Rural areas can attain autonomy for their residents without relying on the whims of ride-hailing companies that might hike fares or go bankrupt next week.
So far, we have focused on public transportation in big urban centres. Cities are where the most people are concentrated, and they hold the greatest potential to rapidly get people out of personal automobiles and onto buses and trains—an imperative if we are to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.
But a large chunk of the population doesn’t live in cities or close enough to city centres to access the kind of density that governments often insist on before they’ll provide reliable transit. It’s critical that we build a political project around public transportation that includes the unique needs of rural and small-town residents.
Rural areas—defined by the U.S. Census Bureau using criteria including population, housing density, and distance from urban centres—make up an incredible 97 percent of the country’s land mass and 19.3 percent of its population.1 Of course, there’s a wide range of what “rural” means within that framework: some counties are defined as completely (100 percent) rural, while others are mostly urban (less than 50 percent rural).2 But generally, rural residents tend to be older, are more likely white, and have higher rates of disability than urban resi dents.3 Rural communities of colour tend to be geographically concentrated; nine out of ten rural and small-town Black residents live in the U.S. South.4 There has been a rise in Hispanic residents of rural and small-town areas.5 In Canada, almost 39 percent of Indigenous people live in rural areas, with another 20 percent in “small population centres.”6
Five specific demographics have been identified as facing transportation disadvantages in rural areas, similar to most places: older adults, people with disabilities, youth, low- income households, and women (especially mothers with young children and women fleeing from abusive situations).7 Due to austerity measures, many services are consolidated in larger towns, forcing rural residents to drive long distances for healthcare, banking, post offices, pharmacies, and social programs.
Systematic neglect of intercity transit such as motor coaches and passenger rail has rendered many areas effectively unnavigable without a car or airplane ticket.8 As a partial result of such policy failures, U.S. airlines flew over 778 million passengers on domestic flights in 2018, an all-time high.9 Aviation emissions are expected to grow between 300 and 700 percent by 2050, making air travel the sole source of emissions that will continue to rise from developed countries.10
These realities have often been used by politicians to justify not investing in rural and intercity public transportation systems. After all, only 4.2 percent of rural households don’t own a vehicle, and 31 percent own three or more.11 These geographies—featuring wide roads, large parking lots, and multi-vehicle garages—are literally designed for the car. Political representatives can easily make the case that if everyone owns a car and has no trouble finding parking, why bother spending on subsidies for buses that are going to ride empty?
Chronic underinvestment in rural transportation can lead to a wide range of negative impacts, including debilitating isolation and loneliness. Young people without access to a car can feel trapped and lose out on opportunities; queer, trans, and gender non-conforming youth can especially need an option to leave their rural or small-town communities. Traffic fatality and injury rates are also high in rural areas. While only one-fifth of the U.S. population live in rural areas, almost half of fatal car crashes occur there.12 These realities have made “three revolutions” thinking particularly appealing to many rural constituents. They offer the promise of lower emissions, improved access, and better service without requiring fundamental overhauls in taxation, funding, or planning.
Personal electric vehicles have obvious appeal to rural residents who can afford them. Electric vehicles are estimated to offer twice the cost-saving potential in rural counties and small towns as for urban dwellers, and considerably more emission reductions.13 Rural residents currently spend a greater proportion of their income on gasoline than urban residents do, as they typically have to travel farther, more often, to meet basic needs.14
Many rural areas currently lack charging infrastructure, but that can change quickly with a bit of targeted investment from various levels of government. Access to a garage, which can be a rarity in urban centres, allows for the straightforward installation of home charging stations as well.15 Several auto manufacturers are working on electrifying pickup trucks, which may prove useful in rural areas.16 As the batteries of electric vehicles continue to grow in capacity and size, more fully electric vehicles will be able to make long trips without running out of power. Combining an electric vehicle with rooftop solar panels in rural areas offers up even more decarbonizing and cost-saving potential. A 2014 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggested that such a partnership may create “accidental environmentalists” because the sheer reduction in fuel costs will prove attractive.17
None of that changes things for people who can’t drive or prefer not to due to age, disability, or income. Perhaps ride-hailing can help. Uber pitched the idea of rural service in early 2017; the company’s policy director of New York stated: “We want to be everywhere in the state. The goal is to provide a car to people everywhere.” Lyft announced in August 2017 that its service covered 94 percent of the country, anywhere in 40 states (including Alaska).18 A month later, Uber boasted that it was serving 172 areas in California, 102 of which had populations under 30,000 people.19
Ride-hailing is often positioned as a means of solving the elusive suburban “last mile” problem: how a transit rider gets home from their stop or station. Failing to address that can lead potential transit riders to opt for their own vehicles. If an Uber or Lyft ride can take the place of that private car, all the better. The prospect of “100 percent coverage” of the country by a ride-hailing company would also be a huge marketing opportunity.20
Rural-focused ride-hailing services have also emerged, like start-up Liberty Mobility Now in Nebraska, Ohio, Texas, and Colorado.21 Liberty Mobility Now’s strategy was to recruit and train drivers from the local community and charge a fraction of what it cost for a taxi ride. However, the company was forced to shut down after less than a year due to an investor lawsuit.22
More successes have come from small community-owned operations, like the farmworkers’ ride-sharing program in Cantua Creek, California, that was introduced in chapter 4. In the Canadian province of New Brunswick, three organizations partnered to provide a volunteer-run rural Tele-Drive service for seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income residents. The manager of Rural Rides Affordable Transportation said: “We have free health care, but if you can’t get to the health care, it really is no good to seniors or people that have a low income.”23 Such community-based projects are by their nature small-scale and often depend on the time and resources of a few individuals. They can serve as stopgaps, but they don’t constitute transportation policy.
