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Rural Resources Q & A

The Rural Assistance Center provides health and human services information for rural America out of the Center for Rural Health at the University of North Carolina.

The following Questions & Answers are from the Rural Assistance Center:

Question: What transportation services can rural communities provide for people with disabilities?

Answer: Access to transportation is a major issue for people with disabilities living in rural areas. Some options that can increase transit options for people with disabilities include flexroutes, which allow for fixed transit routes to add on additional stops as needed, and voucher programs, which allow riders to decide who drives them, where and when. To learn about flexroutes, see the Handbook for Rural Flexroute Implementation. To learn about voucher programs, see Making Transportation Work for People with Disabilities in Rural America: The Supported Volunteer Rural Transportation Voucher Program and the Great Plains Rural Initiative on Transportation (GRIT).

By combining transportation services to different special populations as well as the general public, people can be served by routes that are close to where they live rather than routes funded by the agency that serves them. Communities may want to explore the use of vehicles, such as school buses, that are only used part time to provide services for people with disabilities. Strategies that partner transit providers with volunteer or paid individual drivers to provide needed transit are another option to consider. Some issues that should be addressed include appropriate driver training and liability issues. For more information, see Easter Seals' Project ACTION (Accessible Community Transportation in Our Nation) and APRIL's Rural Transportation .

Question: What federal agencies support human service transportation projects in rural areas?

Answer: There are several federal agencies that fund human service transportation projects. These are the Department of Education's Office of Special Education & Rehabilitative Services; the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Aging, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration, and Office of Disability Employment Policy; the Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration; and the Social Security Administration Disability Programs. Also, the federal departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Veterans Administration, and the National Council on Disabilities have programs to support transportation projects.

For more information about these agencies and their projects a new federal interagency called United We Ride has been developed to coordinate the nine federal departments (62 agencies) that provide funding in support of human services transportation.

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