Maybe we need to start thinking of introducing 12-15 passenger, gasoline-powered vans as they have done in some countries?
I used to drive vans like this for a couple of years. Nonprofit group running it, lots of little subsidies to keep it going. It was supposed to be a regular system of bus route type deals to start with but had degenerated to little more than a taxi service by the time I was involved. I didn't care for the hours as there was no real shift system; they'd just call you up each night and say 'you pick up your first ride at x place at x time tomorrow' - and that was *all* you knew about the next day. That bit cost them a *lot* of employees, though with the ride patterns they could have gone to a regular shift system with little difficulty.

Something else I've been thinking about lately, which kinda-sorta ties into my experiences with that operation - school busses, specifically school bus routing. That was actually pretty similiar to what we were doing with that van system: lots of pickups each morning all over the map...but not that many actual destinations. With school busses, the destination is always a school - figure maybe eight or ten to an area; with the vans it was also morning pickups all over the map - but likewise only about ten or twelve really common destinations (and some of those destinations were in easy walking distance of one another). Whole thing repeats in reverse in the evening with both systems. So...I find myself wondering if the 'logic'/'methodology'/whatever behind the one could be applied to the other much of the time. I mean, with the school busses, the kids did get to school on time - and back home within a reasonable interval, and those dang school busses run just about everywhere. Lot of doubling up on school bus routes as well.