Quite a few of those items can be eliminated or reduced.
I think people suggesting "build it from scratch" mean build a local Uber-like service from scratch, which like Uber would not own vehicles itself or pay for gas or maintenance. That gets rid of the buying vehicles, and covering gas, maintenance, and tires.
Dispatching drivers could be done with pairs of text messages to the driver, of the form "pick up <NAME> at <ADDRESS>" and "drop off <NAME> at <ADDRESS>". The driver can tap on the addresses in those text messages to open them in the driver's smartphone's map application. That gets rid of the need for a commercial map license.
I don't see any need for a payment back end. The town can require drivers to accept payments directly using one or more specified methods (such as Square).
It probably doesn't need native iOS and Android apps. A web-based application should be sufficient.
They already have a website. They should be able to add the back end stuff to that, so no new costs for ops or hosting. (That is assuming that they have access to the code for their site and can make changes. Their site is run by Pathfive.ca, which seems to be a company that specializes in building and hosting websites for educational institutions and local governments. It may be that the town only supplies content to fill in templates).
You're describing a business model that (in theory) has a massive built-in cost advantage over Uber (whose model sounds bloated and inefficient compared to yours). The start-up costs are lower, the operating costs are lower, the maintenance and keep-up costs of a single Web site are lower.
Why hasn't anybody executed on that strategy (in practice)?
Forget the government affiliation, someone could be minting money either by competing with Uber on cost or just strategically choosing smaller markets that are not yet covered by Uber.
I think people suggesting "build it from scratch" mean build a local Uber-like service from scratch, which like Uber would not own vehicles itself or pay for gas or maintenance. That gets rid of the buying vehicles, and covering gas, maintenance, and tires.
Dispatching drivers could be done with pairs of text messages to the driver, of the form "pick up <NAME> at <ADDRESS>" and "drop off <NAME> at <ADDRESS>". The driver can tap on the addresses in those text messages to open them in the driver's smartphone's map application. That gets rid of the need for a commercial map license.
I don't see any need for a payment back end. The town can require drivers to accept payments directly using one or more specified methods (such as Square).
It probably doesn't need native iOS and Android apps. A web-based application should be sufficient.
They already have a website. They should be able to add the back end stuff to that, so no new costs for ops or hosting. (That is assuming that they have access to the code for their site and can make changes. Their site is run by Pathfive.ca, which seems to be a company that specializes in building and hosting websites for educational institutions and local governments. It may be that the town only supplies content to fill in templates).