"They" may only be waking up to this now, but we've been onto this for ages!
"Chris Grayling says local buses could be replaced by Uber-style services"
(December 2017)"Are Uber and Lyft abstracting passengers from mass (public) transport and adding to congestion?"
(February 2018)The Bristol-based variant
Slide was mentioned back then, but has since folded. Here is the parent company RATP Dev explanation:
26 November 2018 - RATP Dev, announces today the closure of its shared ride-to-work service Slide Bristol.
Slide, launched in the city in July 2016 as a pilot project, has since made more than 40,000 passenger trips in one of the UK▸ ’s most congested cities. Slide is closing due to challenging conditions posed by Bristol’s infrastructure and competition from rapid transit routes.
Coralie Triadou, Microtransit Director at RATP Dev, said: “Slide Bristol was the first microtransit service to be launched in the United Kingdom, and we are proud to have worked with the local community to provide this service to its commuters. Slide has proved to be extremely popular, covering more than 210,000 kilometers over a two-year period and receiving an average 4.9 out of 5 rating from customers for its drivers and service.
“Our experience in Bristol has shown us that Microtransit services in large city centres can only operate smoothly when they are fully integrated with the public transport network, and this is where we want to focus our efforts. As these conditions became challenging to meet in Bristol and with increased competition from two new Metrobus Rapid Transit routes, we decided to end the service.”
“We are proud to have transformed what was initially planned as a short pilot project into a full two-year operation and remain committed to investing in microtransit services and in developing new creative transport solutions which benefit commuters throughout the UK and beyond.
