rural towns Archives - Transportation For America

Fix-it-first would be a win for rural communities

The lack of repair requirements in the infrastructure bill will shortchange rural areas, costing them potential jobs and leaving them with crumbling roads and bridges that won’t get repaired. Our report highlights why using highway funds to fix roads and bridges would bring numerous benefits to rural America.

The infrastructure deal that passed the Senate in August and is currently waiting on a House vote after budget reconciliation will fail to make meaningful progress on the maintenance backlog on our nation’s streets, roads, and highways. That’s because there is no requirement for state DOTs to prioritize repair before building expensive new roads they will struggle to maintain. Historically, when given new funds with this kind of flexibility, they’ve chosen to expand their roadways (with dubious results), with no real plan for maintaining their highway system.

Cover of Rural Transportation Policy report

Read our latest report on the transportation needs in rural areas
Rural Americans need and deserve reliable and convenient transportation options, but current policies are failing them. This short report we released last week has six recommendations and stories of success from rural America that show a better approach.

What’s the impact on rural areas?

Despite what you may have heard from scores of Senators from rural states, failing to prioritize repair first is a big loss for rural America.

Instead of fixing potholed roads and preventing key farm-to-market bridges from being weight-limited or closed outright, a large portion of the infrastructure funding will go to costly expansion projects in big growing metropolitan areas. State DOTs will burn through the funding buying expensive right-of-way to widen roads for metro commuters. Oftentimes, these highway projects will worsen neighborhood connectivity by creating new barriers and will just end up inducing more driving, which means widened roads fill up with traffic in a few years, failing to deliver on the (expensive) promise of reducing congestion.

Meanwhile, rural areas, which aren’t growing as quickly as their urban counterparts, don’t have much rationale for road expansion, but they absolutely do need their roadways repaired. In fact, a report from TRIP (a national transportation research nonprofit) estimates the rural road maintenance backlog at $211 billion. With metro areas sucking up a majority of the funding for wasteful roadway expansion projects, there will be little left for the vital but unglamourous job of fixing rural highways, county roads, and small-town main streets.

What’s worse, the jobs that come with road repair—good-paying blue-collar jobs that rural communities need—won’t be as abundant. Maintenance work produces more jobs per dollar than roadway expansion since a greater share is spent on labor thanks to the lack of costly right-of-way acquisition. And since maintenance is the big need in rural areas, instituting requiring that existing roads are fixed before new ones are created would ensure that not only is the money spent better, but it actually goes to the greatest needs, creating more jobs along the way.

We don’t have to keep wasting highway funds on endlessly expanding highways. While the bipartisan infrastructure bill failed to include fix-it-first accountability, we can still hold our leaders accountable to actually use funds to repair roads and bridges before constructing new ones. Doing so would help preserve the rural roads that are vital for connectivity and bringing goods to market, all while creating the most jobs.

It’s time for infrastructure that works for rural America

Erwin's downtown with multiple historic buildings and American flags

Rural Americans need and deserve reliable and convenient transportation options, but current policies are failing them. Today we’re releasing six recommendations to help the administration make things right, combined with stories of success from rural America showing a better approach.

Time and time again, federal policymakers have operated under the assumption that living in a rural area inevitably means spending a lot of time driving long distances to accomplish daily needs—and that rural residents have great enthusiasm for this. But this belief is out of touch with the reality of rural life, where more than 1 million households don’t have access to a car, and for the most part, life is still arranged around small downtowns or town centers.

In addition, the folks who do drive are driving farther than they ever have before to accomplish the same things as yesterday—amounting to a great deal of cost, time, and inconvenience. New research from Transportation for America and Third Way released today finds that households in both rural and urban areas are driving significantly farther per trip as of 2017 than they were in 2001 to accomplish their commutes and daily tasks.

Yet households in lower-density suburban areas actually travel farther on average than households located near rural town centers. Our seven short stories in the back of this report show that many small towns are offering their residents the resources they need to achieve a high quality of life and travel conveniently and safely to jobs, school, stores, and more. Unfortunately, these towns’ efforts are undercut by federal policy that treats rural places as “drive-through” country, hollows out the most economically productive places in rural America, moves destinations farther apart, and consistently fails to prioritize rural needs.