This is where autonomous vehicles are supposed to step up. A March 2018 report by German consulting firm Roland Berger, with the lofty title of “Reconnecting the Rural: Autonomous Driving as a Solution for Non-urban Mobility,” made this case clearly.24 The report argued that autonomous vehicles will offer major cost reductions for rural areas, providing access to isolated communities that will in turn greatly increase quality of life—and further, offer a “strategic benefit” of serving as a testing ground for the technology, since there is less traffic and more predictable road systems.25 It identified three constituencies who will benefit from such advances: youth not old enough to get their licences, people with disabilities, and seniors who can no longer drive. The report drew particular attention to the latter, given the rapidly increasing average age in many rural areas.
“Few central governments currently plan to invest in public transit in sparsely populated areas, and some are actively disinvesting from these areas,” the authors wrote, calling explicit attention to austerity as an opportunity for privatized mobility.26 Declining transit access leads to lower local spending and reduced business and government revenue. But the report claimed that autonomous vehicles would kickstart a positive feedback loop of more frequent travel, spending, and resources for both residents and tourists. However, in order for this to happen, the infrastructure of rural roads would need to be significantly improved: clear white lanes for navigation and top-notch telecommunication technologies to ensure lightning- fast transmission of data.27
Autonomous vehicles have also been heralded for their potential to help attract younger people back to rural areas and retain them.28 Anyone will be able to summon a vehicle at any time of day or night and get where they need to go without worrying about safety, inebriation, or cost.
Yet personal electric vehicles face the same limitations for rural residents as they do in the city. They’re costly, even with generous subsidies, so only well-off residents in these regions will be able to afford these cars and the associated charging infrastructure for some time to come. Improved safety technologies accompanying the vehicles may reduce the crash rate in some instances—but the risks of high speed, poor signage, and an aging population remain.
There are also unresolved questions about how funding for charging infrastructure would be allocated. Electrify America, the Volkswagen subsidiary that was required as a part of the settlement for the VW emissions scandal to fund highway charging infrastructure, has been accused by California politicians of investing far more of the settlement money into profitable areas like San Francisco and Beverly Hills than into low-income rural areas.29 And as with any personal vehicle, the rise of electric cars means very little for people who can’t drive or prefer not to.
A limiting factor for longer ride-hailing trips, especially to rural areas, is the cost of “deadheading.” Ride-hailing drivers aren’t paid when there is no passenger in the vehicle, and they absorb the gas costs. Rural rides can also be very short, even from one end of town to the other, making them rarely worth a driver’s time and money. A 2017 forum on an Uber-focused subreddit about rural rides explained some of the disincentives for drivers: “Why as a driver would I ever accept a ride 20 minutes each way into the middle of nowhere?” one person asked. “The chances of a short ride or cancellation would be way too high for me to blow the better part of an hour + fuel costs on.”30 Another commenter noted: “The model breaks down in suburban and rural areas. It really requires significant density; otherwise people just own cars and drive everywhere.”
