Maui County is considering replacing two of its fixed bus routes with on-demand, microtransit services.
Both the Waiheʻe Villager Route 8 and the Kula Islander Route 39 have had low ridership in recent years. On average, buses on both routes have fewer than five people boarding per hour.
The county has contracted with the national transportation consultant group Nelson/Nygaard to study the applicability of microtransit for Routes 8 and 39, which would function like a hybrid of a rideshare service and a bus.
A rider would request a trip and pay their fare through an app on their phone. The software within the app compiles these requests and creates a custom route for a van driver, who then goes and picks up the riders and delivers them to their chosen destination.
At a public meeting on Dec. 10, Nelson/Nygaard consultant Peter Soderbergh said a number of tradeoffs with the service are still being explored.
"Does the service go directly to your front door, directly to your final destination, or are there kind of more concentrated stops?" he said, "Do you allow advanced booking… or is it purely on-demand service?"
Soderbergh said that new microtransit service zones would maintain access to all of the existing stops along Routes 8 and 39.
He added that there will be opportunities for community feedback through the design process.
"As we have some of those preliminary service designs completed, we plan to come back out to the public and stakeholder groups to get your opinion on those initial service plans [and] make sure that they align with your needs and priorities," he said.
