Lockdowns and social distancing have been tricky for transit agencies, said Sharon Feigon, executive director of the Shared-Use Mobility Center, a public-interest, nonprofit organization that advocates for reducing private vehicle use and offering more options including e-scooters, bike-sharing, and microtransit. On one hand, transit agencies provide a vital service, particularly during the pandemic. But on the other, in light of COVID-19, low ridership and increased safety methods are straining transit agency budgets. Many agencies have had to reduce subway and bus frequency, and microtransit could be used to fill in some of these service gaps, particularly at odd hours, Feigon said. Microtransit companies also say cities can use it to provide affordable rides for people in communities that are already under-resourced. These demographics — including seniors, a population the disease hits particularly hard — have largely been stuck making trips on public transit, according to data from Transit app, a journey-planning application based in Montreal that operates in more than 200 cities and regions worldwide. Other tools to reduce the spread of the disease can be, or are, developed within the platforms themselves. Cities can set a rider maximum per trip — informing drivers not to pick up any more than that set number — functionally enforcing social distancing on the rides. L.A. set the rider limit at one, while Lincoln set theirs at two, for instance. Microtransit companies are also looking to develop pre-screening functionalities in their apps. Hypothetically, any time a person hails a ride the app could ask them questions about potential symptoms and how much they have self-isolated. Via is looking at pre-screening functionality, along with the other new ways it has adapted or is looking to adapt its platform during this crisis, said Zack Wasserman, the company’s chief strategy officer. One of the more controversial functions some microtransit companies are considering in the wake of COVID-19 is contact tracing. Broadly, the method makes use of the near-ubiquity of smartphones. Users who fall ill report it through an app on their phone, which in turn notifies anyone they had been in close contact with of the risk. But critics worry about giving governments that amount of information about its citizens. Many countries around the world are working on contact tracing applications. China, an early adopter, has used contract tracing since February. In March, Singapore’s government released one that uses Bluetooth transmitters in people’s phones, and made the source code openly available. Australia launched its own app in April, using the code. Also in April, Apple and Google announced their own proposed Bluetooth approach, in which phones would log whenever two or more people are close enough together for a long enough period of time to contract the disease. This proximity information is stored on users’ phones, and used to notify people who have potentially been exposed. Apps like these could be incorporated into a microtransit system. Spare and Via are still in early talks with cities about doing so and in the early stages of creating the functionality. To help protect users’ privacy, Spare and Via anonymize and encrypt user data. According to Mayaud, on Spare, contact tracing would be optional for both cities and users. While other forms of contact tracing operate continuously in the backgrounds of people’s mobile phones, handling the tactic through a microtransit app would mean that contact information is only gathered when users share rides. This might make people feel more comfortable when it comes to privacy concerns, Mayaud said.
Despite the efforts to protect users’ identities, privacy and effective contact tracing have different, competing objectives, said Alexandre Bayen, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies. For contact tracing to work well, the companies or health agencies need to know who is infected and where they have been — and when — to establish and communicate a possible chain of infection. For instance, China’s contact tracing system lets the state know the locations of the phones running the app, an addition to an already robust and controversial surveillance system. Chinese citizens are also issued digital barcodes on their phones, or QR codes, that dictate if they are allowed to be in public. The approach slowed the spread of the disease because it allows officials to alert people directly about their chances of infection, or to self-quarantine. This tradeoff between privacy and disease tracking is one “that every country will deal with differently,” Bayen said. Microtransit may face other problems as well. While it may be possible to provide cheap rides to low-income people, in practice there could be issues in fostering equality, Bayen said. Such systems typically rely on smartphones, for instance, although some cities allow people to call in requests on any type of phone. Worldwide, cellphone usage varies greatly. And in the United States, only 53 percent of people aged 65 and over had a smartphone, according to a 2017 report from the Pew Research Center, potentially leaving one vulnerable population less able to use microtransit services. Microtransit may also falter when the pandemic ends and more people are commuting again. Pre-COVID-19, it was a challenge for microtransit systems with fleets of small vans to make enough direct rides to match the raw people-moving power of a bus, Feigon said. But, she added, microtransit could still be valuable as social distancing ends and more people begin to move around cities, though it’s likely in the wake of the pandemic, many people will continue to work from home, Feigon said. Because it is quite flexible, it could replace some fixed-route transit routes in the future. Further, one of microtransit’s biggest strengths, normally, is getting people to and from bus and train stations, she said, making it easier for people to use traditional public transit. It could also be used in rural areas with infrequent public transit service and large distances between stops, she said, adding that it is likely that more cities will adopt microtransit going forward. In the meantime, while streets are relatively quiet, transit agencies can begin to consider new, innovative ways to create more resilient transit systems, Feigon said. This could take many forms, from e-scooters and bike lanes to things like microtransit, to accent public transit and reduce the congestion that private vehicles bring to cities. “The new normal’s not going to be the old normal,” she added. “I think that we have the potential to either really build the system, or it’s going to fall apart.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Amid a pandemic, transit authorities turn to technology on Jun 21, 2020.