Uber-alternative adds mass transit options for getting around

Bridj, the newest entry into the metro transit mix, is a bit hard to describe. A flexible pre-paid bus? A sort of group Uber? Nothing exactly fits the new microtransit system that touches Johnson County’s northernmost edge.

No, the only way to understand Bridj is to ride it. Which I did last week.

If you haven’t heard of Bridj, that’s understandable. The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority is only a few weeks into a one-year pilot project to see how it might work as part of the city’s transit offerings. People are only just beginning to check it out. Boston and Washington, D.C., already have it, but Kansas City is the first public transportation system to partner with it.

Like Uber, it’s a service you request and pay for through a cellphone app (just search bridj to download it). That’s where the similarity ends, though. Instead of a car, Bridj sends a 14-seat Ford van with a ATA-hired driver behind the wheel. And because other people can also call for the van, you might have to walk a block or two to get to a common pick-up location. Same for the drop-off. The stops change according to who is riding.

For now, Bridj operates mainly in Kansas City. But people who can conveniently get themselves to the Johnson/Wyandotte County line and east of Roe Avenue and want to ride to work at KU Medical Center or points east can access it as well.

I don’t fit that description, so I had to drive up to find a likely spot near Bridj’s western service boundary, which is Roe Avenue.

I found a parking lot near the Burger King, 4811 Roe Blvd., and started things in motion by opening the free app. It asked me for my pick-up and drop-off spots, which I set as my location and The Kansas City Star at 18th Street and Grand Boulevard, where my car would be waiting for the ride home. Then a screen popped up with a list of the possible pick-up times, with the first one in about 10 minutes.

It’s worth noting here that you can set up your ride as much as a day in advance.

From there, you tap on your preferred time, following the prompts to put in your credit card numbers for payment. Rides cost $1.50, but there’s also a promo code to get your first 10 rides free. It’s KCBRIDJ (and yes, the capitalization matters).

The app told me I could meet up with a Bridj van at 8:21 a.m. at Roe Lane and 48th Street, northbound, which was about a block and a half away. So far, so good.

Here is where things got a bit confusing. There are a lot of Roe-named streets in that part of town. The intersection in question definitely was Roe Lane. But the cross street sign said it was 48th Street going east and 47th Street going west. There was no northbound. Worse, a little way up the hill was a Roe Parkway, and father still was Roe Avenue.

Was I at the right place? According to the tracking feature on the app, there was a van nearby, but I was still a minute’s walk from my pick-up place. That couldn’t be good.

I waited. Finally at a couple minutes past 8:21, I saw the van with Bridj in big letters making a turn to come towards me down the hill. The driver told me the actual pickup place was Roe Boulevard, near the Burger King. He’d waited for me a few minutes, then turned the corner and saw me waving and figured I’d got the wrong spot.

That was the only glitch, though. The van was big and comfortable, still with that new-car smell and working Wi-Fi. I got dropped off at 8:51 a.m. at 19th and Main streets, a short walk to The Star.

I was the only rider that morning, and the driver told me that hasn’t been unusual in the new service. But as people hear about it, more requests are coming in.

In fact, interest has been picking up, said Robbie Makinen, president and chief executive officer of KCATA. Some 2,000 pins requesting service have been entered and there were 30 trips last week, up from only six or seven the first week, he said.

The service is bare-bones now, but Makinen hopes that information from those requests will show the ATA where to expand and what hours to add. Potential riders at the River Market area, for example, have shown interest and that could soon become part of the service, he said.

Right now the service is concentrated on linking big employers — KU and Truman medical centers and downtown government offices — during peak commuting times from 6:30 to 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. But eventually, Makinen hopes times will be expanded to provide rides to lunch spots, for example.

In the meantime, they’ll work out little glitches like my Roe (Lane, Avenue, Boulevard) confusion.

Because ridership is still small, the vans are currently traveling a fairly fixed route, but that will change, Makinen said. The software will update the routes in real time as more location requests are put in for pick-ups and drop-offs, he said.

“It’s like a living thing, not just a big bus going down the street,” on a fixed route, he said.

“The more options we can give people the better chances they have to access public transit,” he said. “I think the possibilities with this are really, really big.”

This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 12:57 PM with the headline "Uber-alternative adds mass transit options for getting around."