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…