Americans will do anything but build consistent public transport.

Short gain compared to long term investment right here.

This is akin to discovering that you can hire freelance developers from developing nations for 1/10 of the cost, but then after 3 years... your whole system is a spaghetti mess and the rebuild cost many times that.

Because they're now having to switch back over to buses anyways.

This isn't a solution. This is a small city making a choice that's hostile to the environment and, if anything, intentionally laying the groundwork to privatize the local public transit options to invite surge pricing and other unethical price gouging that have no place in public services.

LA Metro is doing a similar service as an additional option with their transit. It's designed as an option to fill in the gaps. More need to look to LA Metro. They're doing a lot right.

Long wait times made the bus route almost unusable for David Bunn, even when his car broke down and he couldn’t afford to replace it. Instead, Bunn, who has two broken discs in his back, would take a 5-mile (8-kilometer) roundtrip walk to pick up groceries.

"A small city"

i thought it waa somethings revolutionary, like, for ex, those who already have cars would pickup those without one, and get some gratification. Like we already have thousands of most-empty cars, let's fill them up!

But no, they just have city-paid taxi lol huhu such revolution, much thought process, very innovative

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Milton Barnes used to oversee packed subway stations in Washington, D.C., a far cry from the sparsely filled buses he drove after moving to Wilson, North Carolina, to care for his elderly parents.

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.

These smaller-scale, tech-based solutions to public transportation problems, known broadly as microtransit, have 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.

Via started operations seven years earlier with what was then a consumer service offering shared van rides in parts of Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the New York City subway didn’t go.

Even Wilson won’t be able to operate under its microtransit pilot program forever without finding new ways to pay for it, said Kai Monast, associate director of the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at North Carolina State University.

Monast 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.

The original article contains 1,146 words, the summary contains 221 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

He got cool T-Shirt.

Wait what ?

Columbus Ohio does both that and buses. Unfortunately the area covered is much smaller than it ought to be

Seems like a really good solution for small cities

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, access to transit is great. On the other hand, I feel like the greenhouse gas reductions would be minimal.

Imho a bit comparable to the tricycles, racals and jeepny's in the Philippines tbh... It works, prices are cheaper than taxi's, comfort goes down as cost, but at least many lowerclasses can get places without having to own a car...