SmartRide is an on-demand micro-transit point-to-point service currently billed as “Shuttle service that comes to you”.

SmartRide was established in February 2018, with door-to-door service in the City of Citrus Heights. Citrus Heights had an earlier, less flexible service. The Citrus Heights zone became more important when Route 24 Madison-Greenback was discontinued with SacRT Forward transit renewal, leaving no service east of Sunrise Blvd. Citrus Heights is now included in the Citrus Heights-Antelope-Orangvale zone, and is a door-to-door service, picking up and dropping off at any address within the zone. SmartRide has been expanded several times to other areas in the SacRT service area, and it has also been shrunk a few times, most recently in August 2023 due to budget issues. These other zones are corner-to-corner, not door-to-door.

SmartRide is very popular with its riders. Who wouldn’t like door-to-door or corner-to-corner service for the same price as a fixed route bus? Sometimes rides are unavailable, sometimes there is a long wait, and service hours are only 7:00AM to 7:00PM, Monday to Friday. No weekends. With a shift from commuters being a large share of riders to trips for multiple other reasons, no weekend service makes no sense.

When the program was established, it was sold to the public and transit advocates as an extended first mile/last mile service to get people to and from transit. The current program makes no mention of this original intent. It is now just micro-transit, using smaller vehicles and an app to provide transit service. A sampling of planned trips in the app indicates that the app does not even suggest fixed route transit as part of a trip, except outside service hours. If you enter a destination outside your service zone, it does not suggest using fixed route transit for that trip, it just says the destination is outside the zone. These are issues that could be fixed in the SmartRide app, but the fact that they have not been indicates that SacRT does not think of the service as related to fixed route service.

The application to Sacramento Transportation Authority for funding says: “One of SacRT’s objectives for the SmaRT Ride program has been to encourage the use of SmaRT Ride as a means to get to fixed-route transit, rather than as a replacement for fixed-route transit.” However, nothing in the operations of SmartRide, the SmartRide app, or the website indicates that this is the current intention.

This post focuses on where the service zones are in relation to high-frequency transit. SacRT has few high frequency routes, but where it does, should be promoting use of those routes. These 15 minute frequency routes, as shown on the map below (pdf), are Gold Line as far as Sunrise station, Blue Line, Route 81 Stockton, Route 1 Greenback, and portions of routes 30 & 38 where they overlap, and portions of routes 30 & 38 where they overlap. The map deserves some explanation, which follows.

The light blue crosshatched areas are the service zones for SmartRide. These are sketched, so similar to the actual zones, not completely accurate. The downtown-midtown zone is almost obscured, for a reason: it is overlapped by several high frequency routes. Areas within a half-mile walking of light rail 15-minute service are shown as fuzzy purple and maroon spots. These are actual calculated walking distance areas, not buffers. Light rail was largely built along existing rail lines, including areas of low walkability, and at several stations the other side of the light rail tracks cannot be accessed without long walks. The high frequency bus routes are shown in red and black, with blue buffers. These are half-mile buffers, not actual walking distance areas, because STAR does not have the data needed to calculate actual walk distance for bus routes. For urban areas, the measurements should be similar, but as riders know, there are some low density areas along the routes.

STAR believes that SacRT should not be offering on-demand micro-transit in areas which have high frequency fixed route transit service. About one-third of the Citrus Heights-Antelope-Orangevale zone has high frequency service with Route 1 Greenback. All of the Downtown-Midtown zone has high frequency service, and we do not know of any reason why a zone was established here. Much of the Franklin-South Sacramento zone has high frequency transit. The other zones have limited high frequency service, or only medium frequency, or almost none at all. For these other zones, it would definitely make sense to offer rides to and from transit.

One of the issues with point-to-point micro-transit is that it assumes that most citizens deserve transit. But it is not reasonable nor sustainable to offer transit in low density areas. People moved to these areas mostly because they liked low density, or sometimes for economic reasons (‘drive til you qualify’ is the saying). As one of the most poorly funded transit systems in California, it is important to question where the limited funds are going. STAR questions whether they should be going to serving areas that are low density, or which have high frequency transit.

The next post will focus on what SmartRide costs SacRT, and the riding public that uses fixed route service.

• SacRT SmaRT Ride