poll where people can vote for which route they would prefer to depart at xx30 the following hour.