rural transit Archives - Transportation For America

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.

Safety and mobility choice through rural California

Juxtaposed by a well-supported bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, there are many people in rural communities, particularly agricultural workers, along the route that are in critical need of vital, reliable, affordable transportation options, and suffer dire health and economic consequences as a result.

Agricultural workers harvesting lettuce in Salinas, CA. Photo from Flickr/yaxchibonam.

The 2022 AIDS/Lifecycle bike ride (June 5-11, 2022), a seven-day, 545-mile ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles raising awareness, advocacy, and financial support for community services for those afflicted with HIV, passes through many rural agricultural communities. Through Marina, Salinas, Gonzalez, King City, Bradley, Paso Robles, Santa Maria, or Lompoc, community members bike or walk along the side of the road in dangerous conditions like non-existent shoulders and roadways in need of maintenance or repair. I recently had the honor, privilege, and ability to participate in this bike ride, and along the way, I observed what is so often observed on U.S. streets: when our transportation system prioritizes vehicle speed over all else, other road users fall through the cracks.

*T4America Policy Director Benito Pérez, stopped by agricultural fields near Salinas, CA.*

It is quite the experience and privilege to ride through the beautiful California countryside, supported by medical and bike tech teams. If I got tired or felt sick from riding, I could stop and get a ride to the next rest stop or hop on a chartered bus to the next overnight camp stop. This unfortunately is not an option for residents and workers alike in these rural communities. Along our route, biking infrastructure was scarce, and other convenient modes of transportation like public transit are often hard to come by. Those of us participating in the bike ride could easily spot rural residents and workers biking for long distances on unprotected paths.

Add the additional pain of high gas prices and scarce and infrequent public transportation options, and many people are left with little option but to walk or bike on hazardous roads with high speed or very large freight vehicles and tractors. For undocumented workers or people living paycheck-to-paycheck who have to show up in-person for work, high gas prices become even more of a barrier and can force people to other modes of travel, even when safe infrastructure is lacking. I observed one woman biking with a shopping cart tied to her bike to carry her goods home.

Dangerous rural roadways aren’t specific to California. Over 1 million rural households across the nation have limited mobility options. Leaders in many rural communities are standing up and looking to make changes to improve transportation choices and safety. In California, the city of Salinas has an active Vision Zero program, enacted in 2020, looking to stem the tide on roadway fatalities. Communities like Lompoc are actively looking at policy and funding opportunities to expand their complete streets program. However, as the bulk of their busiest and most dangerous roads are state-owned, these places will have to rely on the state to make sure rural communities receive the investments they need. That will involve emphasizing a better state of repair on roadways, investing in rural transit solutions (including microtransit), not to mention supporting transportation investments, policies, standards, and strategies advancing safety and mobility choice for all roadway users.

Despite the support that cyclists on the AIDS/Lifecycle ride received and the increased safety that often comes while biking in larger numbers, a person was still killed on the final day. Roadway fatalities for pedestrians and cyclists continue to rise, and without making an effort to address the dangerous conditions on our roadways (mainly, the lack of safe infrastructure for road users outside of vehicles), this trend can only be expected to continue. (The 2022 edition of Dangerous by Design, produced by Smart Growth America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, addresses how our streets are designed for vehicles at the expense of all other road users.)

This ride was an experience for the impact it has to its mission, but it also was an experience to “ride in the shoes” of the many residents in these rural communities in Central California, only a sliver of many rural communities in America clamoring for safe, reliable transportation choices for their socioeconomic and health well-being. Often, political leaders assume that all rural residents drive, or only drive, and any investments in other modes of transportation are somehow out of touch with rural needs. But the fight for safer streets and more convenient methods of transportation can’t stop at city limits. That mindset leaves far too many behind.

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.

Senators hone in on 80/20 split, transit operations funding at Banking hearing

Last week, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee held a hearing on investing in public transit in the next long-term transportation law. We were pleasantly surprised to see senators ask questions on funding transit and highways equally, transit operations, and rural transit.

