Lessons in Transit Innovation

As part of a larger effort to make the city of West Sacramento more friendly to their aging population, an on-demand ride-sharing app was developed to make transportation more accessible for seniors who cannot easily use public transportation. The response has been overwhelming, and the project will soon be able to support itself financially. The city is also using another app to help connect seniors with volunteer opportunities that make use of their skills, which was something else they learned was desired by doing focus groups.

In rural Huron, California, an electric vehicle ride-sharing program, called Green Raiteros, provides free rides for low-income residents who need to get to medical appointments. The organization's 120 clients can call in advance, or just show up when they need a ride.

Evie Community Carshare is an electric-vehicle service in areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, with high poverty and pollution rates. Users can pick up a car and leave it anywhere within the service area.

Citizen participation in meetings, door-to-door surveys, and via an open-source online platform where residents could edit and add to draft plans resulted in 7,000 citizen proposals to redesign one of Bogota’s major, car-choked, 23-km thoroughfares. Residents as young as 10 years old contributed to design plans that will cut climate-changing emissions and pollution by adding more bike lanes, pedestrian paths, and electric buses and cable cars. City officials spent substantial time listening to residents’ ideas and concerns, including talking with populations that are often ignored by those in power.

The coronavirus pandemic drastically reduced the ridership of the Monterey-Salinas Transit District, so the system shifted services to help the mostly rural community it serves. Despite cash-flow problems, unused drivers and vehicles helped Meals on Wheels deliver 8,000 meals to seniors and persons with disabilities, wi-fi-enabled commuter buses parked in rural areas to provide hot spots for students, and the system donated unused vehicles to groups serving veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and at-risk youth. The system continues to adjust to rapidly changing circumstances.

The capital city of San José in Costa Rica is taking steps to become greener and less dependent on cars. By focusing on public transportation initiatives like city bikes and bike lanes, a green esplanade, and an electric passenger train, the city is hoping to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and help the country reach net zero-carbon by 2050. While the cost of these projects can be pricey, many residents are strong advocates for making the city more sustainable.

In starkly unequal Rockaway, Queens, New York, a group of 60 young people organize grassroots campaigns to equalize outcomes across race and class lines in the Rockaway Youth Task Force. Just a year after its founding Hurricane Sandy hit, and the RYTF really came into its own when it turned a vacant, half-acre lot into a thriving youth-run farm. The group also successfully lobbied the city to extend a bus line that gave over 10,000 more residents transportation access.

Recent efforts to bring a gender perspective, especially a feminist one, to urban planning are making cities safer and more inclusive. One Indian app called SafetiPin crowdsources ratings of public spaces based on various safety criteria like lighting, visibility, and transportation. Elsewhere, city planners and researchers are defining what a feminist city would look like. In Sweden, buses are incorporating "night stops" between regular stops to decrease the amount of walking at night needed.

American cities can find solutions to low transit use by looking to other cities in Europe and Canada where the focus is on robust service and getting people to major transit hubs. These transportation systems use existing infrastructure and space with strategy so that transit is efficient and affordable. This in turn means more people are likely to use it because service is better.

Finland is at the forefront of conceptualizing mobility as a service. In Helsinki, citizens are getting rid of their cars and using Whim instead. The app gives users unlimited access to all transport options (bus, train, bike, taxi, and car) for a single monthly subscription.