Innovative Toolkit for Quantifying Rural Transit Benefits

In rural areas, public transportation costs often exceed revenues, and the financial outcome exclusive of societal economic benefits is difficult to quantify. A core challenge is a rural transit provider’s service spans large geographic spaces with spatially fragmented, transit disadvantaged populations and land uses. This challenge causes high operating costs for rural public transit providers that operate with limited resources and information access. While existing studies analyze the benefits of rural transit, a suitable comprehensive methodology is inadequate to quantify the full range of the socioeconomic benefits based on data availability. For this reason, public agencies that supply transit service in rural areas need to make a better case for public funding to establish and sustain services for users. Better public transit access can help promote equity and opportunities for transit disadvantaged populations who have been systematically divested for economic, physical, and social reasons. Rural transit agencies and policymakers need to better understand equity issues and incorporate them into the economic analyses when gauging the societal benefits that transit provides to rural communities. For example, the societal benefits may include reduced foregone trips, access to health care, mobility for persons with disabilities, social connectedness, and improved labor and workforce access. The economies of scale that are evident for urban transit may not apply to rural communities. Instead, the economic impacts manifest when quality transit services provide access to health care, work, education, shopping, and other necessary life connections. The objective of this project is to develop a toolkit that identifies and quantifies the socioeconomic benefits of rural public transit. The results of this project should be able to be replicated by rural public transit professionals, including transit managers, planners, and other transit professionals, to evaluate the economic benefits of rural public transit.

• Record URL:
  http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=5618
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Contract to a Performing Organization has not yet been awarded.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Proposed
• Funding: $300000
• Contract Numbers:

  Project H-62

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Transit Cooperative Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC    20001

  Federal Transit Administration

  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Schoby, Jamaal

• Start Date: 20241101
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Rural transit; Transportation equity; Travel patterns
• Subject Areas: Economics; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01902061
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Board
• Contract Numbers: Project H-62
• Files: TRB, RIP
• Created Date: Dec 13 2023 12:42PM