Public transportation usually gets shafted in the long-term surface transportation law—so much so that lawmakers tend to call it “the highway bill.”

But not this year. Senators in the committee charged with writing the public transit portion of this law—up for reauthorization this September—surprised us at a recent hearing with questions that got to the heart of the policies keeping U.S. public transit behind. Many senators specifically asked our director Beth Osborne, who testified before the committee, about the 80/20 split between highway and transit funding, the value of funding transit operations, and rural transit needs.

We’ve long criticized the Senate Banking Committee for shirking its duty to write the public transit portion of authorization by taking a backseat to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which writes the highway title. But this hearing might signal a change in tactic. Here’s what we heard that surprised us.

The belly of the beast: the 80/20 split

Since 1982, spending from the federal Highway Trust Fund has followed this formula: 80 percent for highways, 20 percent for public transportation. The logic behind this was that since the Trust Fund’s funding came from the gas tax drivers pay at the pump, most of the funding should be spent on highways.

Besides a groundbreaking resolution from Rep. Chuy García (that you can support here), this faulty logic hasn’t been challenged much since—even though subsequent legislation, particularly the three COVID-19 relief packages, didn’t adhere to this formula. Which is why we were surprised to hear Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) ask Beth right out of the gate how funding transit and highways equally would improve transit service. “We’ve never made the kind of investment in transit at the national level as we did for highways,” Beth said. “But this is what we need to do to give people multiple modes of travel.”

Senator Menendez also noted that the federal transportation program subsidizes highways and bridges, so he doesn’t understand why transit is any different.

Funding transit operations—not just maintenance and capital

The only federal funding provided regularly to medium-sized and larger transit agencies is for maintenance or expansion projects—not the day-to-day costs of operating transit service. Transit agencies are on their own to raise this money, relying on a combination of fares, sales tax receipts, and other state level sources of support.

The three COVID-19 relief packages broke this tradition by providing operating support to transit agencies, giving us hope that lawmakers would make this a permanent component of the long-term transportation law. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) brought this idea to the committee by asking Beth about the value of federal operating support, even noting that investing in more frequent service will bring a return of more riders.

“People can’t rely on transit that comes every 45 minutes to an hour,” Beth responded. “We need the reliability that high-frequency transit service brings, and not just at the times that white collar workers need transit.” And the only way there is through federal operating support for transit.

An interest in rural transit

Both Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Tina Smith (D-MN) asked Beth about the types of investments needed to support public transit in rural areas, and how they might be different than investments in urban and suburban public transit.

This is an important issue: we found in an analysis of American Community Survey data that the majority of counties with high rates of zero-car households are rural. In fact, more than one million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a vehicle, as we blogged last year.

“When we think rural, we think wide open fields and farmlands. But we forget that there are concentrations of people who live in distinct towns, and that services they need—like hospitals and schools—are moving farther away, consolidating into centers that serve entire regions,” Beth responded. “We need transit that can connect people to those regional hubs.”

Lack of bipartisanship

Only one Republican member of the committee showed up to the hearing: Ranking Member Pat Toomey (PA-R), who spent his testimony criticizing the high amount of funding public transit received in the most recent COVID-19 relief package.

The lack of bipartisan participation in the hearing is both good and bad. On the good side, transportation has typically been an issue that both Democrats and Republicans agree to undermine for the sake of bipartisanship, regularly passing long-term authorizations that maintain the status quo and make our transportation problems worse. Breaking from this tradition is necessary to pass an authorization that will actually maintain our infrastructure, improve safety, and connect people with jobs and services sustainably and equitably.

Yet the lack of bipartisanship implies that these recommendations are partisan—when in reality, many of the changes to federal transportation policy needed would achieve both parties’ goals: improved economic competitiveness, access to jobs and services, sustainability and more. That’s why freshmen Democrat and Republican members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee supported many of Transportation for America’s recommendations in legislation passed by the House last summer.

