CityMapper To Exit The OnDemand Bus And RideShare Minicab Business.

Transport app Citymapper was said to be, a reliable, even admirably inventive, but not all its experiments work out. Today, the company announced it’s shutting down its hybrid bus and minicab service, previously known as Smartbus, then SmartRide, and then, simply, Ride. 

Ride was always a confusing experiment, available only in Citymapper’s home city of London. It started with a pair of buses in 2017, which serviced routes that the company’s data said were underserved by public transit. Then in 2018, it became SmartRide, with buses replaced by eight-seater vans that allowed them to be registered as private hire vehicles rather than buses. Eventually, the company added shared minicabs to its roster. 

But Citymapper Ride never made it out of London....shape of things to come perhaps for ViaVan???

These minicabs were particularly interesting: similar to UberPool, but with drivers paid a fixed salary instead of a per-ride fee, drivers often said they preferred this stability to the algorithmic demands of services like Uber. 

In a blog post, Citymapper said it would find these drivers “good places to work,” but that regulatory constraints and a desire to focus on other projects meant Ride has had to end. 

The other projects in this case are just one: Citymapper Pass. This lets Londoners pay a weekly subscription to access a range of services including trains, buses, and bikes. Pass was launched earlier this year, and Citymapper says it will soon hopes be adding London's black cabs and minicabs to the service’s top tier (perhaps they should have thought to ask us first if we wanted to be added) to make up for the loss of Rideshared Minicabs.

Of course, Citymapper isn’t the only transport company that’s attempted to reinvent the bus. Lyft and Uber have launched similar services with shared vehicles on fixed (or semi-fixed) routes, without great success. Even Elon Musk used to envision his grand Hyperloop project as a sort of public transport carrying shuttles full of pedestrians. That was before he narrowed his plans — both literally and figuratively — to simply putting cars in tunnels. 

When it comes to disrupting city infrastructure, Citymapper’s plans, too, have diminished in scope. The last day of operations for Ride will be on July 14th