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Transit Equity Day highlights the need for transit in rural communities

Transit Equity Day—which honors Civil Rights Leader Rosa Parks—is on February 4th. As we celebrate the importance of ensuring people of all backgrounds and abilities are able to use transportation, it is imperative to highlight communities that are often left out of the public transit conversation: rural communities.

Source: AARP.

All communities and people deserve transit options to ensure their greatest well-being. Access to high-quality and reliable public transportation is foundational to ensure everyone can access essential destinations like schools, healthcare facilities, and jobs. Traditionally, transportation advocacy is seen in urban and metropolitan areas where density is plentiful, and the demand for transit is loud. However, rural communities are lost in the conversation, perceived as areas that do not need access to transit due to the sprawling nature of the communities and assumed access to private vehicles.

A Complete Streets approach is needed—and can be made possible—in rural communities. Learn more about how to create safe and inclusive small towns in this video.

In reality, more than one million households in rural areas do not have access to a car. In fact, the majority of counties with zero-car households are in rural communities, highlighting the brazen need to invest in public transit. The lack of transportation access leads to a decreased quality of life with barriers to access community amenitites, healthcare resources, and schools. However, studies have repeatedly shown that people in rural areas are equally as likely to walk and bike as those in urban areas if they have access to safe and reliable options to do so. In spite of this, investments in transportation networks that support walking, biking, and public transit are largely limited to urban communities. There are a lot of affordable, attainable solutions to encourage active and multimodal transportation in rural America. Implementing Complete Streets, more effective and multimodal-oriented land-use approaches, and strategic transit planning would all result in more mobility options for residents, as well as significant benefits, including healthier and more economically prosperous places.

A critical part of the strategic planning process includes developing a vision for a community that is tailored to its unique needs and features building partnerships with community groups, agencies, and individuals that will help realize this vision. Having land development policies and guidelines in place is also key to producing strong economic outcomes and vitality in the long term.

Strategic innovation also ensures the availability of viable and affordable transit for underserved regions. A study in rural New Mexico examined the feasibility of microtransit implementation in the area, finding that community engagement accompanied with diverse funding strategies was key to achieving success. Other examples of such efforts include the Blackfeet Indian Reservation’s micro-transit service in northwest Montana or the City of Wilson’s RIDE service. Innovative, shared mobility options that go beyond traditional buses, like bikeshare systems or vans, can offer flexible options that serve the unique needs of rural communities.

Transit Equity Day serves as a reminder for local leaders and planners to prioritize transit investments in rural communities. By fostering equitable access to transportation options in rural communities, we can build more resilient areas where everyone can thrive.

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.

In the Wall Street Journal: Our chairman advocates for long-distance rail

T4America’s chairman, John Robert Smith, starred in a mini-documentary from the Wall Street Journal about Amtrak’s proposal to cut long-distance routes. Smith made the case for saving these routes.

T4 America chair John Robert Smith spent 12 hours with a Wall Street Journal reporter on an overnight ride on the Crescent route from Washington, DC to New Orleans. The trip was part joy ride, part campaign to save Amtrak’s long-distance routes. Amtrak has proposed cutting long-distance routes into shorter, more frequent trains connecting regional cities. At T4America, we’ve been working for years to help preserve and even expand passenger rail throughout America, recognizing that the service is a valuable transportation option—and is often the only way to travel in some smaller, rural communities.

Smith, the former mayor of Meridian, Miss., believes that cutting the long routes or breaking them up is a mistake. “I’m afraid we’re positioning rural America to fail,” he said.

Smith continued, arguing:

“You’re seeing a microcosm of the type of people that depend on long-distance trains. Their quality of life would diminish without this option. You see that lady who’s 100 years old, do you think she’d be making that trip by car or flying?

“The question isn’t whether the Crescent or any other train is profitable; the question is does it bring value to the cities that it serves along that line, and is that value significantly more than the very modest amount that it takes to operate that train?”

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Watch the seven-minute video here.

Burlington, North Carolina embraces transit in a growing community

Residents in Burlington, NC have greater access to jobs today thanks to a new transit system, which launched in 2016. A far cry from a large, transit-rich city, Burlington is showing how important public transportation can be for smaller communities. Many residents are already pushing for service extensions and longer hours for the fledgling system.

Link Transit’s current route map. (Image: Link Transit)

Share your rural or small city transit story here

Burlington, NC is located roughly halfway between Greensboro and Durham/Chapel Hill just north of Interstate 85 with a population of approximately 52,000. (For comparison, places like Allen, TX and Greeley, CO are home to about twice as many people as Burlington.) But up until 2016 this growing area had only a countywide, on-demand shuttle service operated by Alamance County Transit Authority (ACTA). Reliable, fixed-route transit was nonexistent.

Burlington sits at roughly the center of Alamance County, NC. The county is shaded red. (Image: Google Maps)

As the town and region grew, increasing transportation options to provide better access to jobs and opportunity became more important. “Our citizens are starting to expect it as an option, whether they use it once a week or everyday,” said Mike Nunn, Burlington’s Transportation Director. “We need this as an option in our community.”

“We had a lot of folks who had never been from one side of the community to the other. They hadn’t been to the new retail development because they didn’t have transportation—nor could they get a job in that area because they didn’t have transportation,” Nunn said on a recent T4America’s webinar.

The Burlington-Graham Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), which encompasses all of Alamance County, actually began planning a fixed route service all the way back in 2008. Nunn emphasized that an important piece of the planning effort included educating the public and local elected officials because the community was unfamiliar with the benefits of a fixed-route transit system.