A better approach: Six recommendations

Congress’s bipartisan infrastructure bill preserves many of these obstacles, but there are still plenty of opportunities ahead in how we implement that bill to make it easier for rural communities to revitalize their downtowns (bringing necessities together at one stop) and provide better transportation options. After this bill is finalized, federal decision-makers shouldn’t tune out for five years until the next big transportation bill, like they usually do—they should put in the work now to make this transportation policy work for rural communities.

1. Invest heavily in transit in rural America

Like every other part of the country, rural America includes residents who for a variety of reasons can’t drive, even if they have the financial means to access a reliable vehicle. Rural areas in particular have a higher share of their population aged 65 and over, who take fewer trips on average than their urban counterparts. Investing in transit can combat isolation and ensure that all people are able to access the resources they need. Rural transit is different too, and we need an approach tailored to their specific needs, rather than just a smaller “urban” transit program for rural areas.

2. Prioritize projects that improve access and reduce trip length

Good infrastructure should get people where they need to go, but our current approach focuses too heavily on speed as a proxy for success. Instead of incentivizing new projects that improve speed by default, it’s time to prioritize access—connecting more people to work, goods, and services in areas closer to where they live. You can be sure that some of the noted growth in trip length in rural areas is due to the consolidation or closure of destinations like hospitals, major employers, or the like.

3. Prioritize safety for everyone in developed areas like town centers

For rural areas, where town main streets often also function as state highways, current federal standards aren’t cutting it. Roadway design emphasizes speed and directly contributes to dangerous conditions for people walking or traveling without a car. As demonstrated by our case study of Hillsboro, VA, prioritizing safety over speed can make all the difference between a thriving economic hub and an abandoned downtown.

4. Prioritize maintaining rural highways over expanding them

Current policy incentivizes new highway investments that draw development away from small town centers, instead of prioritizing the repair of road and bridge connections that small town residents need. If a bridge in a rural county is closed due to lack of repairs, the detours can be incredibly inconvenient.

5. Connect rural areas by making a sizeable investment in better broadband access

We’re focused on transportation, but bad broadband access comes with significant transportation impacts, requiring long trips in some cases to accomplish work and activities that could otherwise be done online. While 97 percent of Americans in urban areas have access to high-speed fixed service, that number falls to 65 percent in rural areas, and barely 60 percent have access on Tribal lands, limiting economic opportunity and mobility.

6. Recalibrate federal agency policies and grant programs to better support rural town centers

Many rural communities depend heavily on grant programs from the US Department of Agriculture and other agencies to support their economic development, but a recent New York Times article highlighted how these grant programs can ultimately work to the detriment of small towns. These programs should be structured to encourage and incentivize investment in the historic town centers where their impacts are amplified.

In addition to these simple but powerful recommendations, we also profile a handful of communities that are attempting to do things differently, including stories from Paris, TX, Burlington, NC, Oxford, MS, Erwin, TN, and more.

Read the full report.

Rural areas desperately need a transportation overhaul, too

People disparage rural areas with the term “flyover country,” but our federal transportation program currently treats rural areas even worse—as “driveover” country. If Congress adopts Transportation for America’s three new policy principles, transportation investments could truly help rural areas prosper.

A focus on speed rather than safety and access would result in telling Erwin, TN that they need to widen this road and get rid of the crosswalks. Federal transportation policy doesn’t work for rural America.

This week, we released our three guiding principles and three outcomes we expect from any new investment in transportation. These ideas will start to fix our broken system and improve safety and access to opportunity for all—including rural areas.

When I was a small town mayor in Mississippi, I fought transportation policy that treated our town like it was “driveover” or “drive-through” country. Our transportation program makes it far easier for rural communities to build highways—which residents can use to drive far away for jobs, schools, education, and other services—than it does to help rural places invest in their vital town centers.

What the federal government doesn’t realize about rural areas is that they are not comprised of empty towns and open fields that need to be driven through as fast as possible. In reality, rural areas are dotted with countless walkable town and community centers.

In some rural areas, these walkable places are the center of commerce and activity for that town. But unfortunately, in too many rural areas, thanks to federal transportation policy that prioritizes new highway construction and roads designed primarily for speed—no matter their context—these once-thriving walkable places have been hollowed out, with jobs and services now located far away.

Our three principles would improve life in rural areas by finally treating rural areas as places to be, not places to drive away from.

