MONTPELIER — Green Mountain Transit has learned in the first 18 months of its two-year MyRide pilot project, and the company is making adjustments to deal with accessibility challenges and ride delays.
MyRide is Green Mountain Transit’s first experiment with microtransit, said Jamie Smith, director of marketing and planning. The service has value, according to a full evaluation, but cannot adequately replace regular bus routes in a rural state.
The program operates as an on-demand service, similar to Uber or Lyft apps, but through public funding. Green Mountain Transit introduced MyRide in January 2021.
“Vermont is interested in these types of micro-mobility services,” Smith said. “But obviously, given that they’re not normally implemented into cities as small as Montpelier, it really was intended to be a two-year look at whether or not this model would be successful in Vermont.”
One benefit with MyRide, Smith said, “is every time that bus is in motion, it has a passenger on board,” while its traditional fixed-route buses had to operate on a published schedule, regardless of whether anyone was on the bus.
But one drawback with MyRide is that people in some demographic groups lack the technology needed for the on-demand service — that is, either a smartphone app or a phone to call to schedule a ride.
“Technology access is a challenge for lower-income, older adults who just don’t have the bandwidth or wherewithal or financial feasibility to have a cellphone, for instance, to be able to download the app and request a ride,” said Sarah Lipton, executive director at the Montpelier Senior Activity Center. “That’s just not something that a lot of folks have.”
On the other hand, Lipton said, she has heard from other people that the service has worked effectively for them, including her own father, who frequently uses the service to attend doctor’s appointments.
One possible solution to the cell phone problem, said Elizabeth Parker, chief financial officer for the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition, is installing public transit phones in high-traffic areas for the on-demand service. Her organization strives to form community coalitions of people interested in brainstorming solutions to local issues, and pursuing plans to put the solutions in motion.
MyRide was a collaborative idea involving Green Mountain Transit, local government and community advocates, said Jon Moore, general manager of Green Mountain Transit. The pilot project coincided with Covid-19, which affected how much the service is used, Moore said.
In the long run, “we’re hopeful that the more convenient service structure, the on-demand nature, will attract more people to the service, which will help offset single-occupancy vehicle use and create a net environmental benefit,” Moore said.
Green Mountain Transit worked with a MyRide advisory group in setting up the service, including people from the Montpelier Senior Activity Center and other stakeholders, to ensure people in the community could help shape MyRide. It also provided a series of educational offerings on how to use the technology, but not as many as intended because of the pandemic. This included an outreach campaign to senior citizens and transit-dependent riders, inclusion of information about MyRide in the Senior Activity Center newsletter and more.
What the service evaluation found
The service evaluation found that 46 percent of scheduled rides took people to the area near Central Vermont Medical Center and the Berlin Mall, which was served previously by one of three closed-circuit bus routes that MyRide replaced.
The high demand in that area led to bottlenecks and ride delays for people booking rides to other areas of Montpelier, cutting into the availability of any of the three MyRide vehicles for downtown passengers.
The evaluation produced a number of recommendations for improving MyRide. Green Mountain Transit hopes to adopt several of them during the fiscal year that starts July 1. The timeline will depend on the approval of federal funding requests.
One change would reinstate a fixed-schedule MyRide route serving the hospital-Berlin Mall area, since nearly half of current passengers use that route, while the other two MyRide vehicles would remain app-activated.
MyRide uses cutaway buses, and while the vehicles themselves are not net-zero on the sustainability scale, Smith said, they’re twice as fuel-efficient as the full-sized transit buses used in Burlington.
MyRide cutaway buses can hold 18 passengers at a time and get 8 miles per gallon of fuel, while the full-sized buses get 4 mpg.
How many and how much?
The average MyRide trip costs $16.75 for just over 3 miles of travel, according to Bloomberg’s reporting; that is more costly than the bus system that existed before the pandemic, but less costly per ride once the pandemic kicked in.
Before the pandemic, Montpelier bus rides cost about $11 per passenger. Then ridership plunged when the pandemic hit in March 2020, and the per-passenger cost of a bus ride rose to about $26.50 by June 2020.
“I think when you’re talking about a new service, you’re going to find that, in the beginning, it is more expensive,” said Bonnie Waninger, Washington County board chair for Green Mountain Transit, since costs are gauged on dollars per passenger, and it takes a while to build up passenger numbers. “I think we’ll want to see year three before we really make any judgments about is it worth it? Is it not? Because you’re still tweaking to serve the riders and what they’re asking for.”
Montpelier’s fixed-schedule bus service provided 51,737 rides in the fiscal year running from July 2018 through June 2019, and only 27,817 rides in the fiscal year that followed — when the pandemic arrived in March.
In 2020, from July to December, the fixed-schedule bus service provided 10,674 rides; MyRide launched in January and provided 12,501 rides through June.
In fiscal year 2022 so far, from July 1 until now, MyRide has provided 30,594 rides.
The program currently operates 18-passenger buses but, once those buses surpass their six-year lifespan, Green Mountain Transit wants to downsize to more comfortable minivans equipped with wheelchair ramps, Moore said. The minivans would be more fuel-efficient than the buses. The program also has federal funding for two small electric buses, which are awaiting federal testing.