The Burlington Amtrak station. (Image: Ildar Sagdejev, Wikimedia)

In June 2016, LinkTransit began serving Burlington and other nearby cities. The service consists of five color-coded routes connecting in the center of Burlington and extending to neighboring Graham and Gibsonville. LinkTransit connects to intercity express bus service that goes east to Chapel Hill and west to Greensboro, as well as Amtrak service.

LinkTransit links employers to employees

Nicole, a Burlington resident, told local Fox 8 how important the new transit service was for her. She said she couldn’t afford a car and finding reliable transportation to her job at Best Buy was a challenge: “It’s been really tough getting back and forth to work because you never know if someone’s going to pick you up or drop you off,” she said. “So at least now I know I’ve got a concrete way to get to work.”

Though the service currently only operates from 5:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, residents are already requesting greater frequency, new stops, and expanded hours to meet non-traditional commute schedules.

“Everyone would like it to run seven days a week already,” said Nunn. “We are sixteen months in, and that is the first thing we hear. And also, for employment, to go to 7:30 or 8:30 at night. That’s a funding issue. That just takes dollars.”

Businesses are also responding. Nunn added that employers are frequently advertising their jobs as “on the green route” or “on the purple route.” LinkTransit already extended a main commuter route, the Orange Line, adding two additional stops near three hotels, a truck stop, and industrial suppliers like Delta Gypsum and Ferguson. Before the route extension, riders would get off at the end of the line and walk more than a half mile and under a highway overpass to reach jobs at these businesses.

Alamance Crossing, Burlington’s second and newest (outdoor) shopping mall, is served by the red route. The Holly Hill Mall is served by the red and blue routes. (Image: A_Moffa, LocalWiki)

The new bus service was a major factor in the decision of PRA Group to open a 500-job call center at Burlington’s Holly Hill Mall in 2017. The debt-buying company, which has more than 5,000 employees in offices in twelve countries, cited public transit access as a major factor in their selection of the mall site, which is strategically located at the transfer stop for the red and blue bus lines.

“Access to a skilled workforce is the number one consideration of companies looking for a new location,” said Peter Bishop, City of Burlington Economic Development Director. “LinkTransit provides a critical piece of infrastructure in our efforts to compete with other communities for new jobs and investment.”

Do you work for an operator of a rural transit system? Are you someone who rides it frequently? We want to hear from you.

Share your rural or small city transit story here

The Paris Metro in small-town Texas

While many people think of public transit as a big city service, transit also serves scores of residents in small towns and rural areas across the country. New transit service in the small city of Paris, TX (pop. 25,000) offers the first reliable public transportation option that residents can use to travel to work, classes, and job training.

Share your rural or small city transit story here

The Ark-Tex Council of Governments Rural Transit District (TRAX) serves a 10-county area in the northeast corner of Texas, including one county in Arkansas, along the border with Oklahoma (about 100 miles northeast of Dallas). Given the vast area TRAX serves, their regional transit service is operated on-demand, with reservations made 24 hours in advance.

Paris, TX—marked with the maroon pin—is in the rural, northeast corner of Texas.

Although this on-demand service provides a vital lifeline for residents making critical trips to reach health care or reach a grocery store, the advance notice required, the limited availability of rides, and small fleet presents some very real limitations on the service’s ability to meet daily and emerging transportation needs.

According to former Paris, TX Councilman Edwin Pickle, city leaders realized that the region’s meager transit options were a barrier for residents, and that they needed to help find a solution.

“We started realizing transportation was a bigger problem because people couldn’t get to their medical needs, couldn’t get to their grocery stores, they couldn’t get anywhere,” Pickle said on T4America’s webinar.

With support from the city and several local partners, TRAX launched new fixed-route bus service running on a regular schedule in 2016. The service consists of four routes in Paris, TX known as the Paris Metro. Buses run hourly between 6:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The Paris Metro logo, which appears on the side of their buses.

The “Paris Metro”

According to TRAX transportation manager Nancy Hoehn, the new routes “have gone a long way towards meeting the community’s needs for jobs access.”

“We have heard from a lot of the social service agencies in Paris that work with a target population of lower-income and transit-dependent people. When they would go to interview in the past and were asked if they had reliable transportation, the answer was no. Well, now the answer can be yes. Just that, in itself, has been huge for the community at large.”

Hoehn credits community involvement during the research and planning stages with developing a bus service that supports all members of the community. Community organizations like New Hope Center of Paris, which works with individuals and families experiencing homelessness, helped the agency identify crucial points of origin and destinations for riders. Now, the Paris Metro stops on the corner directly outside the New Hope facility, giving residents access to medical treatment, social services, and education.

Procuring funding for the new service depended on a combination of public and private partners. Local sponsors include the Paris Regional Medical Center, United Way of Lamar County, Paris Junior College, the City of Paris, The Results Company, Texas Oncology, and local private foundations.

Along with local funding partners, federal funds were critical for launching the service.

“We would not exist if it were not for the federal funds that come through TxDOT,” said Hoehn. “In the local counties we serve, the income levels are low and the counties are strapped just to fund the things they are responsible for. That’s why we’ve tried to be creative with our match money to come from other sources.”

Serving all residents and engaging the community

The Paris Metro was tailored to meet the specific transportation needs of each sponsoring partner.

For example, the Paris Regional Medical Center, the largest employer in the city, is located outside the city center and was previously inaccessible by transit. While dependable transportation was important for employees getting to work, hospital management knew that lack of reliable transportation was also a major impediment to quality health care. Patients discharged from the hospital were often unable to reach necessary follow-up care, like physical therapy, and were winding up back in the hospital as a result. Now, the Paris Metro allows residents to reach scheduled appointments rather than coming in through the emergency room.

