Jan 14, 2019

A city experiment in micro-transit is in peril amid Ford Motor Company’s corporate shakeup. When a free commuter shuttle service started circulating among downtown, Capitol Hill and Cherry Creek Shopping Center in October, city officials said it was an innovative way to tackle urban mobility. But the pilot program will end months early because Ford last week announced it is shutting down Chariot, the subsidiary running the service. The service had attracted 110 repeat or regular customers over the course of three months, according to Stuart Anderson, executive director of the Transportation Solutions Foundation, which launched and helped run the program for the city. “We’re scrambling right now to find alternatives. Our Cherry Creek to Capitol Hill to downtown route has about 110 people that ride it — and these 110 people are our priority,” Anderson said. He did not know how many trips the service had provided, he said. A screenshot of Chariot routes in Denver. The shutdown also will end Chariot’s campus service for the University of Denver. Chariot was supposed to make transit more efficient by allowing riders to reserve seats on a fixed-route bus with an app. The company had operated for five years, and Ford bought it for a reported $65 million in 2016 . “In today’s mobility landscape, the wants and needs of customers and cities are changing rapidly,” CEO Dan Grossman said in a blog post. The announcement came as Ford slashed jobs and closed plants in Europe, part of a broader restructuring . The city of Denver had agreed to pay $250,000 for Chariot to deploy three shuttles on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays for the downtown route. The experiment was to last through April, but the Denver service will end Jan. 27, Anderson said. A spokesperson for Denver Public Works couldn’t immediately say how much money had been paid through the contract or what the city’s next steps would be. Related Articles Anderson hopes that a major ride-hailing app or another startup might step in to resume service. The Denver route had proved most popular between Civic Center Station and Capitol Hill, he said, though it was originally pitched as a service for Cherry Creek employees living near downtown. Anderson could not share ridership for the DU service, but he said it was exceeding expectations. “They have a lot more people that are relying on their shuttle circulator, including students that gave up their car,” he said. DU is searching for a replacement contractor at least through June 30, the end of the fiscal year, according to spokesperson Jon Stone. Meanwhile, RTD also is experimenting with micro-transit: Starting this weekend, it will rebrand its Call-n-Ride service as FlexRide, now featuring online and mobile trip booking and allowing reservations to be made just 10 minutes in advance. Tags: