Gastonia’s micro transit service boosts ridership

GASTONIA, N.C. — More people are riding Gastonia public transit than ever despite the city ending its bus system last year.

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Gastonia launched a micro transit service in its place.

Longtime bus driver Charles Littlejohn said it took a while to get used to his new ride.

“Starting out, I didn’t know what to expect,” said Littlejohn, lead fleet driver.

Littlejohn said he makes about 15 to 30 trips a day taking passengers across the city for GoGastonia micro transit.

“We were the largest community in North Carolina at the time to transition from fixed route into micro transit,” said Randi Gates, the director of transportation for Gastonia.

Gates said their former bus system served six routes, came once an hour and only served a fraction of the city.

Gates said Gastonia decided to try micro transit in its place.

They are using smaller vehicles that are on-call to pick up passengers and drop them off anywhere in the city for the same cost of bus fare.

“You’re not having to walk a quarter-of-a-mile, a half-a-mile to the closest stop,” Gates said. “The van is coming right there.”

If you’re looking for a ride, all you have to do is go into the go Gastonia app, type in your destination and the app will connect you with the closest driver.

Longtime bus riders said there was a bit of a learning curve.

“You have to get in the app,” said Daniel Rivera, a rider. “You have to do all this other stuff to get in there but as soon as I did all that, it was easy.”

City data shows that during its year in operation, ridership was up nearly every month versus the previous bus numbers.

Gates said they had to buy nine more vans last year to meet the number of calls because demand was so high.

“It is more expensive to run the micro transit on the demand system, but the service we’re providing is much greater than what we were doing with the fixed route,” Gates said.

Gates said the city is still working out a few kinks, including how to decrease wait times or more efficiently serve high-ridership areas.

They see the past year as a success.

“It’s very unique how this can move a city like Gastonia around,” Littlejohn said.

GoGastonia is on the second year of its three-year contract with their micro transit partner Via.

The city said the current overall cost of running the micro transit system is lower, but it relies more on the city’s budget because it’s eligible for less federal and state funding than a bus system.

GoGastonia stats:

13,705 GoGastonia accounts created
173,692 rides completed: 5,683 riders completed at least one ride; 4,683 riders completed at least two rides; 3,431 riders completed at least five rides
Average pick up time = 23.1 minutes
Average ride duration = 14.1 minutes
Average ride distance = 4.7 miles
Overall ride rating = 4.9 (out of 5)
94% 5-star rating for rides