Map of the four Paris Metro routes.

The medical center not only made financial contributions to launch the new Paris Metro fixed route service, but also donated office space to manage it. The exterior of this donated space has become a new bus station for the city and is now served by Greyhound and rural transit, as well as the Metro.

Similar adjustments in service were made for other sponsoring partners. Texas Oncology’s patients need door-to-door service, so the route loops through the clinic’s parking lot. The clinic installed a signal light on the street to alert bus drivers when there are riders to pick up. Paris Junior College has students with disabilities who had trouble reaching classes because they lacked reliable transportation to school. To help their students reach classes and other daily needs, TRAX and the college created a discounted semester pass for students subsidized by Pell grant funds. Reliable, affordable transit allows students to enroll.

Fulfilling an unmet need

The new fixed route Paris Metro service has been a success, providing 50,000 rides in its first year. The Texas Transit Association recognized it with an award for “Innovative Project of the Year,” and TRAX is adding larger buses to accommodate the demand for rides.

Greg Wilson, member of the Executive Board of the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce and President of Lamar National Bank, which has branches in Paris, said that the bus service fulfills what was once an unmet need. “The impact of our bus system has exceeded all expectations when it comes to the impact on the local business community. I see people getting off the bus downtown to shop, visit our bank branches, and access medical care.”

For many households the new transit service provides freedom and flexibility, allowing parents to reach a job and giving young adults access to get to summer jobs, after school activities, or other programs. For these households, transit means added stability.

As the Metro enters its third year in operation, the city is looking forward to expanding the service in order to better serve the needs of the community.

Do you work for an operator of a rural transit system? Are you someone who rides it frequently? We want to hear from you.

Share your rural or small city transit story here

First & Main: An Opportunity for Local Elected Officials to Tell Capitol Hill Their Stories and Fight for Main Street

The corner of First & Main is where everything happens. Whether a small town in a rural area, a tribal community, or a mid-sized city, First & Main is the anchor of it all. While it has a different name in every community, First & Main is where you can find the old train depot that built the town, City Hall, or the corner from which to spot the community’s most beautiful historic buildings.

Do the Trump Administration and Congress understand what America’s struggling small and mid-sized communities need to turn their prospects around? Local elected officials are uniquely positioned to tell federal decision-makers what they need to flourish, and scores of them are uniting behind a new blueprint for prosperity in these smaller and midsized communities.

The nonpartisan First & Main initiative is a coalition of local elected officials from small to mid-sized communities all across the country. Initiated by current and former elected officials, the coalition will fight to protect those federal programs proven to work for local communities, improve the programs that should be more effective, and create new programs to provide local communities with additional resources.

The First & Main Blueprint was prepared based on feedback provided by these local leaders. It contains more than 30 proposals that local elected leaders have told us will help their communities rebuild, reinvest, and remain competitive in today’s economy. A key component of the First & Main Blueprint is its proposals for funding community-scale transportation projects: roads and bridges, Complete Streets, public transit, transit-oriented development, and trails.

Are you an elected official from a small to mid-sized community such as a mayor, city council member, tribal leader, or county board member? Do you know or work with someone who holds such an office? Here is how you (or they) can get involved with First & Main:

Read the Blueprint to learn more about the specifics of what we are proposing
Sign up for our free kickoff webinar scheduled for March 1 at 3 p.m. Eastern. On the webinar, three mayors will share stories about how federal programs and funding are essential for their communities. We’ll talk more about the campaign’s goals, strategies, and next steps.
If you are a local elected official, join First & Main (no cost) to share your story and become a part of this critical effort to save key federal programs benefitting America’s local communities.
Ask your local elected officials – mayors, city council members, county board members, tribal leaders, and others – or those you work with, to join First & Main.
Travel to DC April 22-24 for a First & Main gathering to talk more in depth about these issues, strategize, and then go to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress regarding the importance of the Blueprint’s proposals.

The program will offer local elected officials from small and mid-sized communities the opportunity to share their stories with the Trump Administration and Congress regarding how federal programs and policies can improve their economic opportunity, revitalize their downtowns, and improve their quality of life. Join First & Main to be part of a coalition that will do just that.

What’s at stake for small and rural transit providers?

Federal transit funding is still on the chopping block. Those who operate or depend on transit — whether in small, rural areas or large, urban ones — must band together to convince both Congress and the President of the vital nature of public transportation services.

While we’ve frequently highlighted the ongoing, existential threats to the main source of federal funds for helping cities expand or create new public transportation lines or service, smaller cities and rural areas are also at risk of funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of vital programs they depend upon.

In this new detailed memo (pdf), T4America lays out the specific threats facing rural areas and explains Congress’ and the administration’s efforts to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation. Get the full summary on:

What the president has proposed and the status of the current appropriations process
What you can do today
Formula transit programs, Small Starts, the TIGER competitive grant program, and
The outlook for the transit program

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.

Join us on October 23 for a live webinar discussion

Our team of experts will discuss rural transit providers, the projects that are at risk from these cuts, and what you can do to defend transit in your region. Join the live discussion on Monday, October 23, 2017 from 3:00-4:00 p.m. EDT. Register today.

