Transit On-Demand: The Good and the Bad

Recently, I was reading through Sean Marshall's attempt to visit every city hall in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, which included a blog post about his experience with on-demand transit. Despite using transit extensively, I had never found the need to use on-demand service. This, coupled with me realizing that I had never adventured to two of the twenty-six municipalities in the GTHA, inspired me to venture to some of the region's more rural locales, on public transit. I think my conclusions are similar to Sean's, but I have some more particular thoughts about the services I used.

What is on-demand transit?

On-demand transit is a catch-all term for all transit that does not operate on a traditional, fixed schedule. Passengers are required to use an app or call a number to order a vehicle, which is usually a car or van, but can sometimes be a regular bus. On-demand transit, also known as dial-a-bus, can take a number of different forms:

• Door-to-door, which can include paratransit (i.e. WheelTrans);
• Door-to-destination, which has a preset list of important destinations, like a grocery store or a recreation centre;
• Door-to-conventional service, which requires a transfer to a conventional transit route for a complete trip (including TTC's Family of Services); and
• Door-to-commuter service, which brings people to a commuter rail station, with a focus on traditional commuting patterns.

There is also flex service, where, on request, a fixed route can make a detour to serve an additional stop. On-demand service can exist in urban, suburban, and rural contexts.

The rationale, and supposed benefit of on-demand service, is that it can better match service to demand. Instead of running 'empty buses', it responds to demand as it arises. Since on-demand works best with demand under ten passengers per hour, it can make an effective service in low-density areas. While they appear to work like a rideshare would (Innisfil actually uses Uber), there is an added benefit: since fares are the same as conventional systems, customers receive a transfer to other services, thus significantly reducing the cost of transportation versus ridesharing. You can also book rides in advance.

Numerous agencies have adopted on-demand transit in recent years, including YRT, DRT, HSR, and Barrie Transit.

Attempt 1: Durham Region Transit

I had planned to make a small excursion to the community of Cannington, which is located in the town of Brock. To reach this town on transit, you would have to take conventional services to either Uxbridge or Port Perry, and request on-demand from there. This service operates as a door-to-door service.

Based on Sean Marshall's experience, I figured that I would be best off by pre-booking my ride to Cannington. So, last Saturday, I downloaded the DRT On-Demand App in advance of a trip on Sunday.

I set my pick-up time as 11:15am in Uxbridge, giving me about fifteen minutes leeway in case the GO bus arrived late. When I inputted my trip, I received one trip option:

The one trip option left Uxbridge before my GO bus arrived. I figured, whatever, I will play around to find another trip. Well, any time I adjusted my pickup time, I was hit with this message:

When I switched my pick-up location to Port Perry, I received the same message. When I switched my destination to Beaverton, I got the same message. I decided that, since I couldn't even get a trip to Cannington or Beaverton, let alone one home, it made no sense for me to even attempt the trip.

I had not read any reviews on the app prior to downloading, but when I went through them, I realized that my feelings were not exclusive to me.

Durham's On-Demand service covers the entire rural northern portion of the region, and it seems like only a few vehicles are scheduled here at any time. It would be impossible to rely on this service for work or school, let alone if you had to bring your child along with you. There is no opportunity here to take trips spontaneously. 

For the purposes of showing alternative options, I put my trips into Lyft to see how much it would cost, and it was extreme. For Uxbridge to Cannington:

For Port Perry to Cannington:

Consider that on-demand would have been a free transfer from GO or DRT service, the Lyft 'alternative' is a price increase of more than $40, one-way. My short trip to Cannington would have went from $0 beyond GO Transit to nearly $90 round-trip.

Attempt 2: York Region Transit

My second attempt, this morning, had a destination of Mount Albert, a community in East Gwillimbury (one of four, the others being Holland Landing, Queensville, and Sharon). On-demand transit here, or as YRT calls it, 'Mobility-on-Request', is in zones. Unlike Durham's service being rural area-wide, here there are specific services, such as 'King', or 'Sutton-Pefferlaw'. Trips between the zones generally require transfers to conventional routes. The specific service in Mount Albert is called 'Mount Albert', and operates door-to-destination, with some aspects of door-to-conventional service and door-to-commuter service as well. There are six preset destinations, as shown in the map below:

My trip began at East Gwillimbury GO (#5 on the map), where I was transferring off the GO train, to an destination near #3. Trips cannot be within 500 metres, so visiting a friend in the same community is a trip that cannot be accommodated on this service.

After leaving Newmarket GO, I ordered my ride. Luckily, it showed my ride as being just seven minutes away. The next ride was listed about an hour later: remember this point.

