May-June 2016: The Bus Rennaissance - Intercity Travel, Bus Rapid Transit, Technology Advances, Rural Services (2016)

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TR N EW S 30 3 M AY –J UN E 20 16 34 Hough is Program Direc- tor and Associate Profes- sor of Transporta tion, and Mattson is Associate Research Fellow, Small Urban and Rural Transit Center, Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, North Dakota State University, Fargo. Transit agencies serving the needs of peoplein rural areas throughout the United Statesare challenged by low population densities and long travel distances. Rural transit agencies face other challenges as well, such as finding and training the staff to operate and maintain vehicles and securing local funding from a limited tax base. Many rural agencies have been resourceful in meet- ing these challenges. Rural Travel Behavior The gap between urban and rural areas in the avail- ability and use of public transit is significant. Accord- ing to the 2013 American Housing Survey (AHS), 73 percent of urban and 47 percent of suburban house- holds have access to a grocery store by public tran- sit, compared with only 27 percent of households in nonmetropolitan areas. Access to other services and amenities by transit reveals similar disparities. AHS data, along with data from the American Community Survey and the National Household Travel Survey, show that rural residents rely on the automobile much more than their urban counter- parts do. Only 4 percent of rural households lack access to an automobile, but 70 percent have access to two or more vehicles. Only 0.5 percent of rural residents use public trans- portation to commute to and from work, compared with 6 percent of urban residents. Rural residents may take fewer trips per day than urban residents but drive significantly more miles because of the long travel dis- tances. Differences in commute distances account for a large share of the disparity in miles driven—daily commute miles for rural residents are nearly double those of urban commuters (1). The general population’s reliance on the automo- bile in rural areas creates difficulties for subpopula- tions such as older adults, people with disabilities, The Changing State of Rural Transit Challenges, Trends, Benefits, and Innovations J I L L H O U G H A N D J E R E M Y M A T T S O N The Bus Renaissance (Photo above:) Passengers boarding an Arrowhead Transit vehicle in northeast Minnesota. TRN_303.e$S_TRN_303 7/1/16 11:46 AM Page 34

TR N EW S 303 M AY–JUN E 2016 35 and people in low-income households, who lack access to an automobile and require transportation alternatives. Members of the relatively few rural households that lack access to an automobile make almost one-third fewer trips per day than members of households that own a single vehicle. The disparity is greater when compared with households that have two or more vehicles (2). The difference—known as the mobility gap—suggests a need for rural mobility services for those who cannot drive or do not have access to a vehicle. Demographic Trends Older people and people with disabilities, veterans who need health care services, and Native Americans living on reservations face a variety of transportation challenges in rural areas. Older adults tend to rely on others, especially family members, for transportation, but this can be problematic, because family members are often far away or not available—they may have moved to other communities or have jobs and other commitments. Approximately 16 percent of residents in rural areas are 65 years of age or older, compared with 13 percent in urban areas. As age increases, so does the likelihood that an individual will have a disability that creates mobility needs and limitations. Accord- ing to American Community Survey data, 15 percent of residents in rural areas have a disability, compared with 12 percent in urban areas. The percentage of population age 65 or older has increased in both urban and rural areas in the past decade, but the increase has been greatest among the rural population. The share of the rural population that is elderly is likely to continue to grow in the next several decades as the baby boom generation ages. Veterans also are more likely to have disabilities. In general, the need for veteran transportation is grow- ing because of the many injured men and women returning from overseas military service. Veterans in rural areas are more likely than their urban counter- parts to be older, in poorer health, and disabled (3). Many rural veterans must travel long distances to reach a Veterans Administration health care facility. Many Native Americans, especially in the Upper Great Plains and Southwest, live on remote, rural reservations. They have limited access to medical ser- vices, shopping, employment, and educational oppor- tunities (4). One-way trips of 50 or 100 miles are not unusual. Rural reservations also tend to have a high per- centage of low-income households. According to the 2013 AHS, approximately one-third of American Indian and Alaska Native households live below the poverty line—roughly twice the national average. Rural Transit Benefits Providing transit is less efficient in low-density rural and small urban areas than in urban settings, mea- sured by cost per trip or by trips served per mile. Nevertheless, research has shown that rural transit agencies provide a net benefit to their communities in three main ways: u Transportation cost savings to the user, who would have taken more costly forms of transporta- tion in the absence of transit; u Trips that would have been foregone if transit service were not available; and u Local economic