[erjiang]

In my past life I built and sold dispatch software for microtransit / on-demand rides. (UberPool as a service, more or less.)

What this article doesn’t say:

* Many, many cities have something similar already, but only for riders with disabilities. (“paratransit”) You need to schedule your ride the day before, but they will take you from door to door.

* The cost per ride is quite high: more than $20 per ride, often. This cost is borne by the city, while riders pay little to nothing. In very few cases does it make financial sense - most places aren’t replacing their buses with microtransit.

* The best utilization I’ve seen is on campuses, where there are a fixed set of stops in a small region, and a large population of people who can’t or don’t want to drive (maybe due to limited parking).

[anyoneworks]

Istanbul has an oddly good system, where vans run a set route, but you can ask for them to stop wherever. I feel like this would be a better balance that would allow for greater coverage, while also lowering the cost of equipment and in the very least, eliminating the need to walk as much to a stop. It's also faster because it's basically a large taxi, so once the van is full, you only stop where the passengers need. This is only a supplement there, but I think it would work better than the majority of bus set-ups currently used.