What’s at Stake for Rural Transit Funding in 2018 and Beyond

Federal transit programs for communities of all sizes face unprecedented levels of cuts

Federal transit funding — including the funding on which small and rural transit providers rely — is once again on the chopping block. At risk for smaller cities and rural areas are funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of Small Starts, TIGER and formula funding. Those who operate or depend on transit — whether in small, rural areas or large, urban ones — must band together to convince both Congress and the President of the vital nature of public transportation services.

This detailed memo lays out the threat to rural areas from Congress and the administration’s efforts to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation. Read full memo here.

Also join our experts on October 23, 2017 at 3PM EDT and learn what is at stake for small and rural transit providers and what it means for your local and regional projects. Register here.

Part 2: Options for all: Serving the elderly and disabled with shared-use mobility

Transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft and bike-share providers like Zagster improve options and expand accessibility. Can they support the needs of vulnerable populations and smaller markets? Transportation for America attended the Shared Use Mobility Summit to learn more. (This is the second post of a two-part series. Read Part 1 here.)

In our last post, we discussed some of the innovations that transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft are pioneering, and how niche solutions are popping up to serve an increasingly diverse base of customers.

While added choice is generally good news for the consumer, these programs do raise new issues for government agencies.

“There are underlying differences in the traditional service vs. new TNCs,” says Jana Lynott, senior policy advisor for AARP’s Public Policy Institute. “For one, TNCs do not do fingerprint background checks. The Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) compliance office has also raised concerns that they do not do drug and alcohol testing. And the FTA has even questioned whether it’s legal per federal rules for federally funded transit agencies to sign these types of contracts.” Additionally, despite their concerns, FTA is also trying to figure out their role and the impacts these projects can have on communities. Earlier this year, through their Mobility on Demand Sandbox grant, they awarded $8 million to transit agencies across the country to test some of these innovative projects.

Data concerns

Another challenge for public agencies is that TNCs typically don’t share their ridership data, which would have immense value for local leaders, policymakers and planners.

For large cities trying to forecast trips, lack of data from TNCs hinder their ability to forecast ridership and plan accurately. “We can’t model what we don’t know,” says David Leininger, Executive Vice President of Dallas Area Rapid Transit. “Supposing all these innovations work, how does it affect our traditional methods of analysis? We don’t know the market share of these trips,” he says. That makes it harder to plan around them. Across the summit, many participants expressed a desire for public agencies to access TNC trip data.

PC: Trillium Transit

Data challenges are just as pronounced with rural and paratransit services. Major transit providers use a common standard for public transit timetables: the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS). Using GTFS data, apps and extensions is how services like Google Maps can make it easy to map, plan, and track trips across a wide range of providers and transit services. There is no such common language for paratransit.

“We’ve created a system where human service agencies have to buy proprietary software packages that don’t talk to each other well,” says Lynott. Now, a group has formed for software developers, transportation professionals, and other interest parties to work together and develop and propose common data specifications. And the Transportation Research Board is currently studying an open-data specification for transit providers, Lynott reports.

Equity issues

Data is only the tip of the iceberg for skeptics of TNCs. There are legitimate and growing concerns about how they are subverting existing markets and their ability to truly meet the needs of vulnerable populations. Many advocates and industry veterans are about the suitability of TNCs in this space.

PC: Gamaliel

“The idea of having on-demand services provide paratransit is unacceptable,” says Carol Tyson, transportation equity advocate.

Tyson reports that to discuss concerns over a request for proposals that the District of Columbia put out for TNCs to provide paratransit service. The assembled group demanded widespread wheelchair access, enough training for drivers to work with people with disabilities, performance measures to gauge wait times and fares, and protections against cuts to bus lines. Most of all, they want a seat at the table. “The people who rely on these services are often missing from the discussion,” says Tyson.

Also often missing in these discussions are the drivers and their perspectives. Advocates demand living wages, paid sick leave and fair hiring policies. Their anxieties are likely to grow as TNCs embrace a future of automated vehicles that would remove the driver entirely along with their associated costs. That would end hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs. Economic concerns have led Zipcar founder Robin Chase to champion an unconventional policy: a universal living wage.

Watch a video that Robin Chase shared at the Summit about the future of autonomous vehicles: https://youtu.be/DeUE4kHRpE

Bike-share considerations

As TNCs look toward smaller markets, bike-share providers have followed suit. “People often think about systems in New York City, Washington D.C., or Chicago, but it’s actually thriving in a lot of places,” says Nate Taber, head of marketing for the Zagster bike-share company. Zagster operates 142 systems in North America. The company works around the challenges of smaller marketplaces — including lower density and tax bases — by developing service-based purchasing, locating near parks and major destinations, centralizing its operations, and working with community partners to attract sponsorships.

Coalitions of community groups and businesses are key to success in these markets, and they take part for good reason. “We have seen communities use bike-sharing as more than a new mode of transportation, but as an amenity and a way to be more competitive,” says Taber. “Cities use it as a lever to draw in new businesses.”

PC: Zagster

But bike-share systems, too, pose hurdles for elderly and disabled populations. For one, most standard bike-share bikes are heavy. Providers are working to develop new, lighter-weight models, but they are built heavy for a reason; it reduces theft and can withstand lots of wear and tear. Zagster also offers a line of accessible bikes. These include hand-cycles for people with disabilities, and tandems that allow people who travel with a guardian the ability to use the program. One small pilot program recently launched in Rome, New York, includes a three-wheeled bike with two seats for this purpose.