Turning needed reforms to the federal transportation program into a partisan issue will fail to deliver the transportation system Americans deserve and overwhelmingly support. We urge senators on both sides of the aisle to take a hard look at the current transportation program and ask themselves: is this working?

Beth was “the belle of the transit ball”—but nothing is real until it’s law

It’s exciting to hear senators ask about policy proposals that would constitute a paradigm shift in U.S. transportation policy if enacted—which is why after the hearing, our chairman John Robert Smith called Beth “the belle of the transit ball.”

But the Banking Committee hasn’t released any bill text yet, meaning that we can’t assume that ending the 80/20 split, funding transit operations, supporting rural transit and more will make it into the bill. Talk without action is meaningless. Yet we’re glad to see that there’s talk at all, especially after decades of the status quo.

Video: Rural transit agencies warn of devastating service cuts

It’s not just big city transit agencies that are suffering debilitating financial losses due to COVID-19: the pandemic is affecting rural and mid-sized transit agencies to the point where they might have to close their doors—permanently. Agency directors in Oklahoma and Illinois shared about the impacts.

Americans rely on public transportation all over the country—not just in big cities like New York or Chicago. Yet in our own analysis, we found that more than one million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a car. That doesn’t include households with one car shared between multiple working adults.

Without transit, these rural households will be stranded. And by failing to include transit in COVID-19 relief packages (aside from yesterday’s House package that included $32 billion for transit, which we hope remains in the bill and is passed by the Senate), Congress is apparently okay with that.

In two new videos released by Transportation for America, rural and mid-sized transit agencies warn of permanently cutting transit service as a result of financial strains from COVID-19. Directors of Little Dixie Transit in southeastern Oklahoma and the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD) in Illinois spoke of how COVID-19 is impacting their riders, employees, and ability to provide robust transit service now and in the future. If Congress doesn’t provide public transportation with at least $32 billion in emergency relief, both agencies will be forced to radically cut service—or even “shut our doors,” as Little Dixie Transit director Jeannie McMillin warned.

Check out short video highlights of the interviews below, and watch the full interview with Champaign-Urbana MTD’s director here.

Tell Congress to pass at least $32 billion in emergency relief for transit in the next COVID-19 relief package. House Democrats have tentatively included $32 billion for transit in their latest relief package, but it still has to pass the House—and then the Senate.

Send a message to your members of Congress

More than one million households without a car in rural America need better transit

Many people think the only Americans regularly relying on transit to reach jobs and services live in big cities. Yet the majority of counties with high rates of zero-car households are rural. In fact, more than one million households in predominantly rural counties do not have access to a vehicle. Rural Americans without cars face unique barriers and they deserve a tailored approach to their transit needs rather than just assuming they can or will drive everywhere.

Transit agencies have been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis, and rural transit providers are no exception. Before the pandemic, most were already operating on narrow margins with tenuous funding from local tax revenues that are now rapidly dwindling. Many of these providers were already stretched thin, serving multiple counties over large geographic areas with a small staff of part-time drivers.

The Director of the Oklahoma Transit Association Mark Nestlen said it well in a recent Vice article:

Congress never sat down at the table and said ‘let’s develop a rural transit program. What should it look like?’ They sat down at a table and said, ‘here’s the urban transit program…we’re going to have everything be the same and just put it in rural,’” he said. “When you do that, you’re going to put a square peg into a round hole.

While rural transit services are often costly to operate—particularly demand-response services, which allow individuals to arrange a ride to and from specific locations rather than operating on a fixed route—they are absolutely essential for families and older residents with no other means to reach healthcare, groceries, and other crucial services. To better understand this need, we used the latest American Community Survey (ACS) five-year estimates to look at how many households in every county nationwide do not have access to a car, and what other difficulties rural carless households might disproportionately face.

