by James A. Bacon
Bridj, a Boston start-up, bills itself as “the world’s first smart transit system which uses big data and luxury shuttles to adjust to your individual commuting needs.” The company charges $6 per ride, or three times that of a city bus, but it provides Wi-Fi connectivity and luxury seats, and it saves riders time by providing direct service between destinations. For well-heeled commuters, the top-of-the-line service is vastly preferable to either the city bus or driving and paying for parking. If the experiment works out — it launched this month — Bridj could significantly enlarge the market for mass transit.
Not to blow my own horn (Arooo-ga! Arooo-ga!) but I’ve seen this coming for a long time, ever since Uber launched its luxury transportation service as an alternative to traditional taxicabs. The smart phone revolution is making it easier than ever to match rides with riders, reserve seats and make payments. Meanwhile, the ability to process massive volumes of data enables companies to optimize the deployment of their vehicle fleets.
What I find fascinating is that Bridj and start-ups providing similar services in Chicago and San Francisco (see the post in City Labs) are demonstrating that there is a demand for mass transit not being met by one-size-fits-all municipal bus service. As typically happens with the introduction of a new product or service, the first wave of entrepreneurs targets the affluent market because that’s where the money is. One would expect that as these business models prove themselves and as technologies and algorithms are perfected, these private transit companies will begin providing differentiated services for other market segments. One could readily imagine a less luxurious Bridj-like service catering to middle-class riders, and tighter-packed, less comfortable but cheaper services providing mobility to lower-income individuals.
Extending the smart transit revolution from well-heeled riders to the rest of the population will be good all the way around — it will provide more transit options for a wider variety of people. It will get more cars off the road, reduce pollution and cut the demand for parking. There will be only one set of losers — local municipal transit monopolies. We can expect push back from the transit companies against Bridj, just as the taxicabs have sought to block Uber in city after city. The transit companies will wail about the private carriers “skimming the cream” and the disasters that will befall their lower-income riders if they go bankrupt.
There’s nothing stopping municipal transit companies from embracing the same technologies and the same strategies. They won’t, of course, (a) because they are innovation-stifling monopolies, (b) they are dependent upon state and federal subsidies, which come with all manner of strings attached, (c) they are subject to the dictates of local politicians and (d) they lack the financial wherewithal or management skills necessary.
If I were a local elected official in Virginia, especially if I were in a suburban county where lots of my constituents drove to work downtown, I would be on the phone begging Bridj to expand to my metro. And I would promise that when they came, my community would roll out the red carpet.