After ordering my ride, I was directed to platform 11 at the station, which was clearly marked for Mobility-on-Request. The app told me what vehicle would pick me up, as well as my driver's name (which I have blurred).

Right on time, my YRT-branded car arrived at the station. Because I used Presto, the trip to Mount Albert cost nothing.

I was the only pick-up on my trip, so we made our way right to Mount Albert. My driver dropped me off at my destination, the Lighthouse Cafe. Special shout-out to this cafe by the way, it was really good, and I definitely would return.

This is a bit of an aside from the topic, but I did want to talk about Mount Albert a bit since it was my first time here. It feels like small-town Ontario, and not within the GTA at all. There are some new developments to the north and east, but the older parts of town are pretty compact. Getting around on a bike here would be easy, but there is a significant grade change the further south you go.

I noticed a planning application for a warehouse on the west side of town, and I was surprised to see the application concerned connecting the warehouse to the municipal water supply! It's quite wild that there are areas in our region that are not still connected to utilities.

I walked out to Highway 48 to get to the Foodland grocery store, which required a lovely walk in the muddy shoulder of an 80km/h road. Would it be so hard to extend the sidewalk 300 metres here? This is the only grocery store in town.

As Foodland is one of the key destinations, I ordered a ride from here to the East Gwillimbury Civic Centre, in Sharon, to connect with conventional YRT services (#1 to #4 on the map). As there was only one driver in the zone today, it was the same driver who brought me to Mount Albert. My wait was quite short again as well.

On the drive back, I decided to ask the driver some questions. She said that today was particularly busy, but nothing that one driver couldn't handle. She said she has an equal amount of trips between Sharon and Mount Albert as she does trips within those two communities. 

Overall, I was pleased with my trip here. My trip cost me nothing, whereas on Lyft, it would have been approximately $15 each way. The one catch is that this service does not operate after 11pm on weekdays, 8pm on Saturdays, and at all on Sundays, which makes more leisure-focused trips a challenge.

This is not specific to YRT, but Mount Albert is an official transfer point between YRT and DRT on-demand services. I could not imagine trying to coordinate a transfer here. YRT might be fine, but with DRT, good luck.

My Thoughts

While I was happy with YRT's on-demand service, I did have a few issues. First, since it's not a fixed route, it doesn't appear on many applications. While I always recommend against using Google for transit directions, some people still do it, and would be under the impression that they must pay for expensive rideshare for the trip.

I said earlier to remember a point concerning my next possible trip being an hour later. Well, isn't the point of on-demand to have no fixed schedule? How can I have no options within the hour? Well, since the drive between Sharon and Mount Albert takes about 20 minutes each way, in addition to other trips customers request, a sort of pseudo-schedule is created. Think of it this way: if the first ride of the day is from Mount Albert to Sharon, at 7am, the next trip on this route has to be 7:40am at the earliest. 

This makes me question the benefit of having an on-demand service versus a fixed route. What benefit is there to operating on-demand service when it creates specific trip times anyways? I drew the map below to reflect what I imagine a fixed bus route in the area looks like, from 404 Town Centre to Mount Albert via East Gwillimbury GO. This route was inspired by the former 58 Mount Albert YRT route that existed until 2020.

On-demand could still exist, serving parts of Sharon and Mount Albert that are at some distance from regular service (either this or route 50 Queensway on Leslie). This route would cover the vast majority of the demand between the communities, and to the GO Station, allowing for on-demand to actually be demand-responsive and not have the aforementioned pseudo-schedule. As well, it could properly be displayed on apps like Google Maps.

Unlike some other transit buffs, I do believe on-demand has its place. That said, there needs to be a process whereby, when demand reaches a certain threshold, a fixed route is installed. Some of the more urbanized parts of Durham have had this experience, but why this has not been applied to regular Durham and rural York I have no idea. Many of York's other on-demand services have demand in a line that a fixed route could easily serve, but I digress. At least YRT's 10 Woodbridge route is back at the end of the month, replacing on-demand during peak periods.

Conclusion

If it wasn't for on-demand, many people in rural areas would be completely disconnected from school, employment, stores, and more. It acts as a lifeline for those in areas that may not have the density to justify regular service. However, lack of density is used as a justification for the service, even if demand is beyond ten passengers an hour. Transit service cannot just connect, it needs to be there when you need it, even if trips are spontaneous. Booking trips to do groceries a day in advance is not good! While my experience with YRT's on-demand service was broadly positive, I think that there needs to be effort made to convert these services to fixed routes at some point in time.