Chapel Hill Transit

Partially because the town is not as cool as once it was, there's no cooler thing about Chapel Hill these days than the free buses.  When my car was broke last week, I had to ride the F bus from downtown Carrboro to down by Whole Foods, and it was very convenient, despite stopping at the Mall for 7 minutes, despite the fact that the AC wasn't on in the morning when it should have been.

The actual buses are suspiciously similar to the ones they had when I was in junior high, back when you had to pay money, but that's beside the point.  They are not only free, they have free bike racks.

However, one gets the feeling that there is piss poor route and fleet optimization. Morning buses headed into town are full, which is awesome, and evening rush seems to have good ridership as well. But I run in the evenings around Eastwood Lake, and I see the G bus come down N. Lake Shore.  It is almost always completely empty. Once I saw one rider.  Buses use a lot o. gas per mile. I get 55 cents per mile as an expense for driving my car, when I drive on biz.  I'm sure that's a Federal rate. I don't know what the comparable figure for buses is, but it's much higher. To say nothing of the emissions issues.

There should be a way for buses to run less empty. Use vans.  Give people who use lightly traveled routes off hours vouchers to call cabs.

There are hardware limitations around vans, and possibilities for abuse of a taxi scheme, sure, but I'd like to know if these issues are being studied.  Does the system track rider volume at all?