[scott00]

I tried to figure out what the economics on this looked like from the Wilson, NC Mass Transit Fund budget: https://www.wilsonnc.org/home/showpublisheddocument/5592/638...

The numbers were confusing. Among them, for 2021-2022:

Ridership: 156,904

Revenue Mile: 315,409

Total expenses: $2,022,634

Fares collected: $3,255

The total fares and ridership from the budget do not seem consisten with the unit fares discussed in the article.

My best guess here is that the fares discussed in the article aren't showing up in the financial statements, and the ones in the statements are for another service entirely, maybe disabled transit.

Across their entire system, they're spending $12.89/ride. I'm lacking data for this assertion, but my gut is the non-microtransit stuff is fairly negligible here. Even if we knock it down to $10/ride we're still talking an 80% subsidy.

But 2019-2020, before the switch to microtransit they were at $28.03/ride. So they do seem to be picking up substantial operating efficiency, even if it's still heavily subsidized.

Covid's probably skewing that substatially...2018-2019 only $15.15 subsidy per ride. So still some improvements but not that amazing. And they were collecting $0.73/ride of revenue, so that subsidy rate was 95%.