The majority of counties with high rates of zero-car households are rural

More than one million rural households do not have access to a car, according to this latest ACS data. On a national level, the majority of households without a car are in urban counties (as are the majority of people), but the rates aren’t as different as you might expect: on average, about nine percent of households in urban counties do not have access to a car, compared to approximately six percent of households in primarily rural counties. And while most of the counties with the highest rates of carless households unsurprisingly are in big cities like New York City, Baltimore, San Francisco, New Orleans, and the District of Columbia, the majority of counties with overall high rates of zero-car households are in fact rural.

Based on the latest ACS data, there are 292 counties in the U.S. where at least 10 percent of households don’t have access to a car (out of 3,142 total counties nationwide). Of those 292 counties, 56 percent of them are majority rural. These 164 rural counties are primarily located in Kentucky, West Virginia, South Dakota, Arkansas, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alaska. There are pockets of rural America where a disproportionately large share of residents are completely reliant on transit, deliveries, or help from neighbors to access basic necessities, like Wolfe County, Kentucky, and Allendale County, South Carolina, where more than 20 percent of households don’t have access to a car.

Households in those counties also face other challenges likely exacerbated by low car ownership and underfunded transit

A deeper look at data for those 164 rural counties paints a troubling picture: most of them also have few or no intensive care unit (ICU) beds, meaning residents with health emergencies (such as COVID-19) must travel to a neighboring county. Rural areas around the country have seen a wave of hospital closures over the past decade—more than 120 closures nationwide as of February 2020. Cross-referencing Census data with data from Kaiser Health News indicates rural counties nationwide have significantly fewer ICU beds per person available than urban counties: about one ICU bed for every 7,000 residents on average in rural counties compared to one bed for every 4,000 residents in urban counties.

Of the 164 rural counties we identified with especially high rates of no-car households, 119 don’t have a single ICU bed. And some of those counties don’t even have a single hospital—like Knott County, Kentucky, and Lee County, Arkansas, where 12.6 percent and 16.3 percent of households don’t have access to a vehicle, respectively.

This points to some of the glaring problems with how our national surface transportation program handles rural transit like an add-on rather than a well-conceived program created to meet different needs than transit in a big city. People in rural America must travel longer distances for basic necessities, including groceries, banks, schools, and (especially important today) medical care. Because rural hospitals have been shrinking and closing, getting to a hospital for a job or for medical care requires an even longer trip. This makes rural transit more challenging to run, especially on a shoestring budget.

Many people in those 164 rural counties also face substantial poverty. Nationally 13.1 percent of the country’s population was below the poverty level in 2018 according to the ACS, versus 24.5 percent in those 164 counties. They also have very low rates of internet access compared to the national average. About 80 percent of households nationwide have a broadband subscription, compared to approximately 74 percent for all rural counties, and just 62 percent for the 164 rural counties where at least one in 10 households don’t have a car.

In other words, these are regions of rural America where residents are and will continue to be deeply vulnerable to the near-term health crisis and long-lasting economic impacts of COVID-19.

Rural transit needs more funding support, and we can’t stop there

As Congress takes up the nation’s surface transportation program for reauthorization, it is important for all members—from urban and rural areas alike—to take transit seriously. But we also need to rethink what providing transportation for rural Americans who don’t drive should look like. While there are no straightforward answers, and rural transit agencies will need to be part of this ongoing conversation, there are a number of key considerations we think should be part of the discussion.

For example, rural transit agencies in particular have never stood a fighting chance at covering their costs through fare revenues or even local taxes, and it’s time we stop letting the false standard and expectation that transit should pay for itself influence policy and funding decisions. Rural areas have always needed subsidies for public services, from electricity and water to (today) transit and broadband. We should accept that fact and provide for rural transit like we do for other essential public services.

We should also equip rural areas to design their transit systems to meet residents’ needs as directly and cost-effectively as possible. That could mean additional funding to identify pockets of low-density areas where residents are especially vulnerable, or resources to determine exactly where and when people are traveling to and from to help rural agencies tailor their services. This is information that some transit providers already collect in some capacity, either formally or anecdotally, but many don’t have the resources or capacity to process that information to make service changes.