activity resulting from transit operations—including not only the jobs created by the transit agency, but the jobs created in industries that supply inputs to public transit and the economic activity induced from the income generated by these new jobs (5). Although all three categories of benefits are potentially valid reasons for investing in rural tran- sit, research indicates the importance of providing trips to those who otherwise would not be able to travel. A study by the National Center for Transit Research found that a $1 investment in rural transit returned $1.20 in transportation cost savings and mobility benefits (5). This estimate, however, did not include the local economic activity and therefore may be conservative. Other studies of rural transit have estimated similar cost–benefit advantages (6). A missed medical trip can affect a person’s qual- ity of life and can result in a need for more costly care. Compared with the cost of health care, the cost of providing transportation for access to health care can be small. Providing work trips via transit also can have a positive net benefit for society if the service is less Transit stop in Mandan, North Dakota. TRN_303.e$S_TRN_303 7/1/16 11:46 AM Page 35

TR N EW S 30 3 M AY –J UN E 20 16 36 expensive than providing government assistance to people who lack access to jobs. Providing other types of trips also has benefits, although these are often qualitative and difficult to measure—for example, the quality-of-life benefits from social trips. In addition, rural transit services can offer a safer form of travel, especially for older riders whose abil- ity to drive has deteriorated. Driving abilities can decrease because of age-related vision loss, hearing impairment, poor reflexes, and medical conditions. A higher percentage of seniors in rural areas contin- ues to drive, often because of a lack of alternatives. Data from the 2009 National Household Travel Survey show higher driving rates in rural areas for all age groups, including senior citizens. The survey also shows that people living in rural areas who have a medical condi- tion or disability that makes travel difficult are less likely to give up driving (7). Providing alternative forms of transporta- tion makes the decision easier for seniors and those with dis- abilities to give up driving as their skills and safety levels decline. Size and Scope According to data from the rural National Transit Database, 1,317 rural transit agencies pro- vided 495 million vehicle miles, 28 million vehicle hours, and 131 million rides in 2013. The geographic coverage of rural transit has slowly expanded in recent years. Nationwide, 79 percent of all counties had some level of rural tran- sit service. These data include rural public transit agencies receiving Section 5311 Non-Urbanized Area Formula Program funding but do not include the specialized transportation providers funded by other programs. The median number of trips provided by a rural transit agency in 2013 was 33,520, and the median vehicle miles operated was 184,506. The sizes and types of operations, however, vary. For example, the smallest 10 percent of agencies provided less than 25,000 miles of service, but the largest 10 percent provided more than 800,000 miles. Among the larger agencies, 100 provided more than 1 million miles of service and 16 provided more than 1 million rides. These statistics exclude urban systems that pro- vide transit in rural areas; these systems report their data to the urban National Transit Database. The number of urban systems receiving Section 5311 funding for service in rural areas has doubled within the past few years to 231 in 2013, when these agen- cies provided 36 million rural trips. When these urban providers are added to the rural systems, a total of 1,548 transit agencies provided 167 million rural transit trips in 2013. Rural transit systems almost exclusively provide bus transit. A few ferryboat operators serve rural areas, as do van pools, demand-response taxi ser- vices, and resort-area tramways—a special case with greater similarities to urban transit than to the typi- cal rural system. Most rural transit operators provide fixed-route or demand-response bus service. Many rural transit agencies offer only demand-response service; approximately one-third operate some type of fixed-route service. Some regional differences apply. The Southeast and Midwest have the greatest number of rural tran- sit agencies. The operators in these regions are mostly demand-response providers. The Northeast and far Western regions favor fixed-route service. Workforce Development Maintaining and increasing staffing is critical, as rural transit agencies attempt to meet the growing demand for service. In a 2014 survey of North Dakota tran- sit agencies, most of which serve rural areas (8), half responded that they have too few staff to meet cur- rent needs, and most of the remainder said that they will need additional staff within the next five years to meet expected higher future demand. Many North Dakota agencies reported difficul- ties in finding qualified staff. Transit operators from cities in western North Dakota, such as Minot and Dickinson, reported that they had to compete with the oil industry for drivers. The superintendent for The South Central Transit Network is a six-county transportation service provided by South Central Adult Services in North Dakota. A bus stop in rural Virginia. P H O TO : T A B ER A N D R EW B A IN TRN_303.e$S_TRN_303 7/1/16 11:46 AM Page 36

