Uber for Public Transport

Everyone knows that barring few cities like NY, North America has pathetic public transport. It dwarfs substantially compared to Europe and even Asia. The reasons for the underdevelopment of public transport are many, including strong oil and car lobbies. But one of the reasons is that the population is spread out in North America with sparsely populated suburbs and last-mile connectivity is an issue. Can public transport authorities turn to an Uber-like model to address this issue?

First, let us look at how suburban homes make public transport unviable. With a large geographical spread, public buses can ply on only certain routes. If buses go to every suburban house, then there will be empty runs and commuting time will increase. On the other hand, since buses ply only on main roads, suburban residents have to walk a kilometer or more to access public transport. Some mass public transport systems address this by having massive parking lots near the stations or stops so that the suburban residents can drive to the stops and then take public transport. But this is inefficient as it still requires some amount of private transport, i.e., car. This situation does not occur in densely populated areas in Europe or Asia as public transport is a small walk away from one’s house.

One of the possible solutions is Uber-like car services operated by public transport companies. These Uber-like cars will pick-up the suburban commuters from their homes and take them to the bus stop. So just like Uber, a suburban commuter will call the ‘Public Uber’ from App to take him or her to the nearest bus stop. This will solve the problem of taking the walk to public transport (which can be brutal in the winters on the West coast) and at the same time, the buses will get more customers to make them viable. Considering the thinly spread population, the incremental cost of operating these ‘Public Ubers’ will be limited (though it will be best to run the numbers). Also, as a larger portion of the commute will still be by buses, they will be cost-efficient for commuters as well.

To summarize, by using Uber-like shared rides, public transport will address the problem of last-mile connectivity and can garner more ridership as well. It will be interesting to see if it actually materializes.

PS: I thought of this idea earlier this year during the discussion with Ranjit on Twitter on the topic of public transport (https://twitter.com/ninadparab/status/1099034248105869318)