Drivers aren’t provided any additional incentive to service such areas, and Uber and Lyft haven’t stepped up to change that in any meaningful way. Only 19 percent of Americans in rural areas use ride-hailing apps, compared to 45 percent in urban areas and 40 percent in suburban areas.31 The one Uber driver in Haines, Alaska, which has a population of under 1,500 people, was repeatedly booted from the app as she wasn’t logging enough rides. Also, some rural areas have not been thoroughly mapped by Google, which Uber depends on, so potential riders couldn’t always mark their pickup location. Poor internet coverage also impeded pickups.32
Autonomous vehicles, if they come to fruition, will likely underserve rural communities for similar reasons. Companies will operate such technology where they can make the most trips for the highest returns. While some residents may be able to pay for access, those who arguably need it the most will once again be left behind. It strains credulity to think that massive corporations would voluntarily commit expensive assets to service people with the least ability to pay, rather than young white professionals in gentrifying parts of large cities.
Rural infrastructure will also require massive investments to prepare for the safe proliferation of autonomous vehicles, which require high-speed broadband capacity and sensors in pretty much everything around them: signs, telephone poles, curbs, bridges, bicycles. Complicating the situation further, self-driving cars are still unable to navigate snow, rain, or heavy weather.33
Such an overhaul doesn’t just happen. Google’s controversial Sidewalk Labs experiment on the Toronto waterfront is an attempt to build a geographically contained version of this future. But without immense regional and federal support, such a model would likely be hard to transplant to a town of a few thousand people. In an age of austerity and the anticipated reduction in gas taxes from electrification, it’s unclear how such country-wide projects would be funded. Remote and rural communities have been deprived of meaningful public investment for decades; to imagine this trend would change with next-generation vehicles relies on truly magical thinking.34
Even if autonomous vehicles are introduced in rural areas with little delay, it remains likely that such advances will justify and enable even more driving. Like with ride-hailing, the owners of the service won’t settle for providing only short mile-long trips when they can instead undermine the competition and then fill the void. Existing rural or transit routes could well be extinguished by subsidized ride-hailing and autonomous vehicles.
These are not problems that autonomous vehicle boosters acknowledge or address in any meaningful way. Rather, the consensus appears to be that self-driving cars will have entirely positive impacts on rural residents, especially for those in most need of transportation. That ignores the lacklustre experience of ride-hailing services in rural areas, and the profit imperatives of massive autonomous vehicle companies that will likely undermine the provision of adequate mobility for low-income seniors and people with disabilities. The response can’t be to hope and pray that Silicon Valley decides to do the right thing. It’s to recognize the benefits that rural transit already brings, and to commit to ensuring universal, free access.
Many rural communities do have some semblance of a transit system. In 2015, a total of 1,334 agencies across the U.S. provided service in such areas, while another 270 urban agencies extended their service into rural regions.35 That gave 82 percent of counties in the U.S. rural transit service, up from 78 percent in 2011. Most are demand-response, meaning they are driven when summoned, more like a cab than a conventional bus. But one-third of U.S. rural transit providers offer fixed-route service: a guaranteed trip from a certain place at a specific time of day. That provides access to transit to 70 percent of rural residents in the U.S., including seniors, people with disabilities, youth, low-income households, and women, trans, and gender non-conforming people.
But that still leaves a large chunk of the country without public transportation service. It’s no surprise that many people drive enormous distances to get where they need to go. Almost one-third of rural residents commute a half-hour each way to work; 4 percent travel ninety minutes.36
Transit service that does exist in rural areas has been described by Aubrey Byron of the organization Strong Towns as “more of a spot treatment for the small number of individuals who are aware of the service, qualify for waived fees, and fall within the service area.”37 Service tends to be intermittent, available only a few times a week. Only 0.5 percent of rural resi dents use transit to get to work, and 27 percent (compared to 73 percent of urban residents) are able to get to a grocery store by transit.38 Even when transit service is available, cultural norms can contribute to a perceived need to drive; 92 percent of trips taken by rural individuals over the age of 65 are by automobile.39
Here’s how Scott Bogren of the Community Transportation Association of America described it in the late 1990s:
The past two decades have seen many forms of public transportation virtually abandon rural areas. Small-town residents often travel hundreds of miles just to access the nearest airport; intercity bus service is a shell of its former self; taxi service is scant and expensive; and passenger rail service often streaks through the countryside in the middle of the night.40
Many rural transit services suffer from a lack of coordination and networking caused by jurisdictional limitations. At least one-quarter of the U.S. lacks public transit to travel to an adjacent county or state. As one report describes the process: “passengers have to ride to the boundary, disembark, and try to connect with another service.”41 The inconvenience of potentially being stranded or having to wait long periods for a transfer can further deter usage. A 2001 U.S. Department of Agriculture report described the situation as “primarily local in nature and, largely … not connected to the nation’s passenger service network.”42
Conditions only become worse in periods of fiscal crisis. The loss of funding associated with the 2019 U.S. government shutdown led rural and small-town transit agencies to cut service hours and in some cases consider ending service permanently.43 Already underwhelming service only gets worse under such pressures.