If we want to invest in the economic recovery of rural America, we need to invest in everyone who lives there. The numbers bear it out: Transit must be part of that solution.

Here are 4 things transit agencies can do to fight for more funding

The $25 billion in emergency funding provided for transit agencies in the first COVID-19 relief package was a great start—but as the crisis continues, agencies (and rural agencies in particular) likely need more funds to keep their personnel safe and return to normal service when stay at home orders loosen. Here are four powerful actions transit agencies can take to fight for more funding.

Public transportation budgets are currently in freefall. With revenue dwindling due to dramatically reduced ridership, diminished sale tax receipts, and other impacts from a contracting economy, transit agencies might lose between $26-$38 billion this year. This severely constricts agencies’ abilities to run enough service to get essential workers to their jobs and to keep their personnel safe from contracting COVID-19—and all but annihilates the possibility of returning to normal service when stay at home orders loosen.

The $25 billion in emergency operating assistance for transit included in the first coronavirus relief package—the CARES Act, passed last month—will support agencies for a little while, and even helped Grand Rapids’ transit agency postpone 300 layoffs. But it’s not enough. If transit agencies, riders, and advocates don’t speak up, the choice to cut transit funding at the federal and state level may not be too hard.

Transit agencies can make sure that doesn’t happen. Here are four powerful actions transit agencies can take to push Congress to pass more emergency funding for transit.

1. Track and publicize how COVID-19 is impacting your agency

COVID-19 is having a massive impact on every aspect of public transportation—so if you aren’t already, track these impacts. Quantifying costs and recording stories from personnel and riders will help you make the case for funding.

Some items worth tracking are COVID-19’s impacts on your budget, particularly:

Whether funding from the CARES Act is sufficient to help you maintain frequent, uncrowded service for essential workers, and how long existing funding will last;
If your needs have changed since receiving CARES Act funding;
If you are considering layoffs and what it would cost to avoid layoffs;
Rates of staff illnesses, quarantines, and fatalities.

2. Work with reporters to cover these impacts

What’s happening to public transportation—and what will happen if transit agencies don’t receive anymore emergency funding—is an incredibly important and newsworthy story. Be open with reporters: share COVID-19’s immediate impacts with them, and how COVID-19 is affecting your ability to provide transit service now and in the future. You have a story that deserves to be in the news.

3. Call your elected officials

As an essential industry on the frontline of the pandemic, transit agencies are some of the only entities that can give elected officials accurate and detailed accounts of how COVID-19 is impacting public services and hurting their personnel. And as recipients of federal funding, transit agencies have a responsibility to communicate to Congress particularly that your ability to connect essential workers to jobs is shrinking due to dwindling resources.

We recommend just picking up the phone and calling your Congressional delegation, your state representatives, your governor’s office, your mayor’s office, and your city council—it is their job to listen to you. Tell them about staff illness and quarantines, and what you need to get essential workers to jobs. Tell them what you’re doing to protect employees and the public, and what you need to keep them safe. Tell them that frankly, you don’t know what COVID-19 means for your agency.

4. Engage your local advocates and riders

Passionate transportation advocates and riders—especially essential workers who are using transit to get to their jobs—are one of your greatest resources. Tell advocates and riders that if they want transit service to exist now and when stay at home orders loosen, they need to call their elected officials to secure more emergency operating funding for transit. Share how COVID-19 is impacting your agency to arm advocates and riders with the tools to help you.

For inspiration, Oklahoma Transit Association’s Faces of Transit project is a terrific example of using riders’ stories to promote increased funding for transit.

Psssh, there’s one more thing: Tell T4America how we can help you: Email us (or ask to hop on the phone) to tell us what you’re experiencing. The more we know, the more we can help.

How is COVID-19 impacting rural transit in Oklahoma

Struggles for rural transit agencies show that the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to public transportation are not limited to big cities.

