RIP OC Flex or: How Difficult Public Micromobility is in Suburbia
The public rideshare in Orange County solved the last mile problem for an area around a suburban rail station, but the price was too high.
OC Flex is a micromobility pilot program in Orange County, California, that started in 2018. Basically, it is an Uber-like public van service. In 2025, OCTA announced that the pilot OC Flex program would be coming to an end.
The program had a small geographic footprint, as shown below. The Blue Zone encompassed an area around Huntington Beach and Westminster, and the other Orange Zone centered on parts of Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo, and Aliso Viejo. The Blue Zone was shelved during the COVID pandemic in 2020 and never reopened. The Orange Zone has remained open but will have its final service on June 30, 2025
The OC Flex program highlights why micromobility programs can be difficult, especially in spread-out suburbia like much of Orange County. The zones of operation were only a couple of miles each, spots poorly served by public transit, even though they each had a rail station. I explore some of the reasons for its demise.
OC Flex Ridership Numbers
One of the reasons that OCTA stated for the closure of OC Flex was due to low ridership. The Blue Zone had already closed, with a monthly average ridership of less than 1000 per month pre-pandemic. The Orange Zone showed improvement, but did not meet the expected targets:
“Pre-pandemic (in February 2020), while the target was 6 riders per revenue vehicle hour, OC Flex was averaging 2.5 riders.
“By January 2025, that number had fallen slightly to 2.3 riders per revenue vehicle hour.”
OCTA did not release the exact number of riders in the closure message, but I dug around to see if I could find the information. In an OCTA Transit Committee meeting on March 13, 2025, a staff report showed overall ridership for the pilot program.
Pre-COVID, it does appear that ridership was trending upwards quickly, hitting over 3,000 in February 2020. Obviously, ridership cratered during COVID, and it also did not recover to its previous heights. Ridership had plateaued at about 2000 per month.
Metrolink transfers to OC Flex seemed to have been a major driver of the disparities between the two time periods. This trend does not match with the overall Metrolink ridership, which hit an all-time high weekend ridership this year and has seen growth overall during this same period.
OCTA had even increased service to the Laguna Niguel/Mission Viejo Metrolink station in 2024, but the numbers still did not budge. However, it should be noted that passenger rail service between Orange County and San Diego has had issues with closures due to the track instability near the ocean. This may have impacted some potential rides, but it likely cannot explain the entire drop.
One OC Flex driver told me that before COVID, a lot of passengers would go to the Chet Holifield Federal Building. But the so-called Ziggurat had started to be phased out of its “3,000 employees from 12 agencies, including about 2,000 from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services” from the location. By 2024, the offices were mostly empty, emptying out potential riders along with them.
OC Flex Service Pricing
It only costs $4.50 to ride OC Flex, which includes all-day boarding along with discounts for groups. Meaning that a round trip from my home to my office would only be $4.50, when an Uber would be roughly $14 without a tip for just one way. Likewise, Metrolink or Amtrak passholders could ride OC Flex for free.
These prices and level of service were a great deal for riders, but the program was deemed too expensive to continue operating:
“Pre-pandemic (in February 2020), while the target was $9 subsidy per rider, the cost averaged $31.56 per rider.”
“By January 2025, that cost had jumped sharply to $58.06 per rider.”
Getting the numbers down to the target of just $9 per ride may have seemed like an impossible goal. However, looking at numbers in an older report, OCTA was a lot closer than the $31.56 listed in the closure announcement. In the second quarter of the 2019-20 fiscal year, the subsidy got down to just $19.08. That’s almost comparable to Uber or Lyft.
At almost $60 per ride, the program just didn’t make sense, especially as each trip was likely only a couple of miles long. This makes me wonder why the program got so expensive to operate relative to the earlier period. It is not just about more riders.
In Quarter 1 of the 2018-19 fiscal year, the number of riders was fairly similar to recent years. Both looked to be roughly 2,000 riders per month, but the costs in 2018-19 were just $26.28 per boarding, while the recent year at $58.06. I know prices have increased around the board, but things have not doubled over that period (ok, maybe housing).
OC Flex Did Solve The Last Mile Problem
OC Flex operated on weekdays from 6 AM to 9 PM, and weekends from 9 AM to 9 PM. The overall rideable hours in a year were 17,416, which translates to 2-3 vans running at a time. Each van could hold eight passengers.
While OC Flex was not that popular County-wide, the people who did use it liked it. There was a customer satisfaction score of almost 100%, as reported by OCTA. I only rode it a couple of times, and the service was fine. The app and payment system were a little more janky than the private peers, but I never encountered any problems.
People who relied on it for commuting especially liked the program. Despite having the Laguna Niguel / Mission Viejo Train Station, this part of Orange County is completely unwalkable (it’s barely bikeable, but that is a future post). So the last mile problem of getting from the train station to work is a huge hurdle here.