Green Mountain Transit is wrapping up its application for funding through the Vermont Agency of Transportation for the coming fiscal year, and aims to acquire several minivans within the next year — if supply chain issues can be avoided.
Green Mountain Transit also has been awarded federal money to buy two small electric buses, which are now going through federal testing, Moore said. “The smaller size and electric operations would help to improve the sustainability aspect,” he said.
“As gas prices go up, it’s definitely pushing people to think about what their options are,” said Parker at Sustainable Montpelier Coalition. “This right now is free, and the Legislature seems very determined to keep it free for a period of time going forward, so you can’t beat that price.”
’It’s just the best deal’
Peter Watt, a frequent user of MyRide and a teacher at Montpelier High School, appreciates the free service, but said he would gladly pay a dollar or two per ride to keep MyRide going, if necessary.
“It’s just the best deal to have it in tiny little north-central Vermont in the middle of nowhere in Montpelier,” Watt said. “I could see something like this in suburban Boston or suburban New York City, but there’s probably too many people — so maybe this is the perfect area — but to have it in such a small, rural area is amazing.”
Watt is especially grateful for how friendly the drivers are and other unanticipated community-building aspects of the service.
“I’m great friends with Mark (a MyRide driver),” he said. “We chat and for some reason he’s a regular on my route, my 7 o’clock, but yeah, a couple of the other guys, we’ve chatted about different things.”
Watt works in special education at the high school and has also enjoyed getting to know colleagues who share rides to work on his daily route.
“In Covid, we were all paranoid,” he said. “Now it’s fun to have other people on there and I say hi to a bunch of people as they get on this because I’ve been getting on with them for the last two years.”
Watt never used the fixed-route buses that preceded the MyRide system, and says the convenience of MyRide is the primary reason his household has only one car, which he appreciates both in terms of decreased expenses and environmental impacts.
“We don’t have a garage, so our car, our single, one, bright orange car, sits right out where people look at it, and there’s only one of them and we’re so proud of ourselves,” he said. “I like to set a good role model for the community, and solar on my visible roof is one, and one car in the visible driveway, no garage, is my other one.”
However, some users are less thrilled about the on-demand service. Rebecca Sheppard of Montpelier does not use MyRide, as she finds delays and a lack of predictability pose challenges for her volunteering schedule.
“I don’t want to be there at 9:30; I don’t want to be there at 10; I want to be there at 9,” she said. “I see a lot of buses go by my street and they have one person in it and that doesn’t seem very efficient to me. I used it a lot when it was a regular bus service and I was very happy with it.”
However, the evaluation found that 91% of MyRide performance is on-time, with riders picked up within five minutes of the communicated pickup time. The service has met 97% of demand, with most unfulfilled requests occurring at the end of service hours between 5 and 6 p.m.
Sheppard said the convenience of a fixed-schedule bus route was part of the reason she bought her house. She is thrilled about the prospect of bringing back the fixed route to the hospital-mall area.
“I’m not particularly happy driving into town anymore,” she said. “I’ m 77 years old. Sometimes people want to try something that’ s really different … it meets some people’ s needs some of the time, but I think a regular bus route you could actually count on would meet more people’s needs.”
Applying lessons in Barre
Green Mountain Transit is looking to launch a similar microtransit service in Barre, but wants to ensure it does not replace existing fixed-schedule bus routes, after seeing what happened in Montpelier.
“A full replacement of our fixed-route service is not exactly the answer,” Smith said. Had that been evident before the changes in Montpelier, Green Mountain Transit “probably wouldn’t have done a full replacement of fixed-route service, but something more supplemental.”
As Vermont considers expanding microtransit to other regions, Smith said the Green Mountain Transit lessons are important.
“A fair amount of people really liked the ability to call and book their trip, and they like the on-demand nature of the service, so it’s sort of split,” she said. “We don’t want to do harm to any passengers that need our services, for sure. But it’s worth noting that every month we do see a great number of new users in our monthly ridership.”
Green Mountain Transit plans to distribute a MyRide passenger survey in the coming months to get a more clear idea of how many users of the previous system stopped using public transportation with the adoption of microtransit and how the microtransit system can continue to be improved moving forward.
“We can make reasonable accommodations for folks and some people just don’t like it,” Montpelier Mayor Anne Watson said. “They still may not opt to use the options that we’re making available to them, but my hope is that they do. My hope is that we’ll find sufficient accommodations for everyone and that people will take advantage of those.”
Watson personally uses the service to get to and from work and appointments and said her family was able to sell a car because of MyRide.
“Everyone’s being proactive about facing the issues that it has and finding solutions for people,” she said. “Especially for launching this in the middle of a pandemic, it’s going really very well.”
Though MyRide was intended as a two-year pilot, Smith, Moore, Parker, Waninger and Watson all hope that the pilot will be judged successful and that Montpelier and other regions will make the system permanent in the years to come.
“When there’s change, it can be difficult when you’re, for lack of a better word, experimenting, innovating, trying to see how you can do it different and improve the system,” Waninger said. “There are always stumbling blocks, and you try and adjust to change as it goes. And I think that’s what GMT is doing now.”
This story was updated June 6 at 12:06 p.m. to correct information about the number of MyRide routes.