Transit agencies are struggling to continue providing service in the face of plummeting fare revenues and increased costs associated with the need for cleaning vehicles and providing enough service to allow for safe spacing of passengers.

The fallout for transit in this crisis has been more visible in large cities than rural communities, since more people use transit in urban areas, and urban transit is typically more dependent on farebox revenue. But the impact has been just as severe for rural transit systems. Rural systems often don’t have staff that can dedicate time documenting impacts and calling members of Congress. They are trying to keep the doors open, the vehicles clean and running, and the drivers and riders safe. This may in part explain why many rural and tribal transit systems were caught off-guard when their share of the $25 billion of transit relief funding in the CARES Act was cut in half, from $4 billion to $2.2 billion just before the bill passed.

The reality is that rural transit agencies, already operating on very tight margins with unstable financial support, are already at a breaking point in this crisis. “Rural transit systems are at their wits’ end emotionally, physically, mentally and financially,” says LaQuita Thornely, Executive Director of INCA Community Services, an agency that operates JAMM Transit in four rural Oklahoma counties. “The nature of rural transit makes survival during this time questionable.”

What we heard from transit agencies in Oklahoma are examples of what is likely happening to rural transit agencies nationwide.

The modest pay and part-time nature of driving for a rural system means it doesn’t pay the bills but can supplement retirement income. Because of this, rural transit drivers are more often older — many are over 65 — and therefore at greater risk of complications or even death, should they be infected by COVID-19.

For good reason, drivers are already skittish about continuing to work, and many are quitting, often not even bothering to give notice. Recently, a dialysis patient tested positive for the coronavirus after exposing two drivers. “We are awaiting the ripple effects of that incident on driver retention,” said Charla Sloan, Transit Director for KI BOIS Area Transit System (KATS) that serves 12 rural Oklahoma counties. “Social distancing is not possible when rural drivers have to secure wheelchair passengers in the vehicles.” Several systems in Oklahoma have had to cut service due to the COVID-19-caused driver shortage.

Making sure drivers are protected could go a long way toward keeping drivers safe and more of them on the job. But personal protective equipment (PPE) and even hand sanitizer is in short supply and hard to come by. The Oklahoma Transit Association (OTA) has found a supply of hand sanitizer from a local distillery and protective masks from China through one of its vendor members. “We have been driving hundreds of miles around the state delivering hand sanitizer and masks to systems that have no other way to protect its drivers and riders,” said Mark C. Nestlen, Executive Director of OTA. “We have still not found a supplier for small spray bottles to dispense the hand sanitizer or vehicle cleaning supplies, so the stress level remains high.”

The fiscal impacts of the pandemic on already-stretched rural transit systems will be immense. “My system is two payrolls away from being broke,” said Melissa Fesler, Director of First Capital Trolley who serves three Oklahoma counties. “Already subdued local rural economies are shut down with physical distancing practices taking hold. Local revenue sources are drying up quickly, and those local revenues will not recover for years to come.”

“Concern is growing as to the long-term viability of rural transit once the pandemic subsides and we return to a new normal,” said state representative Avery Frix (R-Muskogee), who serves as Chairman of the Oklahoma House of Representatives Transportation Committee and represents two rural counties. “As a result of the COVID-19 health crisis and the related economic collapse, the funding from local sources is going to plummet. Our rural transit providers rely on local matching funds to leverage federal dollars to keep vehicles moving. And those local funds are not going to be there for years.”

Prior to the public health crisis many rural transit providers were already walking a razor’s edge with being able to continue service. Closing down entirely would be especially devastating to many seniors and people with disabilities who rely solely on their local transit system for the one meal at the senior site or access to much needed health care like dialysis or to the worker who relies on transit to get to work.

“As rural states recover from the crisis, public transit will have to be a major component of the economic recovery,” Frix continued. “Without an effective public transit system operating seamlessly statewide within and between rural communities and urban cities, a recovery will be slow at best, if at all.”

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)

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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.