Maintenance

When I was mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, the state had 12,000 bridges that were structurally deficient. This hammers rural places especially hard. If a bridge needs to be shut down—or even worse, collapses—some areas might lose their only quick connection, and then people can’t get to their doctors, produce can’t get to market, and students can’t get to the community college. Without these bridges, rural areas are isolated.

Unfortunately, the current federal transportation law allows states to kick the proverbial maintenance can down the crumbling road. Many times, states use this money to build new infrastructure while letting their existing assets crumble. (Something Mississippi did for many years, though their state DOT has recently made a drastic about-face, a story Mississippi DOT Commissioner Dick Hall outlined in our press briefing for Repair Priorities.)

That’s why our third principle, “prioritize maintenance,” would require states to fix these structurally deficient bridges before building new roads or bridges they can’t afford to maintain. It would ensure that rural places will not be stranded.

Speed

Oftentimes, the main street of a rural community is a state highway that passes right through the heart of downtown. Because of federal design standards and a focus on the speed of travel above all other priorities, the main street is unsafe and unattractive for people to bike and walk in a very small urban grid, and it’s terrible for the local economy.

Main streets shouldn’t be highways that get people through communities. They should be arteries that bring people in. Walkable main streets in rural areas can and should be a huge driver of economic development for a small town, generating a large, prosperous tax base in a very small area.

In West Jefferson, NC, by prioritizing safety and access over speed, 10 new businesses opened along Jefferson Avenue—adding 55 new jobs— and the number of visitors to downtown increased by 14 percent. Four-way stop signs, crosswalks, and upgraded sidewalks were added—anathema to our broken system where speed is the top priority.

That’s why our second principle, “design for safety over speed,” would prioritize designing main streets to serve their intended functions, not as unsafe highways for speeding traffic right through a town center. Any road embedded in an urban grid where people walk and bike, where businesses or homes are located, and where an outside portion of the county’s economic base is located—like in countless rural downtowns—should never be designed for deadly highway speeds.

Access

When state DOTs build new transportation infrastructure, they might share how wide the shoulders are going to be or brag about how much a new road will speed traffic up, but they never tell the public how transportation projects will make their lives better. That’s because improving people’s access to destinations is not how we measure success. We “measure” success by how fast vehicles are traveling, with no measurement of what destinations you can actually reach.

Bentonville, AR’s downtown is a place to bring people to and connect to nearby neighborhoods, not to speed cars through on their way somewhere else.

Put another way, traveling for 15 minutes at 40 mph and going 10 miles is preferred to traveling for 15 minutes at 20 mph and only going five miles, for absolutely no good reason at all. If every daily need in a small town is a 15-minute drive at 20 mph, what’s the point of building a brand new road on the edge of town that can speed you along at 40 or 50 mph?

This focus on speed results in orienting every transportation project—whether in a big city or a small town—around the goal of moving cars as fast as possible, telling everyone who wants to live in vibrant small towns that the needs of their automobiles come first.

Rural areas also have higher percentages of elderly, low income, and disabled people, presenting greater challenges to connectivity and transportation infrastructure. But when access is truly prioritized—meaning that transportation projects are chosen by how they improve people’s lives by improving their access to daily destinations, no matter how they travel—everybody benefits.

That’s why our third principle is “connect people to jobs and services.” Improving access means that instead of making a road wider for cars to drive just a little bit faster, a jurisdiction might instead build a crosswalk in a rural downtown, or add a new road to the street grid, because those investments would do far more to better connect more people to more destinations.

The goal of connecting people to the things they need—which is fundamental to the purpose of transportation—is currently missing from the federal transportation program, and this affects rural areas just like it does any big coastal city

By making access the goal, designing local streets for safer, slower speeds, and ensuring that maintenance is more than just talking point politicians use to get more money to spend, we can improve the lives of people all across the country.

America’s rural areas are filled with wonderful small towns and vibrant communities. It’s time for our federal transportation policy to build them up rather than pave them over.

Click on any image below to learn more about our brand new principles or download a sharable card

Catch up and learn about what’s at stake for small and rural transit providers in the budget

Smaller cities and rural areas are facing potential funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of vital federal programs they depend upon to provide transit service — whether as a lifeline or a powerful economic development tool.

A few weeks ago we released a new detailed memo (pdf) to explain these specific threats facing rural areas, and detail the efforts by the administration and Congress to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation.

Earlier this week, we held a short webinar with our federal policy experts and some sharp local leaders that have experience in providing transit service in rural areas to explain that memo in more detail. We talked through the status of the current appropriations process, what you can do today, the impact on formula transit grants and the Small Starts capital program, and the overall outlook for the transit program.