Due to austerity and privatization, many regions have lost intercity bus service in recent years. Between 1970 and 2005, scheduled and regular route intercity bus ridership in the U.S. declined from 130 million passengers a year to only 40 million, with the number of communities served with daily intercity bus service plummeting from 23,000 in 1965 to 4,500 in 2005.44
Writing about his home state of Oregon in 2019, transit planner Jarrett Walker reminisced about the bus services that successfully linked small towns with Portland in the 1970s. “Almost all of those services are gone,” he wrote. “Private intercity bus companies, including new players like Megabus, stick to linking big cities. All that remains is a minimal state-funded service called Point, one or two trips a day, mostly to feed Amtrak.”45
Conditions are no better in Canada. After over seventy years of affordable service in rural areas, Canada’s Saskatchewan Transportation Company was shut down in 2017 by the provincial government. The move was widely criticized for its disproportionate impacts on Indigenous women, people with disabilities, and seniors.46
Connie Deiter, an Indigenous woman living in Regina, filed a complaint with the provincial human rights commission alleging that the closure discriminated against her and other Indigenous women who can’t afford to drive. “If you’re poor, you don’t have access to a vehicle,” she said; “a lot of our people don’t, the only option is to hitchhike and that’s already happening.”47
Mental health counsellor Marlene Bear said that she had witnessed considerably more hitchhiking since the closure of the STC, fearing that the situation in Saskatchewan may turn into a new Highway of Tears—a 450-mile stretch of highway in northern British Columbia where many Indigenous women have gone missing or been found murdered.48
A July 2018 survey of fifty-six staff members of domestic abuse shelters in Saskatchewan showed that women are finding it even more difficult to access help; 70 percent of workers reported that clients had hitchhiked to get to or from a shelter.49 People with disabilities have also voiced serious concerns with the closure of the bus service, since private ride options do not guarantee wheelchair-accessible service.50 In late 2017, a spokesperson for the Saskatchewan government told the CBC that “when we made the decision to wind up STC, we were confident that the private sector would recognize opportunities to provide services where demand warranted.”51 However, a research paper published by a University of Regina business administration student two years after the STC’s closure indicated that the private sector had not stepped up to fill the gap, instead opting to focus on the busiest and more profitable corridor.52
In November 2018, private intercity bus operator Greyhound Canada pulled out of Western Canada (with the lone exception of a north-south route between Vancouver and Seattle), further exacerbating lack of access for marginalized communities. The company also cancelled its transit contract with Thompson, leaving the city of almost 14,000 people without public transit service.53 In an interview with Global News, Grand Chief Arlen Dumas of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs said about Indigenous people travelling from northern Manitoba: “It is already well documented that our citizens have to ride the bus for hours, some longer than 14 hours, in order to see a doctor. How will they get access to adequate health care now?”54 Only weeks earlier, a fifty-eight-year-old Indigenous man died on an intercity bus from northern Manitoba to an appointment in Winnipeg.55 In October 2019, Amalgamated Transit Union Canada published a radio documentary paired with a petition calling for the “establishment of a national public intercity transit service as part of a Green New Deal for social, economic and environmental justice and tangible reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.”56
“We call upon all governments to ensure that adequate plans and funding are put into place for safe and affordable transit and transportation services and infrastructure for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people living in remote or rural communities. Transportation should be sufficient and readily available to Indigenous communities, and in towns and cities located in all of the provinces and territories in Canada.”
—National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada),
Calls for Justice for All Governments:
Human Security, 4.8
Passenger rail—Amtrak in the U.S., VIA Rail in Canada—has also undergone decades of stagnation and decline. Arguably the greatest issue for both services is that they are forced to share tracks with freight transportation, which physically pushes passenger rail to the side to wait, sometimes for hours. A 2015 background paper for the Government of Canada concluded that the need to share tracks “severely limits [VIA Rail’s] capacity to deliver efficient and timely passenger rail service to the fullest potential, undermining VIA Rail’s ability to fulfill its mandate.”57 About 97 percent of Amtrak’s tracks are owned by other entities, making it subject to the other companies’ schedules.58 Unsurprisingly, this results in unpredictable scheduling outside of Amtrak’s main Northeast Corridor.