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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

The role of transit in rural America: a case study from Washington State

Top: Centralia Downtown Historic District; bottom from left to right: The former St. Helens Hotel in Chehalis; the original Farmers & Merchants Bank Building in Centralia, the Olympic Club Hotel/Saloon in Centralia. (Images: top and bottom left Steven Pavlov, wikimedia | bottom middle and right Joe Mabel, wikimedia)

Some perceive public transit as exclusively an urban issue. However, rural communities and small cities rely heavily on transit as a key component of the transportation system—not just as a social service to those who cannot drive, although that is one factor. We hope this example from Washington State will inspire you to share stories about the role of rural transit in your community.

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About halfway between Portland and Seattle on the I-5 corridor sit the cities of Centralia and Chehalis. Chehalis is the seat of Lewis County and Centralia is the county’s economic center. Twin Transit serves these two cities, but not the rest of the Lewis County, a narrow rectangle that extends 65 miles from the crest of the Cascade Mountains at White Pass to the coast range near the Pacific Ocean.

Lewis County in red, with Chehalis and Centralia marked in the western part of the county. (Image: Google Maps)

Centralia and Chehalis (pop. of approximately 20,000 and 7,500 respectively) boast stately historic buildings and well-connected street grids. Centralia also has a four-year college, Centralia College, and an Amtrak station with service to Portland and Seattle five times per day. Both Seattle and Portland are less than two hours away by train, and an additional train trip in each direction will be added later this year.

Since 1998, the non-profit LEWIS Mountain Highway Transit has filled part of the gap in transit service in the more rural part of the county, by serving rural communities on the east side of the county between Packwood and Centralia.

“From its inception, LEWIS Mountain Highway Transit was an effort by White Pass Community Services Coalition to provide previously non-existent and much needed public transportation service for east Lewis County residents,” says founder and manager Doug Hayden.

The 85-mile route sees about 700 boardings per month and provides a critical connection for residents of Packwood, Morton, Mossyrock and other communities along Highway 12 to reach shopping, social services agencies, do business with county government, and attend Centralia College.

In the past year, however, Hayden announced that this transit service would have to end in 2019 due to changes in state transit funding rules regarding local match requirements. There isn’t enough local funding for the non-profit to keep providing the service.

If LEWIS Mountain Highway Transit’s critical bus line is canceled, many people along the route who have come to rely on the service will be stranded with few options for accessing medical appointments, shopping, and other necessities.

Crisis leads to action

As is often the case, impending crisis has led to action. Twin Transit developed a plan for adding the remainder of the county to the existing transit district. This would prevent the loss of service in east Lewis County along Highway 12 where many people already rely on it, and add service to other communities throughout the county where it is badly needed. Many leaders and community groups have rallied to support this plan, and in April all the jurisdictions (save one) agreed to put a measure on the November ballot giving Lewis County residents outside Twin Transit’s service district the opportunity to vote to be added. Under the plan, the remainder of the county would pay the 0.2% sales tax just as people making purchases in Centralia and Chehalis do now, and would see transit improvements in their communities in return.

Transit conference where all jurisdictions (save one) supported putting a measure on the November 2018 ballot to expand the Twin Transit district to include all of Lewis County.

County Commissioner Bobby Jackson, who chairs the Twin Transit Board of Directors, has been an active leader on this issue, working to get support from the jurisdictions. “We have an opportunity to make a huge investment in our community’s future with expanding transit to the entire county,” Jackson said. “This will meet needs on so many fronts for our citizens.”

He’s driven by the need to make sure folks without options get them so they can get to work, and because he sees transit as key to the county’s economic future with businesses choosing to locate and grow where they know they will have access to a strong labor pool.

Come November, we’ll know the outcome of this ballot measure vote and prospects for future transit service in Lewis County.

Do you have a story to tell about the role of transit in your rural community or small city? Share with us so we can continue to educate decision-makers that transit is not just an urban issue!

Share your rural or small city transit story here

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.

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.