OC Flex solved that last-mile problem. I had colleagues who used it all the time for their commute to and from work. Rather than driving from the far-flung corners of Southern California, they would simply train in on Metrolink and take OC Flex to work.
I even heard it was difficult to get a seat during peak commute hours in the morning, despite three OC Flex vans running at that time. One driver told me that the mornings were very busy, taking riders to “Saddleback College”, “Soka University”, and the Aliso Viejo “Town Center,” among others. “I feel sorry for the riders,” said the driver to me.
I asked an OCTA representative about alternatives for these riders or expanded bus services in the area. Unfortunately, the rep would not give me any information other than what was already posted on the website. He said:
OCTA is proactively working to ensure a seamless transition for OC Flex riders by providing information about alternatives. This includes adjustments to existing bus routes and schedules to accommodate areas previously served by OC Flex. Those options include: MV Shuttle and Ridematch.info.
Both MV Shuttle and Ridematch.info are pretty useless for most of these commuters. The MV Shuttle only services one city in the Orange Zone and the ride matching is not always available or flexible. OCTA or the cities need to step up and provide solutions.
How Could OC Flex Have Worked?
OCTA had initially projected 135,000 boardings per year for OC Flex. Obviously, ridership was nowhere near this number, and that projection is absolutely ludicrous. If they did hit that number, then the service would have indeed hit the targeted $9 per ride, but I am not even sure how that would have been possible.
Apparently, there is an OC Flex White Paper floating around somewhere that I saw referenced in a Huntington Beach city public communication record. But I could not get a hold of it. I’m wondering if the consultants oversold the potential of the project.
The total cost of the program was projected to be $2,211,318 in 2025. OCTA would not provide me with the cost breakdown for the program, and it was not in any other material, including in the staff reporting to shut down the program.
I am not actually sure OCTA has the breakdown because they have relied on transportation companies Keolis and Transdev to run OC Flex. I also reached to Keolis for a cost breakdown, but did not receive a response. They also run the OC ACCESS Service for OCTA, a program for “physical or cognitive limitations” who cannot ride typical transit. The subsidy per boarding is also high for that program at $78.77.
Presumably, the largest costs to programs like OC Flex are for the drivers. Keolis reportedly pays around $24.16 per hour, which is only around $50K per year. Then, I would guess another $20K in other benefits as derived from the union. But it is hard to make these estimates without a more detailed cost breakdown.
In terms of driver layoffs, a representative from Teamsters 952, who represent these drivers, told me, “There will be no layoffs for OC Flex as the few drivers have been given the opportunity to come to the OC Access service or the call center.” One OC Flex driver confirmed this, while another was concerned about losing hours and was considering transferring to Chino Hills’ OmniRide, a similar public rideshare program.
What is the Future of Suburban Micromobility?
Viability was always going to be an uphill battle in a place like Orange County that is not dense and has an overreliance on cars. Given its tiny coverage, much of the county didn’t even know OC Flex existed, as illustrated by the comments on the r/OrangeCounty Subreddit. Further, as of writing this, not a single local media outlet has even covered the pilot’s closure.
But this particular pilot project failure should not condemn all future endeavors.
In general, running a public Uber system just seems to be very expensive to operate. A comparable system in Chino Hills, California, has fewer riders than OC Flex at 22,000 per year and costs more at $74 per rider.
At the prices that OCTA was subsidizing OC Flex, they could have just given each rider an Uber voucher, which is what a local Councilman suggested in the Chino Hills case. Of note, Uber just announced it will start its own fixed shuttle system that looks very much like a bus service, which may end up getting suggested for these kinds of last-mile problems.
However, OCTA’s buses do actually run at a much more efficient rate than OC Flex, as operated fixed-routes have over 25 million boardings while contracted fixed routes have another 10 million boardings, costing just $6.60 and $9.01 per boarding.
I would like to see OCTA take those old OC Flex vans and run them as fixed-route buses. Not all buses need to be large (I will have a future post on this)!
Finally, I would love to see Waymo self-driving cars tested in this area. I could easily see the cities splitting a few Waymos at a fraction of the cost of the OC Flex program. They could even run all night.
I know a lot of urbanists dislike self-driving cars, preferring improved public transit and densifying areas. Unfortunately, neither of these options will happen in Orange County anytime soon. I am thinking more about how people like my colleague can get to the train station after work today.
While OC Flex was ultimately unsustainable, the need for microtransit was proven to be much needed in this suburban area. It did solve the last-mile problem, just at a very steep price. With its closure, the county will need to find a new solution.
UPDATE: May 19 at 3:23 PM. The article was updated to include comment from Teamsters 952. Times and dates were also updated to corrected info.