A loud ping rings out from the front of the 12-passenger van: It’s a new rider requesting a pickup. Driver Gina Casey checks the address that has popped up on her screen and starts on the route.
“It’s like that all day,” she says, one passenger after another.
Five minutes later, Casey pulls the van to the curb in front of a two-story brick house. A man walks out, boards and says hello. He’s on his way to work.
Before Gwinnett County offered microtransit in Snellville, where Donovan Graham lives, he took Uber to his job. A New York transplant who moved to take care of his mother, Graham doesn’t like to drive and doesn’t have a car.
Uber cost him “a small fortune.” Gwinnett’s on-demand ride costs $3 per trip.
“I tell you, I am so grateful,” Graham said.
In recent years, flexible, on-demand and government sponsored rideshare programs like Gwinnett’s have been pitched as uniquely suited to meeting the transit needs of suburban areas with less density.
Officials in Gwinnett had visions of making microtransit available countywide over the next decade, far past the bounds of the three currently operating zones in Snellville, Lawrenceville and Norcross. Cobb County officials wanted to take its South Cobb pilot program countywide, too.
Both county’s expansion plans hinged on revenue from penny sales taxes for transit that voters overwhelmingly rejected in November, losing by 28,000 votes in Gwinnett and 95,000 votes in Cobb. Continued funding for the existing zones was also expected to come from transit tax money.
Both counties’ plans are now on hold as officials figure out Plan B. If they want to keep the existing programs or expand, they’ll have to find money elsewhere to ensure riders like Graham can get where they need to go.
And as the constant pings from the front of Casey’s van attest, the rides have become popular. Casey has driven a microtransit van since the Snellville zone debuted in early 2023. Her shifts were slow in the first month or two, but now there’s barely time for her to take a break between requests for rides.
“Once they heard about it, it spread like wildfire,” Casey said.
In one afternoon shift, she took people to jobs, to pick up children from day care and to get to after-school sports practices.
This year through the end of October, there have been 20,544 rides were requested in Lawrenceville, while 18,487 were requested in Snellville, according to ridership data provided by the county. Drivers in the Norcross zone, which opened in mid-September, gave 772 rides in its first six weeks.
Credit: Olivia Bowdoin for the AJC
Credit: Olivia Bowdoin for the AJC
Cobb County officials reported 538 rides in the first few weeks of its South Cobb zone, which launched at the end of October. That program has funding for up to three years through a combination of county operating funds and grants from the federal government and the Atlanta-Region Transit Link Authority. After three years, new sources of money would need to be identified.
Gwinnett County is footing the costs in Snellville and Lawrenceville that aren’t covered by fares, with the help of some federal funding, spokeswoman Deborah Tuff said. The county is also footing 44% of the $1.3 million pilot program in Norcross, which has funding through July 2025.
The City of Norcross is covering 12% of the costs and the Gateway85 Community Improvement District is funding the remaining 44%.
Emory Morsberger, Gateway85′s executive director, said his group is trying to figure out what its investment will look like after the pilot program wraps. Their hope was for the Norcross zone to eventually connect with other zones.
“We were anticipating some larger system that this would blend into,” he said.
The zone has only been operational for a few weeks but it’s already exceeding ridership targets and illustrating the need for more transit options, he said.
Credit: Olivia Bowdoin
Credit: Olivia Bowdoin
Morsberger said the referendum’s failure was a disappointment. About 20,000 people living within the CID don’t have cars and need other options to get to work. At the same time, many employers are struggling to fill jobs.
He said it’s clear, after three defeats in five years, there isn’t countywide support for transit. But Morsberger thinks Gwinnett can work with leaders in denser parts of the county to find ways to fund transit where it’s wanted. Business leaders in Cobb have also expressed interest in a more targeted approach to transit expansion.
Matthew Holtkamp, the Republican who was the only Gwinnett commissioner to vote against putting the referendum on the ballot, said he’s hopeful the county can still find a way to fund microtransit. While he opposed the tax, he supports the transit plan, particularly microtransit and a proposed airport shuttle. The Buford/Sugar Hill microtransit zone, in his district, was the next zone slated to open, in 2026.
He likes microtransit because it’s demand-driven and easier to ramp up, or down, depending on usage. Holtkamp said he sees clear benefits to helping people reach jobs in and around the Mall of Georgia, which would have been served by the zone.
Holtkamp said he expects people would be upset if Gwinnett ends service in any of the three current zones ― “that’s human nature.” But he doesn’t think there will be much fallout if the county never expands beyond them.
“People aren’t going to miss what they’ve never had,” he said.
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