Making bike-share accessible is especially important as more communities realize its public health benefits. Recognizing that higher active transportation levels lead to reduced rates of chronic disease, local health insurance companies often co-sponsor bike-share systems. In some places like Corvallis, OR, Medicare will reimburse recipients the cost to use the system. In our forthcoming policy paper on Healthy MPOs, we outline how leaders in Corvallis took several steps to make bike-share convenient for people in need, such as incorporating easier-to-ride tricycles, locating stations near Medicare recipients’ homes, and allowing users to check out a bicycle via text message.

Looking ahead together

More communities are partnering with shared use mobility providers. The market is expanding to meet diverse geographies, age groups, and ability levels. The private sector is powering ahead, promising new options, service improvements, and cost savings. These options raise questions about equity, access and data. And the public sector must strike a balance.

We can learn from other leaders.

In Boston, MA the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority worked directly with disability advocates on a program to incorporate TNCs. In Detroit, MI the Department of Public Health piloted a program to provide transportation for individuals with HIV/AIDS. In Portland, OR, the nonprofit Ride Connection taps a robust volunteer network to serve people with limited options. And Marin County, CA has implemented over a dozen strategies to improve mobility, led by a diverse set of stakeholders.

Cities will need to take the reins to ensure these monumental shifts in transportation doesn’t shape their cities without their input and produce a new generation of transportation haves and have-nots. And with so many new questions looming over the impacts these projects will have, working together to solve these challenges will be crucial.

These are just some of the challenges that T4America’s Smart Cities Collaborative is beginning to work on. Cities are partnering together to explore the positive and negative impacts of these new transportation models, develop appropriate policies, and test on the ground solutions because change is coming….Fast.

Options for all: Serving the elderly and disabled with shared-use mobility

Transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft and bike-share providers like Zagster can improve options and expand accessibility. Can they support vulnerable populations and smaller markets? Transportation for America attended the Shared Use Mobility Summit to learn more. (This is part one of a two-part series.)

PC: Marin County Media

In the United States, individuals miss over 3.6 million medical appointments every year due to lack of transportation, according to a 2013 article in the Journal of Community Health. And according to the Kessler Foundation, access for people with disabilities has not improved since 1998; it’s actually getting harder to get around. This has a disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations.

Senior shuttles and paratransit fill some of these gaps in access, which are growing unfortunately, but they are often limited in the populations, destinations and hours that they serve. These services can be expensive for providers, and inconvenient for customers, who often need to order a ride 24-48 hours in advance.

In towns, cities and places of all sizes, questions are emerging about the role of new mobility providers like Uber, Lyft and other TNCs in filling these gaps and becoming part of how we ensure mobility for these groups of people. What would it look like? What are the concerns that cities need to be aware of as they think about using any of them to help meet their needs?

The Centennial pilot

Centennial, CO, a suburb 13 miles south of Denver, has a fairly typical first- and last-mile problem; its Denver Regional Transportation Authority light rail station is far away from its residential, retail, and job centers. Cost and hour-plus wait times have made its dial-a-ride service unappealing. But in August of 2016, the city partnered with ride-hailing service Lyft to launch a six-month pilot program in an effort to change that. (Centennial is also one of the 17 cities in our Smart Cities Collaborative, and we heard a great deal about these efforts during our inaugural meeting back in November.)

The Go Centennial pilot allows residents to catch a free (subsidized by the city) Lyft ride to or from the light rail station. A local paratransit company has also joined the Lyft platform with accessible vehicles to enhance service. And to help serve people who would prefer to call for a ride rather than using a smartphone application, the city has partnered with a developer to create a web application that the city can use to dispatch rides to those customers.

PC: Peter Jones, Villager Publishing

For Centennial, the project has so far been a fiscal success: total project costs for the city have been about half of subsidizing the previous dial-a-ride service.

“Public-private partnerships with aging, disability, and other groups have become a growing mandate as we come to realize how much we have in common,” says Andrew Salzberg, head of Transportation Policy and Research at Uber. Uber is currently partnering with 20 cities to provide wheelchair accessible vehicles & lease them to drivers. Many cities have joined Centennial in subsidizing TNC services to supplement paratransit service.

A pioneering transit agency

Some cities are working to get ahead of the curve by developing their own solutions. Kansas City, Missouri partnered with Bridj to pilot an app-based, on-demand shuttle service in select areas of the city to make it easier for people to get around.

“We have to look beyond traditional transit, even reinvent what transit agencies are,” says Robbie Makinen, president & CEO of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA), showing a remarkable amount of foresight to think outside the conventional work of a transit agency. “As we explore new mobility options the opportunity to partner with the private sector is tremendous.” he says.

PC: Daily Republic

This winter, the KCATA will launch an on-demand paratransit service called RideKC Freedom. “RideKC Freedom is going to start with the paratransit piece and build out, which is the opposite of what typically happens,” he says. While many transportation systems offer paratransit as a supplementary service, the goal of RideKC Freedom is to begin as a paratransit service before eventually expanding as a shuttle service intended for all users.

Makinen believes that for too many years, the most vulnerable riders have been left to navigate a transportation system that limits their ability to access opportunities. “We will leverage our private sector partnerships to reduce per trip paratransit costs, and then expand RideKC Freedom into serving the broader retail market, he says.” This business model is designed to eliminate social stigmatism associated with using paratransit service, and create a new funding stream.

Service for seniors

Based in San Francisco, CA one company fills a special niche. SilverRide provides call-ahead, escorted rides for senior citizens or anyone who needs additional help due to physical or cognitive challenges. Drivers receive extra training from the company on how to handle common medical conditions and provide physical assistance. The service also provides notes about any special help passengers may need.

