We sat down with the Centre Area Transportation Authority’s (CATA) Chief Operating Officer, Derek Sherman to learn how the agency saved $2M+ per year, drove unprecedented ridership, and served 62% more of their municipalities’ constituents.
To start, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Derek Sherman and I'm the Chief Operating Officer here at CATA. I've been with the agency for 11 years. I actually started in dispatch, and moved from there to an operation supervisor for our fixed-route. Over the years I also was tasked with the development and implementation of our microtransit program and I served as the ADA-paratransit and microtransit programs manager before becoming Chief Operating Officer.
Going back a bit in time, what would you say were some of the challenges the agency was facing before you implemented any changes to your network?
Taking us back a bit to around 2018, one of the things that we were starting to face is the fact that we had this combination where we didn't have enough bus resources to run routes at a decent enough frequency and in turn that was leading to a lot of underperforming routes. For example, one of the routes that we had a big issue with was a route that had about a 70-minute headway. We had decreasing ridership on this route and it was also a very expensive route to run, just about $1M per year to run that route alone. It was a very long route, but it served the county seat and this was a location that we had to provide access to. That’s when we started trying to figure out if there was an opportunity for us to look at something different. We didn’t have the ability to just go out and buy more buses to run this at better frequencies, we were like many agencies facing a financial cliff. So we were trying to find ways to better utilize our resources and still increase ridership and ideally find the potential for saving money. Microtransit was something that was out there. And so we started diving into that and seeing if that was a potential solution for our issue.
And when you looked at microtransit, what sort of gave you the conviction to go for it?
It’s interesting because we were doing something a little different at the time. A lot of agencies I spoke with were introducing microtransit as an expansion to their network. I hadn’t run into anyone who was doing it to replace an underperforming fixed-route. But we started looking at the network and started realizing that the geography, the logistics, and the demographics of the area fit the mold for microtransit and we decided to try it as a pilot. We implemented it to start side by side with our fixed route, it was originally set to be a year long pilot program. And then, COVID hit and everything changed overnight. Thankfully we started this program at the right time. When COVID hit our already declining fixed-route ridership dropped almost by 97% across the network within a month. We literally just watched our ridership tank. But then we saw something interesting happening, we started to see ridership was increasing in this pilot microtransit service zone and at a fairly significant pace. And so we started looking at those underperforming routes. We had eight commuter level routes and then we had what was called the XBXG that was running side by side with our microtransit program and that was the first thing that we started taking away, because we had at this point a proven solution.
And so coming out of the pilot and COVID ending, what did you look at next?
So then we started to look at the rest of the network, for our second implementation we looked at another area where again we were running fixed-route with 60-70 minute headways. Ridership was low. We had municipalities complaining about the fact that we had these 40 foot buses cruising around with three four five people on them. So we ran the same playbook, we implemented microtransit and ran it side by side for a year with the fixed route and we started watching the ridership transition to microtransit and surpass what it ever was on the fixed route and after that year we pulled fix out of that area.
And the increases in ridership were significant, our footprint changed by almost 62% in terms of coverage. This was not a sidewalk friendly area so for the first time many of these people had an actual ability to get transit because now they were served by microtransit and they previously couldn’t reach the bus.
At the same time, in our original zone, things just kept expanding. By the time we had hit the same amount of ridership that the previous fixed route had, we were spending about $350,000 a year on the microtransit program versus almost a million for the fixed route. Same thing in our second zone when we pulled the fixed route out of there.
Now this freed up resources to actually improve the fixed-route in our higher density areas. We’re a college town so we do have a lot of fairly high density areas where the fixed-route still made a lot of sense. And so now we’re making that system better and allowing for connections to happen from the less dense microtransit zones to the high density fixed-route zones.
And the other thing we were watching happening was that in our original zone, we started to see our paratransit ridership transitioning over to the microtransit. This was a huge win because paratransit's extraordinarily expensive to run and so not only were we saving but we were delivering these riders a better service. We actually had one location specifically that was a retirement community. We probably did about 10 in-person presentations with them and you know they took right to the app. It's one of the things I found funny was I always kept hearing, well, older people won't use this because the app and what I found was more older people used it with the app than people that were younger, to be honest.
What advice do you have for transit agencies facing similar challenges?
The first thing I tell people is you have to know your demographics. You have to understand your patrons. You have to understand how they're going to use the different services and what their overall needs are.
Then you also have to have an understanding of your finances. I think if you want to be successful in the long term you have to operate this like a business, because if you operate it like you do in fixed route transit, your success rates will be lower. Some people don't like when I say this, but fixed route transit concepts combined with funding structures are not built to maximize success. Agencies tend to operate with the belief that funding will always be there. Well, the way I look at everything is the funding is not going to be there. So, how can you create the most efficient, financially sustainable service you can possibly put in place? If you can do it that way, you know, you're good down the road.
And then you also have to keep your eye on it very intently. This is not fixed route where I can throw it out there, let it run for a year and re-evaluate. We’re actually not even taking that approach with our fixed route anymore. We are paying very close attention to our fixed route. Obviously it's a little harder to change our fixed route, but we can still update semiannually. There is almost always something we can be doing more efficiently. You know, I hear all the time, microtransit is expensive. And I'm like, well, you're doing it wrong.
And I think the last thing is you need to be willing to weather the storm. People have a hard time with change. Did we get some push back from the community? Yeah, we definitely got push back, and we knew we were going to get that. But if you set up the service smartly and you believe in what you're doing, then sell it and don't hold back. Obviously you need to listen to what your public is saying, don't get me wrong, but it’s on you to educate them to make this a success.
What's the next big innovation you would love to see in the transit technology space?
I think the furthering of autonomous vehicles. Agencies are facing staffing shortages everywhere. Between the technology that we have nowadays, and you include the ability to slide autonomous vehicles into that, I think it is a huge opportunity, especially in rural areas because we have a nationwide problem in how to efficiently serve these populations.
And then I think generally it's on us to continuously look down the road. My mindset is always what does this look like in five years? Right now we're looking at the potential of creating an airport service, we’re evaluating the potential of merging all of our microtransit zones together, we’re also looking at the possibility of commingling microtransit and paratransit trips . The technology is only continuing to strengthen, the algorithms are getting better, the mapping is getting better, there's always something to be done better. People don’t think of transit as a win/lose space, but I think you need a winning mindset. I still need to win my taxpayers’ confidence. I need to win by delivering the best, most efficient service possible. There is always something we can be doing better and I think if we take that mindset we can build winning transit.