If you live in areas where bus service is infrequent or spread out, you know the challenges involved in catching a bus.
But Greater Cincinnati's bus service is expanding a program called MetroNow to Mt. Healthy and Northgate starting July 11. The pilot program started in May in Springdale and Sharonville, where for $2 a ride, you can request a ride via a phone call or with an app to anywhere within the designated zones. A Metro shuttle will pick you up at your requested location.
"The best way to describe it is to think of Uber or Lyft, but on public transit," Metro spokesperson Brandy Jones says. "We're using smaller, shuttle-style vehicles to navigate in areas that don't traditionally have a lot of bus service, or maybe our 40-foot vehicles are too big to navigate within the community, but there's lots of density there."
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Jones says the initial pilot served a few hundred riders in its first month. Metro expects that number to ramp up as more people become aware of the service and try it out. Jones says it's too early in the process to know exactly where people are taking the rides — to the grocery, to work, other destinations — but that's something Metro is analyzing as it goes.
Metro hopes to add four more areas — Blue Ash/Evendale, Bond Hill/Roselawn, Monfort Heights/Finneytown and Pleasant Run North — in 2024.
"What we're going to learn during this pilot phase are the pros, the cons, any adjustments we can make to improve it so when we roll out the additional four zones in 2024, those are going to be even greater," she says. "We'll take all those lessons we're learning from the pilot phase to make any necessary improvements."