Public transit in rural communities is extremely inefficient — this data tells us how to change that

[Disclosure: This article is originally from Via, republished on Cities Today with permission. Via provides an on-demand microtransit platform to transit agencies.]

Fixed route public transportation services have a very low utilisation rate — measured by passenger trips per revenue-hour — in rural areas. Here’s how to give those numbers a boost in your town.

Via analysed 2019 transportation utilisation data from the National Transit Database (NTD) of all bus services in the country, and pinpointed some key findings. Firstly, of all 1,182 bus networks provided by transportation agencies, 87 percent of the 200 least-productive bus networks are located in rural counties with populations lower than 50,000 residents.