SAVANNAH, Ga. — Much of the United States has been developed for people who own cars. Homes are away from businesses and services including hospitals, grocery stores, offices, houses of worship, retail shops, and more. People who don’t have access to automobiles often have to rely on biking or walking long distances to catch a bus or train to get where they need to go.
The Partnership for Inclusive Innovation (Partnership) and its collaborators recently wrapped up a pilot project in Savannah that aimed to address this problem by creating first mile/last mile on-demand microtransit to connect underserved people and communities to fixed bus routes. An event to present the findings and discuss on-demand transit marked the end of the pilot project.
The project began in 2023, with $1.2 million in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grant program, which funded the development of projects to improve transportation efficiency and safety using advanced smart community technologies and systems. With the funding, the Partnership, Chatham Area Transit Authority (CAT), Savannah State University, and Georgia Tech developed an app to seamlessly connect people to fixed bus routes via on-demand electric shuttles. The pilot explored on-demand microtransit in two zones of Savannah, one urban and one suburban.
“The Partnership convened the External Advisory Board with transit and transportation experts from around the state and the country. These transit leaders worked with Chatham Area Transit Authority to employ best practices as they rolled out the pilot project,” said Katie O’Connor, the Partnership’s community research manager.
The event to mark the end of the pilot project included remarks from CAT leaders, shuttle drivers, and mechanics; Savannah Mayor Van Johnson; Savannah State President Cynthia Robinson-Alexander and other leaders; and Pascal Van Hentenryck, app designer and the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. It also includedrepresentatives from agencies and organizations in the Savannah area that have an interest in transit.
Van Hentenryck spoke about the app and how it has been deployed in this and other projects in Atlanta and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and in an upcoming pilot project in Wilson, North Carolina. Aspects of the app change for each city — the zones are different, the current transit options are different, but each also has similarities.
In Atlanta, Van Hentenryck and his team worked with MARTA on a pilot project called MARTA Reach, to offer on-demand transit in three different zones. That project was so successful that in January MARTA released a request for proposals (RFP) to expand on-demand transit, Van Hentenryck said.
“This is the best possible success for us,” he said. “It’s essentially saying the pilot was so successful that they decided to deploy this for five years in about eight different regions of Atlanta.”
In Ann Arbor, the pilot app was used to connect students who live off campus with the campus bus system. It was also very successful, with students clamoring to continue the project.
This year’s pilot in Wilson, North Carolina, a city with no transit service, will offer flexible riders the option of paying less to postpone their ride to a less busy time.
Flexibility and innovation are important parts of transit and the apps that support it across the country.
“We’re committed to advancing a transportation system that is not only efficient but also innovative and sustainable for future generations,” Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said at the event. “When we talk about public transportation, we’re not just talking about today. We’re talking about our children’s children. That strategic goal is central to our mission of improving mobility for all residents here in Savannah.”
The Savannah project involved the development of an app that would allow people to schedule a pickup by an electric shuttle that would deliver them to a bus stop on a fixed bus route. Riders would enter the address of their final destination, and the app would design the best route and order the shuttle. For the cost of a bus ride, commuters could be connected to those fixed routes without a long walk, driving a car, or paying for a ride from Uber, Lyft, or a taxi.
CAT’s Chief of Planning and Infrastructure Development Mary Moskowitz discussed the project’s key takeaways, including the ability to serve everyone, regional collaboration, workforce training, and finding sustainable transportation solutions.
One of the major challenges the project faced is a problem that employers across the nation are tackling: workforce training. CAT partnered with Savannah State University and Savannah Technical College to train maintenance workers for the new electric shuttles.
“We also struggled with workforce development for our [CAT’s] own operators,” Moskowitz said. “That’s something that is not unique amongst our transit agency, but it’s something that we continue to struggle with.”
While the project has not found funding beyond this pilot, Moskowitz and others believe that it was an important part of transit planning and discussion in Savannah.
“It’s important to remember that microtransit, on-demand transportation, is just one element in a complete transportation system,” she said. “I think one of the things that makes this project unique was the demonstration of that multimodal connectivity. [Transit is] not something that happens in a vacuum.”