As journalist Aaron Gordon has reported, catching an Amtrak train between Chicago and Cleveland has become near impossible, despite the fixes being simple: upgrading tracks, running more trains, giving passenger rail priority over freight. As a result of failure by government to prioritize passenger rail, Elon Musk’s entirely theoretical Hyperloop proposal is being celebrated as an alternative between the cities, making these passenger rail improvements even less likely due to political distraction.59
High-speed rail, defined as rail transportation that runs at over 125 miles per hour, continues to be an elusive goal. China, Spain, and Japan are often looked to as inspiration for the mode, which can compete with short-haul air travel.60 But governments are deterred by the costs; it would cost an estimated $150 billion over thirty years to upgrade Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor for high-speed rail.61
California has considered a high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco since the mid-1990s, and the plan was approved by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008. But the project has faced continued delays, ballooning costs, and accusations of mismanagement; in early 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom effectively cancelled it, citing high costs, while keeping a 171-mile line from Merced to Bakersfield.62 Only days later, Trump’s Department of Transportation pulled almost $1 billion in funding for the line, adding that it was seeking to recoup the total of $2.5 billion for the “now-defunct project.”63
Another plan by Brightline, owned by Richard Branson’s Virgin, to build a high-speed project between Las Vegas and Southern California was delayed by two years after it didn’t receive abatements for sales and property taxes.64 Since 1970, some twenty-two studies have been conducted in Canada into the possibility of high-speed rail in Ontario and Quebec without anything coming to fruition.65
As with transit service to suburban areas, there is nothing inherent about poor transportation options in rural counties and small towns. There are unique limitations to each area, of course: farmers and construction workers will continue to require pickup trucks to haul supplies (although much of that driving could likely be curtailed if production and distribution of equipment and supplies was centrally coordinated by public bodies). But publicly owned and operated transit can provide free, reliable, and accessible transportation to residents, regardless of population size and density. All that is required—you may be detecting a theme by now—is committed funding and planning from all levels of government.
Between 2007 and 2015, small-town and rural public transit ridership in the U.S. increased by 8.6 percent on a per capita basis.66 There’s a real desire for better transit in rural areas and small towns. A 2010 poll found that 79 percent of rural voters agreed with the statement: “The United States would benefit from an expanded and improved transportation system, such as rail and buses.”67 Funding such services would help create good long-term jobs in areas currently undermined by natural resource boom and busts and continued urbanization.
As with any jurisdiction, transit planning has to be done in close collaboration with the community. A 2017 profile by American Prospect of a van-based public transit system in Plainview, Nebraska—population 1,200—emphasized that municipal officials and related organizations surveyed residents to find out what improvements they needed, with public transit emerging as a priority.68
Good news stories are emerging, as new rural transit networks are regularly popping up. In Alberta, the County of Grande Prairie is providing bus service to and from nearby towns, while Red Deer established a regional transit service with Innisfail (population 8,000) and Penhold (population 3,200).69 Montana increased its rural transit systems from nine in 2008 to close to forty in 2015 through partnering with federal and local governments.70 North Central Montana Transit, founded in 2009, offers daily fixed-route service for a one dollar per trip between Havre, nearby reservations, and small towns. The service stops at many small towns along the intercity routes, and uses biodiesel to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.71 By 2011, it was averaging 1,600 rides a month, far exceeding its projection of 250. A math instructor at a college said about the service: “Not only do I save around a hundred dollars a week taking the bus, but I get to know other people in the community whom I might not otherwise have met.”72
Since 2017, the BC government has funded an intercity bus service through provincial Crown corporation BC Transit on the Highway of Tears, the notorious stretch of road that Indigenous women in Saskatchewan feared would be the province’s fate without proper transit.73 In the first year of service, five thousand people travelled throughout northern British Columbia via the Bulkley Nechako Regional Transit System.74 There are also connections to bus routes to smaller towns, all at a fraction of the cost Greyhound had charged.75 Two-thirds of the operating costs are covered by the province; the rest comes from communities and First Nations.76 Highway of Tears safety advocate Glady Radek said: “There’s always room for improvement, but I’m actually very, very happy with having our own transit system up here.”77
Tribal transit is offering invaluable service across North America. The Spokane Tribe’s Moccasin Express, for example, offers free trips multiple times a day from the reservation in Washington state to various municipalities in the area; there is also paratransit available for seniors and people with disabilities who are unable to get to the fixed-route bus stop.78
Electric buses now boast incredibly long ranges. In 2017 a Proterra model set a world record by driving 1,102 miles on a single charge. In fact, long intercity trips are almost ideal for electric buses, as regular and somewhat lengthy stops allow for charging. There is no technological question remaining about the viability of passenger rail, either. Building up a network of reliable, free trains with dedicated tracks may come with a high upfront capital cost, but it would bring enormous benefits for the climate, economic equality, accessibility, and more. Ideally, these advances should be led by federal and state or provincial governments in order to maximize coordination and improve seamless transfers between services.