“Seniors and those with disabilities tend to need more hand-holding than the general public,” says SilverRide CEO Jeff Maltz. That’s why passengers receive personalized customer care and frequent reminders about their scheduled rides. And the escort aspect ensures those who need door-through-door assistance can use the service.

SilverRide comes at a slightly higher price tag, which Maltz says is the necessary to provide a resource tailored to serve populations with different needs.

“Any service that offers the extra assistance to accommodate folks who have special needs has added cost to accommodate the extra need. We have removed as much cost as possible by offering a TNC-plus model that can plug into any system in a variety of ways to make sure the needs of all riders are met.” He notes that a one-size-fits-all approach has traditionally led to poorer service and higher costs, and argues that tailored solutions combined with technology and improved regulations are a better approach.

PC: Ride Connection

Designing for the elderly and people with disabilities is important in all systems, notes Sarah Rienhoff. Rienhoff is the public sector lead at Via, another TNC. Her perspective is informed by her past experience working at the global design and innovation firm IDEO. “We should aim to design for inclusivity, looking at ‘extreme’ users, the elderly in this case, to guide our work,” she says.

Rienhoff explains, “When designers take on a problem, they spend time in the edges of the bell curve, with the extremes. By designing for people that most acutely experience the positives or negatives of a product or service, you can also benefit the middle, people who likely experience those same positives or negatives, but to a lesser degree. Rienhoff argues that this is something that many of our transit agencies already do well. “They think about designing services to be universally accessible,” she says.

Maltz agrees it is wise to take best practices from each tailored solution and incorporate those across the board where improvements can be made. he says. And Jana Lynott, senior policy advisor for AARP’s Public Policy Institute, reconciles, “While public transportation should be designed to serve the needs of everyone, there may be cases where older adults are too frail or suffer from dementia where it would not be safe for them to use fixed route public transit on their own.”

Services like SilverRide and Via, when licensed to a transit provider, can serve an important niche. “We also need to design for caregivers,” she says. “They want to be able to schedule rides remotely and track that progress as well.”

Rural coverage

As TNCs grow into smaller cities and suburban markets, options for rural regions lag behind. Uber, for example, considers regions just under 100,000 in population its smallest market.

PC: Zagster

Lynott notes that more services are coming online in rural areas. The national franchise ITN America is the nation’s largest provider of transportation for seniors, providing demand-response service, and more recently Liberty Mobility Now has launched a ride-sharing service intended to compliment the existing transportation in rural communities and provide gap coverage.

As more services come online, it is clear that the market is adapting. But what challenges does that present? And can the public sector and local stakeholders keep up? In our next post, we’ll take a closer look at some of the issues these new TNCs pose. We’ll also review how the bike-share market is responding to different market considerations.

Improving Health and Opportunities: Job Connections for Working Communities

Local civic, business, and elected leaders face a tough dilemma. The elimination of JARC (Job Access and Reverse Commute) has led to service cuts that are crucial to connecting citizens to jobs, health care, school and other essential destinations. MAP-21 missed a major opportunity to fund the once authorized JARC, leading to a handful of states and localities develop innovative ways to supplement true job connections.

In Washington State, flexible and cost-effective, vanpools have become an increasingly popular mode of transit. Ben Franklin Transit (BFT), a privately operated municipal vanpool company located in Southeast Washington, has filled a significant gap in fixed route coverage in 12 cities, 8 counties and two states. A combination of user fees and local & state dollars support the system that serves a diverse mix of riders. Through direct partnerships with major area-employers, vanpooling subsidies are offered to offset the cost of transportation for riders.

How did BFT get started? What results are being seen by riders and employers in Southeast Washington? Read the original T4America case study here: http://bit.ly/1P0Rf0J.

The Monongahela Valley is home to 13 of the 15 poorest communities in Allegheny County, PA. These communities once heavily relied transit to access now non-existent manufacturing jobs. The elimination of JARC led to systemwide cuts by the Port Authority and left many with 4 to 7 mile commutes before reaching their Port Authority bus stop. In 2013, the Pennsylvania legislature raised significant new revenues for transportation statewide through the passage of Act 89, which enabled Heritage Community Initiatives, a human services non-profit, to restore and operate the service, now known as Heritage Community Transportation. 97% of riders on the important link would have no other way to get to work.

What prompted the state legislature to raise additional funding for transit? For more information about Heritage Community Transportation’s work and for the extended T4America case study click here: http://bit.ly/1IBaiJE

Look out of for more regional case studies on Improving Health and Opportunities over the next couple of weeks. Interested in more transportation equity news and trends? Contact Alicia Orosco, for more information at alicia.orosco@t4america.org.

Visionary group in Montana tells us their rural transit success story

This group we visited with last week in Montana, Opportunity Link, received a welcome shot in the arm, announced just this morning: they received a $1.5 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of the 2011 Sustainable Communities regional planning grant program. 468 applications requesting more than $500 million in funding were received by HUD, and only 56 communities and regions were selected for the grants.

If you ever doubt the need for public transit in rural areas, or need reaffirmation of the resilience and ingenuity of frontier America, make a trip to Havre, Montana (or second best, watch the short video below.) We had a chance to make that trip this week and, man, was it inspiring.

A group of us from T4America and the American Public Health Association traveled to Montana to meet with people working in health, transportation and local government in the state’s small cities and rural areas. They are vitally interested in the federal transportation bill because in many cases it literally could determine whether these places live, thrive or die.

