Dial-a-Ride was a horrendous failure in Santa Clara County despite the faint critical tone of this article. How it works among a small and/or dense population is another story.

My late father was a leading critic of Dial-a-Ride at the time, mustering his considerable organizational analysis skills to show just how unworkable it was even in the most perfect scenario. To wit: imagine an assortment of riders all lying roughly in a long line across the valley with a common destination. Even in that case, the transit time for the first boarder from origin to destination would be at least 10-15 TIMES direct door-to-door time, or at least 3-4 times as long as taking existing bus routes with transfers (if needed).

In a small town with a well-bounded small center of commerce and residences, sure, that could work.

Here's a postmortem analysis from Stanford: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00165244

VTA's current farebox recovery rate is below 15% and, to my knowledge, has not ever been better than that.