Occasionally when driving around Milpitas, you might stumble upon a white minivan on the road, labeled with a leaf logo. The Simple Mobile Access to Reliable Transit (SMART) is an app-based system that provides affordable car transit within Milpitas, according to the City of Milpitas’s website. The transit system began on Sept. 12 of 2022, according to the website. When it initially launched last year, SMART averaged around 50 rides per week, but the numbers have risen to over 900 between October 16-20, Milpitas principal planner Jay Lee said. “There are seven vehicles, and more drivers in the system,” Lee said. “Right now, we don’t have plans to utilize more vehicles because I believe that we can still accommodate more ridership with the amount of vehicles we have. But right now, we’re focusing on expanding the hours and creating more sustainable rides.”
Funding for the program was secured through the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) Measure 2016 B Program in 2020, Lee said.
“There’s been a lot of interest in the development of the multifamily apartments around the BART
station area, so we thought that there was a need for a service that connected our residential areas to the transit stations,” Lee said. “It was meant to funnel people towards existing transit, and help VTA by encouraging folks to use their services.”
However, after the pandemic, commuter ridership did not recover within the Bay Area, making a transit system to take people to the BART station less necessary, Lee said. “We discovered that there’s actually a lot of demand for people to ride to other places,” Lee said. “As the program went on, we realized how much of a need there was for other types of transportations, so we changed the service model.”
SMART charges $2.50 for adult riders and $1.00 per ride for youth under 18, disabled citizens, seniors, and low-income populations, according to the SMART app.The cheap costs of the SMART transit is an advantage to the system, Junior Anna Kurrinyy said.“It’s basically the same as Uber, but Uber is (extremely) expensive,” Kurrinyy said, “The experience is about the same; the drivers are the same. Uber just goes farther.”
The system operates exclusively on weekdays, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., according to the city’s website.
“I think they should extend their time to the weekends, as well as after seven,” junior Jinyu Zhou said, “My work ended at eight, and I needed a ride home, but I was unable to get a ride home via SMART.” SMART also takes more than one passenger at a time, usually for the same location, but occasionally even a different location altogether, Kurrinyy said. “It can get kind of annoying,” Zhou said, “I might want to get somewhere but then share the ride with another person, and they’d go in the complete other
direction. But they’re usually consistent with their estimated time of arrivals.”
The transit system has been reliable and extremely useful to commute to work, Zhou said.
“The experience has been good; it doesn’t show up late often,” Zhou said. “Sometimes it does,
but it’s still a lot better than the bus.” Kurinnyy has also had positive experiences with the system so far, as the drivers have been timely, she said.
“They’re all really nice,” Kurrinyy said. “Sometimes they talk with you too.”
SMART was created in collaboration with Rideco, a ridesharing company, which hired their own consultant called CLS Global Transportation, Lee said.
“Rideco and the city both ensure that the drivers that are hired have gone through a rigorous background check,” Lee said.
More changes are coming to SMART, with $1.6 million in additional funding being secured from the state to continue operating the system, Lee said.
“The (city) council directed the staff to expand upon a few things–expanding the service hours to the weekends, and even a little later into the night, and maybe a little later into the morning,” Lee said. “If the program continues beyond this next round of funding through the state and the demand continues to go up, then maybe we’ll explore expanding the number of vehicles and drivers.”