On September 26, 2022, the City Council approved a Microtransit Pilot Program, authorizing a $1M expenditure that comprises a Federal Transit Administration (“FTA”) grant of $500,000 and a local match of $500,000. Staff received the grant and requests City Council approval of the $500,000 award to complete the funding for the Microtransit Pilot Program.  

Authorize the City Manager to approve a Grant Pass-Thru Agreement between the City of Phoenix and the City of Goodyear for a Microtransit Pilot Program. (Christine McMurdy, Project Management Coordinator)

In the Fiscal Year 2023 budget, the City Council approved a supplemental request for $500,000 of local funds from the Park and Ride fund and $500,000 of federal funds from the FTA for a total of $1M. The FTA funds were approved when the City Council approved the Microtransit Pilot Program, but they were not available until recently. Accordingly, staff proceeded with the Pilot Program using the $500,000 in grant match funds to support start-up and operations.

The Avondale-Goodyear Transit Study identified Microtransit as an opportunity to create more mobility options for Goodyear residents. The 17-square mile WeRIDE Pilot Program Zone includes numerous activity centers within close proximity to residents in Central Goodyear, creating the ability to get to and from shopping, healthcare, dining, entertainment and government services in a short trip at low cost.

Microtransit is a relatively new service, so there is not a local government standard of performance we can use to measure WeRIDE. As Microtransit grows in popularity, there is a healthy amount of data sharing happening among agencies to see where aspects of the service can be “tweaked” to achieve a satisfactory level of efficiency.

During development of our contract with the service providers (First Transit for transportation and RideCo for technology), staff in both cities requested access to performance metrics as a means to begin measuring our productivity.

As of mid-March, when this report was due, the results of the Goodyear performance metrics since the start of service on November 14, 2022, are:
 

Total passengers completed	2,513
Avg. Daily Rides booked	31
% drop off on time	96.3%
% pick up on time	96.9%
Avg. daily new users	181
Avg. daily repeat users per month	13
% of shared rides	20.9%

The following four customer metrics, if achieved, provide a fair measure of the program’s success:
 

Average wait time as measured from the ride request to passenger pick up.	Goal=20 minutes or less	11 minutes
Percent of successful searches (app).	Goal is 80% or higher	93.5%
Percent of passengers rating the service at four (4) or five (5) stars on a 5-star scaled, or similar metric.	Goal=80% or higher	98%
Service provided for wheelchair accessible vehicles is equivalent to service for customers that do not require a wheelchair accessible vehicle.	100%