North Carolina Town Swaps Fixed-Route Buses for On-Demand Microtransit

The small town of Wilson, North Carolina is experimenting with completely replacing its bus system with a publicly subsidized, on-demand microtransit van service. As Jeff McMurray reports in SourceOne, the service provides door-to-door service for $2.50 per ride.

According to the article, “Wilson landed federal and state infrastructure grants to support the shared, public rides residents summon — usually within 15 minutes — through a service operating like Uber and Lyft, but at a fraction of the cost to riders.”

In many rural areas, microtransit has “emerged as a great equalizer in the battle for infrastructure dollars that has traditionally pit the bus, train and subway needs of urban areas against the road construction projects sought by rural communities.”

In Wilson, the new service provides a crucial lifeline to local jobs. “More than half the rides are for residents using the vans to ‘maintain or get employment,’ said Rodger Lentz, Wilson’s assistant city manager who pushed for the switch.”

The service, known as RIDE, was developed through a partnership with microtransit company Via, which operates similar programs in many U.S. cities and communities. Kai Monast, associate director of the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at North Carolina State University, predicts that “although Wilson will remain committed to microtransit, the community eventually will return in part to a fixed-route system, adjusted heavily from the data gathered through years of on-demand van rides.”