But rural transit tends to be expensive for small munici palities to cover, especially if there isn’t a large ridership from the get-go. Take the example of Iqaluit, the capital of the Northern territory of Nunavut with a population of 7,740: it ran a transit system in the early 2000s that transported an average of twenty-eight people per day, but shut it down due to the $150,000-per-year cost.79 Of course, $150,000 isn’t much of an expense for cities to incur—it’s the price of a manager or two. But the expense can be prohibitive for a town, especially if the system hasn’t existed for long enough to build up a constituency of ridership. However, in late 2019 the mayor of Iqaluit said its new transportation master plan would hopefully include a public bus system, with a councillor adding: “Some form of public transportation needs to be undertaken to alleviate congestion and provide alternatives to people in town.”80
A somewhat clueless article published by Grist in 2014 is an example of this funding predicament. Titled “Even Rural America Can Have Good Public Transportation,” the piece detailed the shockingly efficient bus system of the 32,000- person region of Aspen, Colorado, including stops within walking distance, frequent service, and buses equipped with bike racks.81 But as commenters pointed out, Aspen, home of a legendary ski resort, is a very wealthy area and not at all representative of most rural and small towns.
“I live in a poor rural community,” an online commenter wrote. “We can’t afford good schools, our health care facilities are small and in danger of closing, jobs have always been scarce. How can we fund mass transit?” It was a legitimate point. But it also exemplified the foundational issue keeping rural areas from having quality transit: strong and consistent funding. It’s not hyperbolic to suggest that many rural areas across the country could have Aspen-like transit service. Municipalities shouldn’t be forced to rely on uneven sources of revenue like property taxes and fares. Rather, as we will explore further in part three, they should be guaranteed funding through income and wealth taxes administered at all levels of government.
Rural areas can attain autonomy for their residents without relying on the whims of ride-hailing companies that might hike fares or go bankrupt next week, building up a public service that people of all ages and abilities can use. So-called micromobility, such as Uber’s attempts to replace transit service in small towns, will never be an affordable and environmentally responsible means to fill the gaps. Transit technologies, in contrast, are immediately deployable and accessible to all. There is nothing speculative or imagined about their potential successes. They only require sustained political support and an awareness of what riders require: a sense of comfort, affordability, and reliability. Getting more people into legitimately shared vehicles, owned and operated by a public service, is a critical first step to cutting greenhouse gases, improving equity and accessibility, and allowing communities to plan in smarter, more predictable ways.
These services can also be a gateway into a broader low-carbon transition. Rural areas are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change—and offering transportation alternatives is a tangible example of how society can be run differently and more beneficially for all.82 That’s even more needed because of the rapidly aging population, with the number of Americans ages 65 and older expected to almost double by 2060 and the desire for rural seniors to “age in place.”83 Participatory budgeting and more town-hall-style approaches can be powerful tools in this process.84
This transformation will not happen overnight. Driving is a cultural foundation of our society, which will take years to change. It can be a challenge to get small-town residents out of their cars as they—often correctly—associate driving with freedom, employment, and ability to socialize. But such norms can be shifted over time, especially if public transportation is provided in a way that feels community-based and predictable enough to schedule your life around.
That doesn’t have to only mean full-length buses either: in small rural areas, public transportation can look like minibuses or even minivans. The key is that such vehicles are publicly owned and operated by professional drivers, through a service that prioritizes service for all. A vision of public transportation that encompasses rural areas and small towns is a far more powerful vision of mobility justice and social transformation, one that recognizes existing conditions rather than trying to cram everything into a singular model of urban transit.
Rural transit is only the first step to a more fundamental transformation of space and relations that will decommodify housing and create more equitable and just rural communities. But establishing better transit, now, is a key tool in that process. After all, low-income people living in rural areas need to be able to catch a bus or train to get to a town council meeting or a protest before bigger picture conditions will change. The path forward isn’t easy, but it is immensely doable and required. Rural and small-town residents are vital members of society, fully deserving of viable transportation services that improve their access to public services, reduce loneliness and isolation, and create good unionized jobs.