If you missed the session, you can catch up with the full recording here:

Transit providers of all sizes, in all parts of the country, should band together and start making the strongest possible case for preserving the federal transit program. Read our full summary and learn how you can take action.

Housing and transportation squeeze hitting rural America, new reports concludes

When the Center for Neighborhood Technology released its revised Housing and Transportation Index last week, much of the focus naturally tilts toward cities due to the measurement of metropolitan areas. But CNT’s rural companion report on transportation costs in less-populated areas deserves ample attention as well.

The transportation challenges for rural America have more to do with factors like access and opportunity than congestion and traffic. With volatile energy prices and longer distances between employment, groceries and health services, transportation choices are essential. More than 1.6 million rural households do not have access to a car, making routine trips a strain on a family’s time and budget. For those who do drive, high gas prices take a big chunk out of monthly incomes. Rural residents with cars drive about 17 percent more miles each year than their urban counterparts.

CNT’s analysis finds rural residents feeling squeezed in every corner of America, from Alaska to Alabama. In the areas near Billings, Montana, average annual household gas expenses have reached $5,300 per year, up from just $2000 per year just a decade ago. Costs shot up $3,200 between 2000 and 2008 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In the rural pockets surrounding Las Cruces, New Mexico, costs were up $3,100. In the image below, turquoise indicates Billings-area communities where yearly housing and transportation costs exceed the 45 percent threshold.

The CNT formula defines true affordability as less than 45 percent of household income going toward housing and transportation costs combined.

The website features profiles of communities in both rural and metro areas alike.

CNT’s three recommendations for inclusion in a new transportation bill are: 1) making transportation costs as transparent as possible; 2) using a similar yardstick as the true affordability in future policies and funding priorities for transportation; and 3) increasing incentives for projects that increase transit options and proximity to employment and housing. Support for passenger rail and intercity buses — both heavily-relied upon in sparser parts of the country —can and should fit under these policy umbrellas.

But rural livability is much more than just a discussion topic in Washington D.C. Stephen Lee Davis of Smart Growth America (and a Transportation for America colleague,) recently wrote about his experience living in Bentonville, Arkansas, a medium-sized town known best as the world headquarters for Wal-Mart Stores. In a two-part series on the Smart Growth America blog, Steve questioned the political figures who see livability as disconnected from America’s rural areas and small towns:

…for me and my wife and many others living in the older part of the city [street grid] in those weeks [in 2005] with astronomical gas prices, a pretty normal life was still possible, even while trying to cut back driving significantly to save money. Several weekends in a row, we parked our cars entirely, and managed to do our grocery shopping, go to church, visit friends, or listen to bluegrass in the square on a Friday night without having to get in either of our two cars. We walked 5 minutes to the grocery store. We biked to Walmart a handful of times — receiving many strange looks in the process. We went to eat at a new restaurant on the square. We went hiking on a short trail in the woods right on the edge of downtown. We went to the library.

Sounds pretty “livable,” right?

…and explained how current transportation policy has failed the residents of towns like Bentonville.

People who live in classic American small towns like Bentonville know a thing or two about livability. There’s nothing “livable” about being stuck in your subdivision that got built too far from town, work or school when gas prices get too high. Nor is it “livable” to have the federal government incentivizing (through money to the State DOT) the widening of highways into the county to encourage more sprawl outside of town even as the city is clamoring for more investment inside of it.

Like their urban counterparts, many residents in rural areas and small towns hope to preserve what they love about their way of life while making it easier to get by — and get around. CNT’s work helps to bring those challenges to light and move policy in a direction that produces results.

T4 America co-chair testifies before Senate on rural transportation

Mayor Smith speaking at the T4 America platform launch in 2009.

Mayor John Robert Smith, T4 America co-chair and President of Reconnecting America, testified before a Senate committee today about the transportation challenges facing rural areas and small towns — and offered six practical suggestions for how the federal government can help them meet these challenges head-on.

Far from being left behind or left out of federal transportation policy, Mayor Smith’s recommendations provide a clear road map for boosting the economies of Main Streets across America and connecting small cities and towns to increased economic opportunity. As the former Mayor of Meridian, Miss., and the board chair of Amtrak, he has experience on almost all sides.

