Minibus system can aid mass transit

By David Splinter     8/20/09 7:00pm

Standing on a street corner near the Pacific Ocean in Lima, Peru, I asked someone which bus could take me downtown. He pointed to a small 10-seater van pulling up behind us. A few of these minibuses would pass every minute and cost about a quarter.I'd seen them before, but never in such a system. And after using them to ride to and fro, I can honestly say that if there were minibuses in Houston and I had to wait less than a minute for one, I would probably sell my car.

Like most people, I hate waiting for buses. Economists have quantified this distaste: People would pay six times as much to reduce time spent waiting for a bus than time spent riding the bus. This is why subways seem so much more appealing than regular city buses; they circulate about every five minutes.

Rice University's Transportation Department currently caters to students preferring short waits, running medium-sized inner loop buses every few minutes, instead of larger buses less frequently. Imagine expanding this system across a wider area of Houston and charging a small amount for rides. This is what a minibus system could look like.

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Small businesses run minibuses in cities around the world. They can quickly adapt their routes in response to changes in travel demand. They can also tailor their service with adjustable fares to go a little off route to your doorstep.

But here in Houston you cannot enjoy these services. To ride Harris County METRO you usually need to walk a healthy distance to the bus stop, and then it is often 20 minutes between buses. So if Lima and hundreds of other cities around the world get to have minibuses, why not Houston?

While Houston is fortunate to be one of the few American cities legally allowing a type of minibus, there are so many restrictions that none operate, as far as I know. Specifically, Houston allows jitneys, a minibus carrying between four and fourteen passengers. Jitney was an old colloquialism for five cents, the fare in the early 1900s for these vehicles.

However, many restrictions keep jitneys from actually serving Houstonians. According to local regulations, jitneys must operate without a fixed schedule, meaning they cannot run effective carpools between your neighborhood and downtown. Otherwise, we could see some minibuses offering services like wireless internet and coffee for morning commuters.

Jitneys also cannot go off route or adjust rates, meaning they cannot charge extra to take you to your doorstep. Probably most ridiculous is that jitney vehicles cannot be more than five years old.

All of these restrictions mean that the Harris County METRO maintains a monopoly on running buses with schedules. As you may expect, this monopoly operates inefficiently. METRO was almost 90 percent tax-subsidized in the fiscal year 2007, with operating expenses of $436 million and fare collections of only $53 million. Granted, METRO may help reduce some congestion and allow low-income residents a means of transportation, but METRO's funds come from a regressive 1 percent dedicated sales tax.

Thankfully, entrepreneurs have found a way around restrictions on transportation solutions with Zipcar and Web sites like NuRide and PickupPal, which coordinate carpooling.

PickupPal's potential to help people get where they wanted to go led the Ontario Highway Transportation Board to rule it practically illegal to carpool in their city. By allowing ride seekers to pay drivers, PickupPal violated their Public Vehicles Act, which only allows carpoolers to pay drivers if they limit travel to between home and work, do not cross city boundaries, have the same driver every day and pay the driver at most once a week.

This is how legal monopolies, like most city buses, tend to defend "their" market share. But even if these innovative programs cause some loss of ridership on city buses, they can help fulfill the goal of mass transit: moving people where they want to go.

The monthly METRO report estimated in May that total ridership would fall 10 percent in fiscal year 2009 relative to the previous year. The decrease in gas prices explains some of this fall, but it shows that we should allow entrepreneurs more of a chance to offer Houstonians mass transit options.

So how can we start bringing the minibus solution within reach? To make jitneys feasible in Houston, we should allow them to schedule service, adjust rates for going slightly off route and operate vehicles older than five years old.

You can see on a daily basis that minibuses work on campus. Private minibuses also work in cities around the world. It is time to allow minibuses to expand mass transit options in Houston.

David Splinter is an economics graduate student.

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