One of those places is Havre, Montana, a town of about 10,000 roughly 30 miles from the Canadian border, nestled between two Native American reservations, Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy’s. There we met Barbara Stiffarm, the executive director of a scrappy organization called Opportunity Link. The aptly named group’s mission is to connect people in the isolated communities of north central Montana to jobs, job training, affordable housing, medical care and other services that help residents of small towns and reservations “achieve independence, prosperity and a better way of life.”

“We quickly discovered that we can’t do any of that without transportation service,” Stiffarm told us. Working with numerous local communities and the reservations, Opportunity Link has cobbled together federal resources, private grants and scant local funds to connect several different transportation services into an integrated network. To fill gaps in service, Opportunity Link two years ago led the creation of North Central Montana Transit.

NCMT is miraculous for a number of reasons.

First, it offers fixed-route service. Many rural transit services are “on demand” – covering the vast distances separating communities from employment, education and health care centers.

“Every day we cover an area about the size of the state Maryland,” said Jim Lyons, the director of NCMT. They started the service with modest expectations for ridership, but have been blown away by the unmet demand they discovered. Rather than riders in the low hundreds per month, they are instead into the thousands; one in ten is an elderly person who simply could not get to health care, activities and other services without it.

IMG_4340 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

The Dean of Montana State University-Northern shows off some of the seeds used to make the biodiesel for the NCMT buses during last week’s tour in Montana. They hope to use these seeds to help refuel trains passing through Havre from Seattle to Minneapolis.

Second, they also discovered they were being eaten alive by fuel costs, and they were disturbed by the effect that burning all that fuel had on their desire to be a “green” operation.

That led to an exciting research and development project with Montana State University-Northern to grow their own biodiesel fuel. The idea is to get local wheat growers to rotate in crops of an oil-seed plant known as camelina. A recent break-through in the local research effort has raised hopes that camelina, which has the advantage of being an extremely hardy, non-food crop, can produce biodiesel that can fuel buses as well as the freight trains that use Havre as a refueling stop between Seattle and Minneapolis. More exciting still, a by-product of that process could also be a component in jet fuel.

And all because an ingenious local group set out to connect people to opportunities through rural transit!

As inspiring as it was, an eye-opening aspect of our trip was to see just how vulnerable these communities are, and how large a role the federal transportation bill plays in their operation.

The local leaders and service providers we met in Montana are mindful that changes to programs being considered in Congress could strengthen such services, and lead to greater coordination and efficiencies, or throttle them altogether. As one tangible example, the HUD Sustainable Communities program that awarded Opportunity Link the $1.5 million grant today was axed last week in the budget for 2012. They also are deeply concerned that changes to programs such as transportation enhancements, now being considered in the Senate’s MAP-21 version of the bill, could leave them no way to fund the community projects that have been vital to economic development and safety.

Further changes would reduce the input that these communities have into how the state sets transportation priorities and allocates funding. The level of alarm was high, and it served to strengthen our commitment as a coalition to continue to emphasize the needs of rural and frontier America and push for measures that will help them, as the bill makes its way through the House and Senate.

White House launches advisory group on rural issues that includes transportation officials

President Obama signed an executive order today creating an advisory group for rural issues. The group will be tasked with developing recommendations for boosting economic growth, job opportunities and quality of life in rural communities.

The Executive Order notes that sixteen percent of the population lives in rural counties and that these areas are essential to future economic competitiveness.

“Though rural communities face numerous challenges, they also present enormous economic potential,” according to the order. “The Federal Government has an important role to play in order to expand access to the capital necessary for economic growth, promote innovation, improve access to health care and education, and expand outdoor recreational activities on public lands

Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, will serve as chairman and will be joined Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and dozens of other Cabinet and administration officials. Including these voices will ensure cross-jurisdiction solutions are considered.

The transportation challenges of rural areas are well-known, yet cannot be overstated.

More than 1.6 million rural households in America lack access to a personal vehicle, and rural areas and small towns tend to have higher concentrations of older adults and low-income families, precisely the groups that are less likely to drive or be able to afford a car. The need for increased travel options in these communities was outlined in our Dangerous by Design 2011 report, which found that while only 24 percent of Americans live in rural areas, the areas account for more than 27 percent of pedestrian fatalities.

As Congress continues its deliberations over the next transportation bill, rural transit needs have finally begun to receive more of the attention they deserve. Senator Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat who chairs the Banking Committee that oversees transit, has called for additional resources to help small providers maintain service levels. And, Representative Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee whose West Virginia district contains a number of rural counties, has said she will “certainly remain a strong voice for making roads safer for pedestrians” as the next bill is crafted.

Rural transportation needs were also the subject of recent report from the Rural Policy Research Institute, or RUPRI. You can read their full report, which includes a number of recommendations for the next transportation bill, here.

Photo courtesy of Huron County Transit.

South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson stresses rural transit needs as gas prices continue to escalate

Gas prices in the U.S. continue to escalate and could hit $4.25 by Memorial Day, according to some projections. These spikes tend to hit smaller communities and rural areas particularly hard, as residents and businesses must travel farther and use more energy during daily activities.

While too much of the talk in Washington emphasizes gimmicks like grand jury investigations and “drill, baby, drill,” some leaders have engaged with constituents on increasing transportation options, one of the most important steps we can take to relieve pain at the pump.

Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, recently conferred with the Brookings Area Transit Authority, which seeks additional funding and capacity to operate its 21 vehicles. Brookings has a population of 22,000 and is home to South Dakota State University.

Senator Johnson, who is currently serving as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, noted that investment in transit systems is a vital economic development tool for many South Dakota communities. The system in Brookings faces the dual challenge of an aging population demanding more services and rising prices due to the spike in energy costs.