TR N EW S 303 M AY–JUN E 2016 37 Minot City Transit noted the difficulty “for a municipality to compete with oil field and private companies’ wages...to hire and retain drivers.” The Dickinson Public Transit director commented that the agency needs more office and transit staff, but “to hire and maintain qualified staff, we need more money for salary and benefits.” Staffing issues are not limited to areas with an active oil industry. Rural transit agencies also must compete with trucking firms that offer higher wages. Moreover, respondents from eastern North Dakota observed that low unemployment rates throughout the state have made qualified workers difficult to find. Transit agencies may need to continue increasing wages to attract and maintain a qualified staff. This could result in higher operating costs, because labor is the largest cost in supplying transit service. Innovation and Resourcefulness Many bus operators have answered the challenges of rural transit demand in innovative and resourceful ways. For example, South Central Adult Services, which provides transit services in a large six-county area of North Dakota, partners with a private com- pany, Lafarge, to use transit vehicles during the off- peak season to provide cancer patients with rides to treatment facilities; Lafarge covers the operating and fixed costs for the rides. The partnership allows South Central Adult Services to use other vehicles to provide more mobility for more people in the region. Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Synthesis 94, Innovative Rural Transit Services, offers other examples of innovations (9). The specialized CountyRide transportation program in Baltimore County, Maryland, for example, uses a sophisticated, computerized scheduling and dispatch system to take trip requests in advance. The system digitally dispatches trips to drivers and optimizes scheduling in real time. Rural agencies across the country are adopting intelligent transportation systems products that opti- mize scheduling and routing, facilitate coordination, reduce fuel costs and wasted miles, and improve on- time performance and rider satisfaction. The adop- tion rate for these technologies is difficult to estimate because of a lack of national-level data. In North Dakota, more than 15 agencies have adopted dispatching software in the past two years. As reported in TCRP Synthesis 94, one agency esti- mates that ridership has nearly doubled in some rural areas, because drivers can focus on driving and qual- ity of service instead of the completion of paper- work. With the higher utilization of vehicles, some agencies have added services for such markets as preschool and daycare passengers. Meeting the Demand The challenges in providing mobility services to rural residents will persist. The number of elderly in rural areas is growing, as the baby boom generation reaches retirement. In a North Dakota survey, a majority of AARP members reported that improved access to public transportation and more ride alter- natives were needed to allow them to stay in their homes and remote neighborhoods (10). Access to rural transit is especially important to people with disabilities, veterans who need medical treatment, Native Americans living on reservations, and people in low-income households. Meeting this demand requires an innovative and resourceful approach that makes the best use of avail- able vehicles and technologies. The type of transit provided in rural areas may differ from that in urban areas, but rural operators are showing that the service is equally important to users. References 1. Perks, R., and C. Raborn. Driving Commuter Choice in America: Expanding Transportation Choices Can Reduce Con- gestion, Save Money, and Cut Pollution. Issue Paper 13-06- A, Natural Resources Defense Council, New York, July 2013. 2. TCRP Web-Only Document 58: Methods for Forecasting Demand and Quantifying Need for Rural Passenger Trans- portation. Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., July 2012. www.trb.org/ Publications/Blurbs/168759.aspx. 3. Peterson, D. Improving Veteran Mobility in Small Urban and Rural Areas. National Center for Transit Research, Univer- sity of South Florida, Tampa, 2014. 4. Mielke, J. 5311(c) Tribal Transit Funding: Assessing Impacts and Determining Future Program Needs. DP-243, Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, North Dakota State University, Fargo, 2011. 5. Godavarthy, R., J. Mattson, and E. Ndembe. Cost–Benefit Analysis of Rural and Small Urban Transit. National Center for Transit Research, University of South Florida, Tampa, 2014. 6. Ferrell, C. E. The Benefits of Transit in the United States: A Review and Analysis of Benefit–Cost Studies. Mineta Trans- portation Institute, San Jose State University, San Jose, Cal- ifornia, July 2015. 7. Mattson, J. Travel Behavior and Mobility of Transportation- Disadvantaged Populations: Evidence from the National Household Travel Survey. DP-258, Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, North Dakota State University, Fargo, 2012. 8. Mattson, J., and J. Hough. Identifying and Satisfying the Mobility Needs of North Dakota’s Transit System. DP-280, Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, North Dakota State University, Fargo, 2015. 9. Hosen, K. I., S. Bennett Powell, and KFH Group, Inc. TCRP Synthesis 94: Innovative Rural Transit Services. Transporta- tion Research Board of the National Academies, Washing- ton, D.C., 2011. 10. Mattson, J. North Dakota Transportation Survey: Aging and Mobility. DP-221, Upper Great Plains Transportation Insti- tute, North Dakota State University, Fargo, 2009. More information about TCRP Synthesis 94, Innovative Rural Transit Services, can be found at www.trb.org/Publications /Blurbs/166363.aspx. TRN_303.e$S_TRN_303 7/1/16 11:46 AM Page 37