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SALT LAKE CITY — It turns out that residents of Salt Lake City's west side are turning to microtransit much faster than city or Utah transit officials had imagined when they launched a pilot program at the end of 2021. While they say this is a good thing, it also poses new challenges as the service continues moving forward.
UTA On Demand, a service provided by the Utah Transit Authority, "has proven to be extremely popular," experiencing 930% growth in ride requests from December 2021 to September 2022, Julianne Sabula, Salt Lake City's transit program manager, wrote in a memo to the council last month.
The microtransit service is sort of a mash-up between a rideshare company and traditional bus service. Riders use an app to hail a minivan that picks up and drops off riders on blocks within a defined service area. UTA provides the service in a few other areas throughout its entire service range.
Carlton Christensen, the chairman of UTA's board of trustees, told members of the Salt Lake City Council that there's been a 28% average monthly growth rate from the time the program launched through November 2022, also netting 2,648 unique riders over the span. Total ridership surpassed 10,000 for the first time in November as ridership grows.
"This is well beyond what we ever forecasted," he said in a Tuesday meeting. "The rate of growth which you see happening in the west side of Salt Lake City is astounding."
Microtransit on the west side
By November, ridership in Salt Lake City's west side was only about 5,000 riders below the southwest Salt Lake County service zone, which is the only other UTA On Demand service area in the county. That service area, however, is nearly five times larger in size, four times more populated and holds three times more jobs than the Salt Lake City zone, per UTA data. It also launched two years before the Salt Lake City service.
West High School students are one of the key reasons behind the dramatic rise, Christensen explained. Students discovered that they could get to school by using the service and the UTA passes that the city provided students at the beginning of the school year.
UTA data shows that Vivint Arena, as well as connections to TRAX and FrontRunner stations in the service area, are other popular destinations. The average trip length is 2.8 miles, and it's helping the city's overall transit ridership grow.
Dealing with new issues
There's a downside to the success, however. Because the program is working better than anticipated, there are not enough vehicles to meet the demand "at certain peak times," Christensen said. That results in longer response times for customers or no rides at all.
Unavailable rides, or requests that could not be completed, have risen over the past few months, which can be troublesome for the person depending on the ride. The rejection rate has reached as high as 8-10% at times.
"The only constraint right now is it's underfunded, basically, for the demand we have," said Salt Lake City transportation director Jon Larsen. "We didn't realize that it would be as wildly popular as it is, so now we're turning away rides because we just can't afford to run more service."
Demand is also projected to double by the end of 2023, according to UTA. This may result in more unavailable rides, at least over the next several months, Christensen cautioned. He added that the agency would look to find ways to get students to ride fixed-bus routes as much as possible as a short-term solution to the issue.
Christensen also noted that it currently costs $18 per rider on average, which is more than other forms of transit but something that can go down, especially if a van is able to collect more riders at a time and be more efficient.
Members of the Salt Lake City Council appeared generally enthusiastic about the report. Salt Lake City Councilman Dan Dugan said he's "excited about this program and how well it's doing," though there are "additional issues" that the city and UTA will have to work through.
The service could be expanded to other parts of the city in the future, too. Larsen points out that the city's 2017 transit master plan highlights its Upper Avenues and East Bench neighborhoods as other possible microtransit zones. That said, he recommends that the city figure out the logistics of the west side service before any expansions.
