The Potential of Microtransit Shuttle Services — Part 1
A few years back, I was in the early stages of researching and planning for a new form of mass transportation in the Korean market. Through the research I came across the concept of microtransit services and was immediately intrigued by the potential it had in an outdated public transportation system.
Although the project I was working on was eventually dropped during the development phase due to a shift in strategy, I still wanted to share my thoughts on the potential they have and how such services should be operated in order to compete with other modes of transportation.
Bear in mind that I am a UX designer and I am approaching the subject on a conceptual level, not really getting into the technical details.
So, What is Microtransit?
I found my favorite definition of microtransit on Wikipedia, where it summarizes all the basic requirements in a clear and concise way.
Microtransit is a form of Demand Responsive Transit (DRT).
This technology enabled transit service offers flexible routing and/or flexible scheduling of minibus vehicles.
Microtransit providers use instant exchange of information, enabling an extra real-time matching of demand (trip) and supply (driven vehicle) on top of an in-advance matching, which extends the accessibility of the transit service.
Possible pick-up/drop-off stops are usually pre-defined to allow better routes’ optimization.
Conceptually, microtransit fits somewhere between private individual transportation (cars or taxicabs) and public mass transit (bus).
After reading through this definition, the last part where it mentions microtransit as fitting somewhere between private and public transit led me to the first part of my research, the positioning of microtransit in the existing transportation market.
The Positioning of Microtransit Services
Microtransit services are essentially competing for the same pool of riders with existing private and public forms of transportation. With this in mind, I conducted a simple comparative analysis between the different forms of transportation and laid it out in the following sequences of images.
So let’s start with the following question.
1. How is the ride experience different between current forms of private and public transportation?
In the image above, I listed the benefits of private vehicles and taxis on the left and public transportation on the right. It should be clear to most people that private transportation has a superior ride experience compared to public transportation, providing faster transport, comfortable seating, and shorter waiting times.
2. Then why do so many people use public transportation?
Because of the costs.
If you’re riding a taxi, you are paying for the time expended by the driver by yourself or the few people you are riding with. In public transportation, you are distributing the costs of the driver with all the people you’re riding with. The same logic applies to other operation costs, including gas, maintenance, garage space, and more.
In the case of owning and driving your own vehicle, you have to buy a car, pay for car insurance, pay for gas, and learn to drive. These are all costs and valid reasons that can discourage people from owning their own vehicles.
In such a context the pros and cons of public and private transportation are clear, especially when considering costs with the rider experience.
3. Private transportation is costlier and has a better ride experience, while public transportation is uncomfortable but cheaper.
These two forms of transportation are, on a conceptual level, representing the two ends of the spectrum for ride experience and cost.
Then…why don’t we try to achieve a balance of both, something in the middle?
4. Between private and public transportation.
At least in South Korea, where I was residing in when working on this project, a good example of something in the middle is mid-sized shuttles (10~20 seaters), often used by kindergartens and taekwondo academies.
Although I don’t know where shuttle services stand exactly in terms of price or quality compared to private and public transport, I am making a safe assumption that both the ride experience and the fees paid by riders are somewhere between the two, based on personal experience and observation.
Then I get to the question of why don’t I see more shuttle services around? Don’t people want the best of both worlds? something not as expensive as taxis but more comfortable than public transportation?
After researching a few shuttle services in Korea, I found that many of these companies were using very manual reservation systems and most app-based services were overpriced and required a reservation at least a day in advance (not really on-demand). With these pain points and limitations, shuttles services were bound to have a limited presence in the market.
Then…
5. How are Microtransit Services different from Shuttle Services?
Microtransit services are the faster, more flexible, and cost-effective versions of existing shuttle services, with these efficiencies primarily gained through automation. Essentially a service similar to Uber Pool and Lyft Line, but with more riders in bigger vehicles.
Sounds good, but still, why would such a service be more competitive in the market?
The next section gets into more detail about the factors that make shuttle services potentially more competitive in the market.
The Competitiveness of Microtransit
Operation Costs
Starting with operation costs, let’s say for instance that there is a demand for a 30km trip from point A to point B with 30 people.
Referring to the scenario visualized above, it is cheaper to provide a ride for 30 people with one large bus than to use three smaller shuttles, which would require three times the number of drivers and gas to transport the same number of people.
Ok, so it’s clear that shuttles are more experience to drive a big group of people from point A to B compared to buses. Then why are shuttles better? Aren’t they more expensive? Am I trying to prove against the idea of microtransit services?
Not really, because the additional costs allows shuttles to have higher…
Route Dispersibility
I don’t know if this is the right term to use, but essentially a shuttle is a bus that is cut up into smaller pieces that can have different trips executed simultaneously. Imagine a school bus that later sections off into three smaller buses to go into different directions so that people can get home faster and drop off closer home.
Compared to larger buses, this dispersibility is an inherent advantage of shuttles that comes with the higher costs of operating more vehicles for the same passenger capacity. This dispersibility has to be utilized as much as possible to overcome the higher costs.
Decentralization of Stops and Vehicle Capacity
The higher dispersibility discussed above makes the decentralization of pickup and drop-off points more possible, allowing riders to ride or get off at points that are closer to their departure or final destinations compared to larger buses.
To visualize what I described above, I created a visual comparison of centralized and decentralized (dispersed) stops for large buses and lower capacity shuttles.
- Centralized Stops with Mass Transit
This format requires longer trips to and from the bus stop. This is often the case for long distance buses, similar to trains and airplanes where getting to the train station or airport is sometimes half the trip. - Decentralized Stops with Mass Transit:
What many public buses in cities are doing, where there are more stops for shorter distances compared to long-distance buses. However, this leads to longer travel times and inefficiencies due to the more frequent stops. - Centralized Stops with Microtransit:
A case where shuttles services operate similarly to long-distance buses with higher costs. This is what microtransit services have to avoid in order to become competitive. If not, they will end up providing the experience of a mass transit bus with higher costs. - Decentralized Stops with Microtransit:
A format that requires less number stops with shorter walking distances from/to the pickup and drop-off points. This is what shuttle services need to achieve to take advantage of its dispersibility.
As described above, if microtransit services are to remain competitive they have to utilize its dispersibility to give riders the added benefits of shorter walking distances, less crowding, less number of stops, and faster travel, especially when it’s costlier to operate.
I also visualized the factors that determine the individual ride experience between buses, taxis, and shuttles in the image below.
With the benefits above, microtransit services have the potential to position themselves as a transportation option with higher rider comfort and shorter travel times than buses while charging more affordable fares compared to taxis.
And this positioning is only possible if shuttle services are able to maximize its dispersibility in the form of decentralized stops to provide the added comforts of microtransit services, as they are costlier to operate and charging a higher price than public buses has to be convincing to users.
In Summary of Part 1
- Shuttles are costlier to operate than buses when comparing total rider capacity. Costs for 30 riders in 1 Bus < Costs for 30 riders in 3 Shuttles
- However, shuttles have higher dispersibility compared to buses. 1 Trip with 1 Bus < 3 Trips with 3 Shuttles (simultaneously)
- With higher dispersibility, shuttles have the ability to provide more comfortable door to door rides that require less walking and shorter travel times than public buses.
- Microtransit services have to utilize this higher dispersibility to make itself more competitive in terms of ride quality compared to buses and price compared to taxis.
With the concept and potential of microtransit services explained in the first part of this post, to further investigate if what I theorized is really happening in the market and to see what makes a successful microtransit service, I conducted an analysis of existing microtransit services in Korea and the US in the next part of this post.
If you have any questions concerning part 1 please feel free to reach out to me or comment below.