The word may have connotations of big cities and tall buildings, but our small towns are decidedly “urban” — at least in the sense that many residents live decently close to a town center or square, with a street grid that gives people the option to walk. Schools may still be within walking distance in the town’s core, kids ride their bikes around town, families walk when they can, and these historic downtowns are still magnets for business and community events.

But while major metro areas are battling gridlock and congestion, smaller towns are looking at issues of access, ensuring that residents have good connnections to economic opportunities — and that they can get where they need to go quickly and affordably.

“Long commutes, volatile energy prices, and shifting demographics all impact the prosperity of these communities,” Mayor Smith testified this morning. “Many small towns and rural areas lack the financial resources, planning capacity, or authority to implement solutions to their transportation needs. A bold new policy is needed at the federal level to meet those needs.”

He knows a thing or two about how transportation decisions can affect economic opportunity on Main Street after years as a mayor. “In my own hometown [Meridian, Miss.], through investment in our downtown and the creation of a transportation hub, we bolstered the local economy and reversed the decline of our historic buildings and city center. Other communities like ours can experience that same revitalization if our country will commit the resources needed to enhance the economic competitiveness of existing communities,” he said.

Download this Brief (pdf)

Mayor Smith, T4 America and our many partners in rural areas that developed these recommendations are seeking to provide a framework for residents of our small towns and rural areas to have the transportation options they need so they’re not stranded without options.

Residents of these areas are demanding good transit networks, safe streets, bridges that don’t fall down and highways that aren’t cracked and potholed.

Mayor Smith’s testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee coincided with the release of a whitepaper on rural transportation entitled “Principles for Improving Transportation Options in Rural and Small Town Communities,” which describes T4 America’s recommendations in much greater detail.

You can read his full testimony here.

And read the official campaign press release.

Rural Senators focus on heartland transit

--Amtrak How could a new transportation bill revitalize rural and small-town America? That was the focus of a Senate Democratic Steering Committee briefing on “Issues and Innovations for Small Towns and Rural Communities” in the Capitol Visitors Center last Friday.

Transportation for America co-chair and former Meridian, Mississippi Mayor John Robert Smith shared his perspective as chief executive of a mid-sized city in a rural area. During his tenure, Smith initiated a renovation of Meridian’s historic train station, sparking growth and economic vitality in the downtown corridor that is now the “life of Meridian.” The improvements that he championed resulted in $135 million in capital investments around the station, and property values quadrupled in an area previously devoid of residents. More importantly, a vital aspect of mobility was restored for all residents of the area. Knowing firsthand how vital Amtrak service was to Mississippians, especially many traveling on fixed budgets, he helped lead the fight to restore the train route between Atlanta and New Orleans, and has continued his advocacy for passenger rail travel ever since.

Rural and small-town residents throughout the country are seeking more transportation options and want to ensure that they’re not left behind. Briefing panelists emphasized that transportation reform, far from leaving the heartland in the dust, can actually encourage growth and improve quality of life.

For one thing, improving rural transportation helps seniors. In 2000, 23 percent of older adults in America lived in rural areas, and as they age, they risk being isolated in their homes in the absence of adequate transportation infrastructure. Broader accessibility is a challenge as well due to long distances some rural Americans must travel to reach employment, groceries and health services. And, intercity mobility remains limited in many parts of the country, cutting people off from friends, family and economic opportunity. During the briefing, Mayor Smith spoke not only about the economic benefits of revitalizing the area around the train station, but also about the transit service that connected low-income residents in Meridian’s HOPE VI housing development, ensuring their access to essential destinations.

Enhancing transportation safety, relieving highway congestion by shifting goods movement to freight rail, investing in public buses and paratransit services and increasing intercity and multi-modal connectivity are some potential solutions for small cities and rural regions. T4 America staff have partnered with National Association of Counties and the National Association of Development Organizations, both of which were represented at the briefing, to help promote these solutions as vital parts of the upcoming transportation bill.

Far from leaving rural America out, a much-needed overhaul to our nation’s transportation policy can in fact provide a needed lifeline and help rural areas and smaller towns succeed as vital, livable places for all.

Rochelle Carpenter of Transportation for America contributed to this report.

56 million people in rural America looking for better transportation solutions

A top priority in the transportation debate is addressing the mobility needs of the 56 million residents of rural areas and small towns in America – about 20 percent of the population of the United States. Rural areas and small towns often fall through the cracks of federal transportation policy, which focuses on statewide priorities for building new highways and often overlooks local needs and preferences.