Brenda Schweitzer, the authority director, “noted that rising gas prices have increased BATA fuel bills by $2,000 just within the past month,” according to the Brookings Register. The Register also reported that “the organization’s out-of-pocket match for fuel is at $5,000 per month right now.”

Johnson assured Schweitzer and other participants in a recent panel that he would use his clout in the Senate to push for a transportation bill that meets the needs of South Dakotans and sparse communities across the country.

“With reliable transit systems, we can strengthen our economic development by connecting people to medical services, schools, family and jobs,” Johnson said on his website. “Meeting with people on the ground who deal with rural transit issues every day helps me as I work to ensure that the needs of rural communities are met.”

The Banking Committee has particular jurisdiction over the transit elements of the next bill, which has been overdue for renewal since late 2009.

Photo: Roll Call

“I don’t know what this talk around DC is about livability not having anything to do with rural areas…”

Earlier this week, we hosted 15 of our partners from rural areas across America for a two day “fly-in” focusing on the transportation needs of rural areas and small towns. We hosted a briefing at the Capitol in the morning and then these partners from all over the country, from Virginia to California, took the message up to their leaders in Congress through dozens of meetings with legislative staff or Senators and Representatives themselves.

Kathy Moxon, the director of Redwood Coast Rural Action in (extreme) northern California, a participant and speaker at the briefing, took a few moments in between meetings at the Capitol to talk to T4 America about this idea of “livability” in rural areas that some in Congress have been questioning.

We wanted to know more about the view from rural northern California — is livability a rural value?

We’d like to thank Kathy for coming to D.C and participating in the fly-in and giving us a few minutes of her time.

T4 America’s rural and small town partners take their transportation message to Capitol Hill

Arkansas Square Originally uploaded by whiteknuckled

Tuesday’s Congressional lobby day hosted by Transportation for America on the needs of rural and small-town America displayed a growing urgency for transportation options, livable communities and good access to jobs and opportunity — as great as one would find in any of our nation’s urban and metropolitan centers.

Though the specifics may take a different form compared to big coastal cities, the values these participants described in a morning briefing and then in dozens of meetings with members of Congress didn’t sound all that different from residents of anywhere else in America, small or large.

Americans from big urban areas all the way down to rural communities and small towns want good access to job opportunities. We want roads that aren’t cracked and crumbling and bridges that don’t fall down. We want our town or city centers to be vital places to live, work and shop. We want safe places to walk and bicycle. We want options other than long car trips for absolutely everything. Call it “livability,” or call it something else.

The dozen-plus participants who came to Washington, D.C. from small communities in Virginia to Arkansas to Northern California and places in between expressed their hope that a new federal transportation bill can help address these needs in rural communities across America.

The “fly-in” kicked off with a Hill briefing, followed by dozens of meetings on Capitol Hill with the participants and their Senators and Representatives about how transportation policy impacts smaller communities.

Participants came from all corners of America and hit many of the same notes when discussing the challenges facing their friends and neighbors. Billy Altom hails from North Little Rock, Arkansas, where he serves as executive director of the Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living (APRIL). Terry Suphahn runs his own consulting firm in rural Northern California, working closely with Native Americans. Barbara Bayes splits time between urban Charleston and her farm, helping low-income West Virginians with access to transportation. Carol Miller heads an organization focused on heavily rural frontier communities — her own New Mexico county is so sparse, she must travel to the neighboring county just to vote and use the post office.

All participants talked about helping their neighbors back home access the basics — groceries, health services and jobs. They also talked of spurring economic opportunity so people can find a job in the same place they grew up. Many felt their towns, tribes or counties were ready to move on innovative projects that improve access and quality of life, if only federal policy would give them a little nudge. Far from asking Washington to tell them what to do, they were asking for resources to make change for themselves possible.

Kathy Moxon (left) and Terry Supahan from Northern California Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Kathy Moxon and Terry Supahan from Northern California posed behind the Capitol for a picture after a day of meetings with members of Congress. Kathy shared a powerful story of a rural community in Northern California that took matters into its own hands. The town transformed a wide highway through the middle of the community into a more suitable main street to help preserve the area as an enjoyable place to walk and live.

Carol Miller of New Mexico, a panelist during the morning briefing, put it well: “We believe good ideas come from the community, that there’s creativity there, but there hasn’t been a channel to bring those ideas up through the system.”

Washington needs to “make doing the right thing easy,” added Kathy Moxon, another panelist.

Billy Altom, the rural independent living director from Arkansas, rounded out the panel by discussing the transportation challenges facing older Americans and people with disabilities. He called on audience members to no longer see those with unique transportation needs – whether due to reliance on a wheelchair, inability to afford a car or age-related limitations– as an “us versus them” situation. Getting transportation right is not just about changing public policy, Altom said, but “changing public perception.”

John Robert Smith, the former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi and co-chair of the Transportation for America campaign, served as moderator for the panel.

Rural fly-in briefing panel 2 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America

Billy Altom, left, Carol Miller, John Robert Smith, and Kathy Moxon all spoke at the briefing at the Capitol Visitors’ Center.

Participants visited the offices of Senators Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Barbara Boxer of California, Max Baucus of Montana, Robert Byrd of West Virgnia and Mark Warner of Virginia, to name a few. Congressman Mike Thompson of California and Senator Jim Webb, along with a handful of others met personally with their constituents to hear their concerns.

Although connecting constituents with their representatives is critical, what happens next matters too – making sure Congress follows-through on a transportation bill that helps Americans from smaller communities get where they need to go and connect to a better life.

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.