Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Tevarius Foster, senior director of customer experience at BJCTA.
Most test drives begin at a car lot or dealership. A prospective buyer gets the feel of the vehicle, taking it around the block, perhaps on the highway, getting a sense of how ownership might feel.
In July, the city of Homewood began its test drive of microtransit, an on-demand option to move around the city. It works just like ride sharing, with riders able to request a trip through the Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority’s Max Connect app and get picked up nearby, with routes designed in real time to keep trips efficient and wait times low.
Photo by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
BJCTA microtransit vehicle.
The service provides point-to-point transportation anywhere within the Homewood city limits for just $1.50 per trip. Someone ordering a ride can be joined by two more people, with those riders paying 75 cents apiece.
On-demand ride service in Homewood is available Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. The trial period runs through September 2027.
“It’s a win-win,” Mayor Jennifer Andress said. “We literally get to find out if this is something that is going to benefit Homewood and something our citizens can use and want us to invest in once this trial is over. Thanks to the grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, it’s really just a no-lose proposition.”
The Community Foundation is footing the bill for this test drive, paying about $792,000 for a year and three months of microtransit service. After the trial period, the projected annual costs are around $610,000 to $630,000, depending on how the service is adjusted over time, with as many as three vehicles operating during the aforementioned service hours.
Foundation President and CEO Chris Nanni said the foundation’s role is to take on issues in the community “that are holding us back from reaching our potential and doing things that not necessarily an individual or an organization can do on their own.
“We’re doing it with mental health; we’re doing it with affordable housing; we’re doing it with regional cooperation, some economic development stuff,” he said. “But transportation is a perfect example of this. There’s nobody that would have written a grant to us to do this. It was us identifying the models and getting people interested, funding it and having a sustainable piece where people could carry it on.”
Foundation leaders spoke with officials in Homewood, Hoover and Vestavia Hills. They found the greatest need in Homewood.
“We’ve been in conversations for over two years with Homewood,” Nanni said. “It [the microtransit project] got caught up a little bit because there was a change in government. We made a grant to fund the entire city for 1.25 years. They know what it’s going to cost at the end of that 1.25 years. It’s timed to their budget. If it doesn’t work well, they don’t have to do anything.”
But if citizens do want the service to continue, Andress and the City Council will have to determine how the city can pay for it.
“A year from now we’ll be working on the next year’s budget,” Andress said. “We will have a year’s worth of data on if this is being used, and we’ll know what trade-offs we have to make. We’ve got Walmart, we’ve got the vocational rehab, we’ve got areas that are heavily used, and the Magic City Connector. But are there other areas where we can trim a little bit here or there to make our microtransit budget more robust? We’ll find out.”
The community foundation, Birmingham-Jefferson County Transit Authority and Via, an international rideshare company, made their most recent presentation to the Homewood City Council in April.
Screenshot of Google Meet call by Solomon Crenshaw Jr.
Julius Bryant of Via.
Julius Bryant is Via’s partner success manager, working with all of the company’s microtransit and paratransit services in the Southeast.
“My job is to make sure that our partners are successful, but there’s a million different things that kind of fall under that,” Bryant said. “We have many, many microtransit, paratransit, different types of transit services all across the country and the world. We do everything in a public mobility space.
“This is something that they have made very clear that they want,” he continued, “and they think there’s a need for it.”
Tevarius Foster, the transit authority’s senior director of customer experience, is confident Homewood users of the microtransit service will soon grow to love it.
“Once you use it that one time, you realize how simple and how easy it is,” he said. “For those that are tech savvy, it’s just downloading the app, saying your location and telling the app where you want to go. Once you hit go, it will find the ride for you, and you book that ride. It’ll tell you where that ride’s gonna pick you up at. It’s just that simple.”
City Engineer Amy Zari said microtransit could definitely help address parking problems.
“We’re hoping this will kind of ease the pressure on private parking, on-street parking, and just the demand for parking in Homewood,” she said, adding that the expertise of the entities bringing microtransit to the city is comforting. “We are lucky to be working with all the groups that have done this before. They’re the experts on this topic, and we have trust that they’ll help us deliver a good product.”