Access to jobs, schools, shopping, and critical community services is just as vital for Americans living in small cities, towns and rural communities. Transportation for America has been working closely with our coalition partners on this important issue for some time. Now, it looks like Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is also getting on board.

Listening to folks at the La Crosse Interstate Fair in Wisconsin this week, he heard many of the same things that we already know:

It’s getting harder financially to depend on a truck or car for all of a family’s transportation needs.
Rural residents need public transportation just like city-dwellers do.
Access to commercial air service is increasingly difficult for rural areas.
Shippers of grain and other products need better freight options to get rurally produced goods to markets.

Clearly, the transportation system in rural areas and small towns faces challenges and demands that are unique from those in our metropolitan areas. Small cities and towns have higher concentrations of older Americans and families in poverty who would absolutely benefit from more affordable transportation options, beyond just driving. In addition, children in rural areas are 25 percent more likely to be overweight or obese than those in urban areas and face unique barriers to being active and maintaining a healthy weight. Non-metro areas have a larger share of people over age 65 (15 percent) than the country as a whole (12 percent) particularly across the middle of the country. (According to 2004 numbers.)

These challenges are amplified by global changes in the economic marketplace, insufficient funding to maintain substandard or unpaved roads, improve public transportation services, and upgrade or replace substandard and deteriorating bridges.

Our nation’s transportation infrastructure should provide access for all Americans, regardless of their geographic location, age, income, or disability status. While there are no easy answers here, Secretary LaHood’s comments are a good starting point for reframing the debate towards policy options that benefit all Americans, regardless of geography.

New policy paper: Transportation in small towns and rural regions

Check out the sixth in our ongoing series of policy briefs. These policy briefs are short, four-page, concise summaries of an issue with interesting facts and some clear recommendations for improvement through the federal transportation bill. Download this Brief (pdf)

Smaller towns and rural communities face a different set of issues than urban or suburban America, and we need a transportation program that recognizes those differences, provides access for all people, and helps them succeed economically.

In our webinar two weeks ago, we talked about transportation challenges and solutions in smaller towns and rural areas, and we encourage you to download the accompanying policy brief on Transportation, Small Towns and Rural Communities.

As the policy brief makes clear, our current transportation program leaves rural communities stranded.

Providing access to jobs and the economy is critical for these rural areas and smaller towns. Unfortunately, since many of the decisions about how to invest in transportation are made at the state and federal level, local residents often have little say over how their transportation dollars are spent.

The 56 million residents of rural areas and small towns – about 20 percent of the population of the United States – often fall through the cracks of federal transportation policy.

These towns have higher concentrations of elderly and low-income citizens, who face unique challenges in accessing their jobs, school or civic life. In addition, children in rural areas are 25 percent more likely to be overweight or obese than those in urban areas and face unique barriers to being active and maintaining a healthy weight.

Consider five short facts from this brief:

More than 1.6 million rural households do not have access to a car.
Demand for better transportation is growing — between 2002 and 2005, ridership for small urban and rural public transportation systems jumped nearly 20 percent.
Across America, households in the lowest 20 percent income bracket spend about 42 percent of their annual income on transportation. This burden is especially heavy during periods of high energy costs, since residents of rural areas drive about 17 percent more than than urban residents.
Limited transportation options are causing traffic congestion in small towns and rural areas to increase by 11 percent per year, twice the rate of large, urban areas.
There are more than 450,000 rural bridges, and almost half of the bridges more than 20 feet long are structurally deficient. 58 percent of highway fatalities occur on rural roads, a rate twice that of urban roads.

Rural transportation connects people to jobs, health care, and family and contributes to regional economic growth by linking businesses to customers, goods to markets, and tourists to destinations. Research has shown that rural and small metropolitan transit services offer measurable economic benefits. In one study, rural counties with transit service were found to have 11 percent greater average net earnings growth over counties without transit, and the estimated annual impact of rural public transportation on the national economy was over $1.2 billion.

Bottom line? Our nation’s transportation infrastructure should provide access for all Americans, regardless of their geographic location, age, income, or disability status. We need to care for our existing transportation network, while ensuring that we build a 21st century system that will allow residents of rural communities, small cities, and small towns to thrive.

Check out the webinars page to listen to or watch a recording of our recent session on this topic.