Transit officials are poised to pick up the tab for another six months of funding on-demand rides around Second Ward and Third Ward.
If approved by the Metropolitan Transit Authority board on Thursday, the agency would spend $216,000 to allow the nonprofit Evolve Houston to continue operating shuttles Monday through Friday, within two roughly three-square-mile areas. Evolve contracts with RYDE, which uses electric shuttles to deliver free rides within the zone from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
“It could be a one minute ride or a 15 minute ride,” said Michael Andrade, Metro’s interim vice president of specialized services and operations.
Those so-called microtransit trips around a neighborhood have become of increasing interest to Metro. The transit agency board chair, Elizabeth Brock, is a founding board member and is a former chair of Evolve Houston.
Metro officials said linking undeserved neighborhoods to better transit is a core priority of upcoming efforts, as transit officials pivot away from major projects such as the $2.2 billion University Corridor and toward smaller programs to improve bus shelters, increase service on some bus lines and in communities where smaller trips can be of big value to riders.
See here for some background. I really am fine with this, and I agree that it’s a good way to extend Metro services, in the same way that integrating bike share would. (Theoretically, anyway, since Metro seems to have forgotten that exists.) Let’s just be clear that if the goal here is to increase ridership, this has very limited potential. The service only exists for eight hours a day. People who want to use it have to use the RYDE app to schedule a ride ahead of time (I don’t know how far ahead of time is required). RYDE shuttles currently cannot accommodate people in wheelchairs. The service currently only exists in these two parts of town.
All of this means that the impact of RYDE is also quite limited. The story says that it accommodates about 2000 rides per month. (The president of Evolve Houston claims this equals about 2,500 passengers, as a single ride may involve multiple riders.) As a point of comparison, the much-maligned Silver Line BRT provides about 1,000 trips per workday, which means something like 20K-25K per month, or eight to ten times what RYDE does. I’m sure RYDE could do more if it were to be expanded further, but then the Silver Line was projected to have about 8,000 trips per workday under the assumption that the Universities line existed, which would be 150K-200K per month. Metro is certainly working to ensure that never happens.
Again, I do think this is a worthwhile thing for Metro to do. I just don’t think it should be anything like their crowning achievement. I’m not sure how contracting with RYDE would be different than providing subsidized Uber or Lyft accounts for the people who currently use RYDE. My issue here remains Metro’s glaring lack of vision, compounded by its startling dishonesty about its change in direction. RYDE services should be in addition to the things Metro has promised to do, not in place of them.
I like this idea a lot but once again if metro wants to increase ridership why not do it incrementally if the goal is fiscal responsibility which metro is well established in that arena. The community connectors do fairly well especially Missouri City which shows that the suburbs are desperate for services akin. The BOOST network should be the basis for increasing/upgrading service. With already upgraded stops and electronic gps time signage it would be way more easy and affordable to convert say the 82, 54 or 56 into future BRT routes. And with the University line i’m so lost atp because they took the BRT buses and put them on the 63 Fondren. But why not set up a basic route that copies the BRT route only stopping where designated stations would be using the brt buses we have like 8 of them at least and artics for remainder needed. Yes it wont be brt but if it ran for a year-18 months see if the ridership justifies upgrading the service. Then upgrade it in sections with timed signal upgrades where most needed and then adding dedicated right of way. Why do we skip steps when it comes to very ambitious and expensive projects.