Most conversations about accessibility focus on ramps, apps, and adaptive features.

Luke Mellor thinks there’s a missing link. If transit itself doesn't show up when you need it, or doesn't go where you need to go, none of the rest of it matters.

Luke works at Pantonium, a Canadian company that builds on-demand transit software rooted in the paratransit space. In this episode, he breaks down why technology can be a barrier just as easily as it can be a solution, how a near-empty Belleville night bus became one of Ontario's first successful on-demand transit deployments, and what transit poverty looks like in both urban cores and remote Indigenous communities.

He also makes a case that most on-demand transit pilots fail not because the technology doesn't work, but because transit agencies don't go big enough to find out.

👉 In This Episode

• Why adding technology to transit automatically creates new barriers. And what Pantonium does about it

• The 'perfect app' problem: how a flawlessly accessible app can still fail the person using it

• The Belleville story: a night bus nobody rode, 300-400 stops made available on demand, and a 300% ridership jump

• What transport poverty looks like when you map income data over a transit network

• How Indigenous communities across Canada are navigating the chicken-and-egg of transit access and economic opportunity

• The dialysis case: why reliable transit is, for some people, a matter of life and death

• What Luke would tell a room full of transit directors today

👋 Guest

Luke Mellor - Pantonium

Reach out at www.pantonium.com

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⏰Chapters

0:00 Cold Open

0:12 Intro

1:45 Luke's Background

3:10 What is Pantonium?

5:20 Accessible Future Philosophy

9:00 Removing Barriers in Practice

13:30 Fleet & Vehicle Accessibility

17:00 Right-Sizing for Communities

21:30 What is Macro Transit?

26:00 The Belleville Story

31:30 Transport Poverty

36:00 Indigenous Communities & Transit

42:30 Connectivity in Remote Communities

45:00 The ROI of Transit Investment

52:30 Message to Transit Directors

55:30 How to Reach Pantonium

56:00 Outro