Charlotte is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. The city's population has climbed past 980,000 people, and the surrounding region added more residents than almost anywhere else in the United States of America in 2025. That growth touches every part of the city's infrastructure, including the paratransit service that thousands of riders with disabilities depend on to get to medical appointments, jobs, connecting with loved ones, and daily life.

For the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) Special Transportation Service (STS), the ADA paratransit service for the Charlotte region, that growth raised the stakes on reliability. A service built for a smaller city doesn't scale gracefully. It shows the strain in longer trips, missed pickups, and dispatchers buried in manual work.
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The wall of overbooked trips

Every morning at STS used to start the same way. Dispatchers walked into a wall of overbooked trips, 80 to 100 of them, sometimes as many as 170, that their previous turnkey provider had failed to place. Someone had to squeeze every one of them into the day by hand.

"It was a lot of work for the dispatcher in the morning to try to squeeze in 100 or 80 unassigned trips, squeezing into every space they had. When we were with our previous provider, we used to see eighty-something, almost 100, every morning." — Leann Le, Application Administrator Senior, CATS

Dispatchers called it laying down rail, one trip in front of the other. It was the first job of every day, and it ate most of the morning before anyone could think about anything else.
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A different way of building the schedule

On May 16, 2026, CATS moved STS from their previous turnkey provider onto Spare. Spare's engine runs continuously in the background, reassigning and refining the schedule in real time instead of waiting for a dispatcher to fix it by hand.

Two months in, that morning wall is gone. Unassigned trips now sit at zero to five most days, a drop of more than 95%.

"The majority of the day was spent trying to find places to put these trips. Now they're able to focus more on calling people, if we're running a little late and maybe offer other alternatives. Dispatchers are able to correspond with the drivers more, make sure they're on the right track, and answer any questions they may have in relation to daily operations. Overall communication has seen a significant improvement." — Regina Wood, Transportation Operations Manager, CATS

Better communication, on the record

Some of dispatch's coordination with drivers used to happen entirely over radio, and it disappeared the moment the call ended. Spare's in-platform messaging changed that dynamic.

"Dispatchers are able to interact more with the operators, with the messaging system that also offers an activity tracking log of the conversations. This has been instrumental in decreasing the radio traffic and actually documenting these conversations and questions that the Communications Center representatives respond to on a daily basis." — Regina Wood, Transportation Operations Manager, CATS

The team also let go of a workaround they'd relied on for years. Manual trip grouping had been a daily chore, a way of forcing efficiency the old system couldn't find on its own. With Spare, on-time performance improved without this.

"What I like about Spare is that it's easier for me to track everything that's going on in the system, because I can see all the logs, all the activities. I couldn't do that within our previous system, but with Spare I can track pretty much everything." — Leanne Le, Application Administrator Senior, CATS

Results in the numbers

Impact for drivers and riders

The change in software reached past the dispatch room. Field Operations Manager Tesheena Spencer points to something that never shows up on a dashboard, drivers actually getting home on time.

"We're really happy with all the improvements that Spare has been showing us day-to-day with our trips, with the scheduling, even the operators returning to base on time. Before, they were returning back to base maybe 30 to 45 minutes, up to an hour, after their scheduled end time. With Spare optimizing, we definitely see the benefit there."
— Tesheena Spencer, Field Operations Manager, CATS

For STS driver Alfonzo Foust, that shift shows up in the shape of his day. One trip at a time keeps the schedule realistic, which means the day actually ends when it's supposed to.

“By having one trip at a time, it helps to make the schedule easier to get off on time. It doesn't feel like I'm really working because I enjoy driving and I enjoy helping people.  So those two things alone make it great for me, and then I go sometimes, wow, and I get a paycheck.  
— Alfonzo Foust, STS Driver, CATS

For riders, all of this shows up in small moments. It's knowing the ride to an appointment will actually show up when it's supposed to. It's a phone call from dispatch before a delay happens, instead of after, so a rider can know they'll be a few minutes late instead of finding out the hard way.

"People don't realize it is a life-saving service because it gets you out and gets you around other people because otherwise, you know, you're stuck at the house. You're not living. You're just stuck there." — Charles Tallon, STS Rider 

Charles Tallon put it simply, this service is how people keep living their lives, not just getting through them. That's what a schedule that actually works adds up to.
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Looking ahead

Two months in, the CATS team already has proof the change was worth it: a dispatch room that runs on foresight instead of scrambling, drivers home on schedule, and riders who can trust the ride will be there when it's supposed to be.

For a region growing as fast as Charlotte, that kind of reliability isn't a one-time win. It's a foundation the team can keep building on, service by service, as the city around them keeps changing.

The story doesn't end here — watch how CATS improved paratransit performance with Spare.