Transportation for America By Transportation for America September 9, 2021
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.
View the full article: T4America.org