FEBRUARY 2022

Provincial/Territorial/Federal
Government Summary
Navigating Rural: Place Based
Transit Solutions for Rural Canada
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Transit and mobility are fundamental to all communities.
However, despite the importance of transit and the increase
in available options, rural communities can struggle to
initiate and maintain sustainable transit services. While there
is some understanding of why this is generally, the existing
information lacks an understanding of the influence of place
– the unique combinations of economic, socio-cultural,
and environmental factors - on rural transit systems. This
knowledge gap is a critical challenge to policy and program
design and decision making.
The goal of this project was to use place to assess and better
understand what we know about rural transit. The project’s
objectives were to:

• Where are the gaps? There is a lack of understanding
of differences across rural communities. There is an
uneven understanding of different regions across Canada.
There is a lack of peer-reviewed literature and granular
case studies. Little is known about transit in remote
communities.
Barriers to Rural Transit
We identified seven barriers:
- Demographic factors and ridership
- Sociocultural aspects of transit
- Natural and built environment
- Local cost of operation and potential
sources of revenue

1) Compile a database of existing rural transit and mobility
literature, identifying gaps within our knowledge;

- Local governance

2) Create a typology of barriers impacting rural communities;

- External funding

3) Explore existing transit support programs to understand
gaps and challenges;
4) Identify and explore innovative rural solutions;
5) Clearly identify the gaps within our knowledge base, data,
and existing support programs; and

- Local economic structure

It is critical that upper levels of government understand
that these barriers do not impact all places in the same
way. Although details of the impact of place are minimal,
developing flexible policy and programs can help respond to
the range of local settings and needs.

6) Conduct a place-based analysis to understand how
barriers are influenced by place.

Making Support Programs Accessible

KEY FINDINGS

We identified overarching challenges that rural communities
face in accessing existing support programs:

Rural Transit Literature
• What do we know? There are high level and general
guiding documents that discuss rural generally, largely
treating it uniformly. There are also case studies primarily
from Ontario and British Columbia, with an emphasis on
larger rural communities that are urban-adjacent.

• Accessing program information: The funding landscape
is complex. There is a lack of easily accessible information
with respect to active programs, eligibility criteria, and
deadlines. This is a challenge for rural local governments
with limited capacity and may discourage pursuit of rural
transit funding.

• Rural considerations within program design: Of the
existing transit funding programs, there is a lack of
explicit consideration for rural realities and needs.
As the majority of funding programs are aimed at
supporting traditional urban transit systems, rural areas
face a disadvantage in terms of equal access to transit
funding that responds to the unique realities and needs
of rural areas.
• Eligible expenses: What is needed locally should match
what is being offered via funding programs. Rural
municipalities have cited operational costs as being
the most imperative for operating a sustainable transit
service, even though capital funding is more common.
• Capacity of the applicant: Oftentimes, rural local
governments have fewer human and financial resources.
Funding programs typically do not account for the
fact that rural planners – if a planner exists at all - are
typically responsible for all planning, not just transit,
and may lack subject specific expertise.
Recommendation: make funding for rural transit more
locally-responsive. This can include: making information
more accessible; allowing for operational expenses to be
eligible; and rural focused client services to assist lower
capacity communities in planning and applications.
What is the Influence of Place?
The influence of place on rural transit plays out on
three levels:
1) Macro: barriers experienced generally and uniformly
by all rural communities. This level is the most well
understood in the literature, including factors like low
population density and long distances.
2) Meso: barriers experienced over large regions or types
of communities based on select characteristics of place.
This level is unevenly understood in the literature, with
certain trends better understood than others, such as
the influence of commuter patterns on transit systems
in urban adjacent communities.
3) Micro: barriers experienced by rural communities that
based on a unique combination of place characteristics.
This level is the most challenging to understand due
to the range of factors. Factors can include economic
structure (single industry, seasonality), demographics,
and remoteness.

It is critical to understand the influences of place in order
to create flexible policy and programs to target and
support the range of rural needs and contexts.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
For Policies and Programs
• Recognize existing blind spots. Policies and programs
based on the existing knowledge base are limited and
unable to account for rural diversity, particularly remote
communities. The dominance of specific regions,
community types, and transit system types leaves out
experiences, considerations, and opportunities relevant to
other types of rural communities.
• Applying a rural lens (rural considerations) can help
in development of program and policy, but should
recognize the impact of data and information gaps.
• Flexibility is required in rural transportation policies
and program to ensure diverse rural transit types are
supported, both within a community and between
communities.
Across the Board
• Change perceptions of existing or potential users,
making transit a viable and socially desirable option.
• Recognize the full benefits of transit systems, going
beyond the cost to operate and return on investment
and recognizing the impact to measures of wellbeing
and social, economic, and environmental co-benefits.
• Enabling sustainable rural transit requires changing
supports and increasing factors that drive success. To do
so requires a better understanding of the diversity of rural
and the influence of place.
Looking for Innovative Rural Examples?
A publicly accessible web map of existing innovative
rural examples can be found at: https://selkirk.
maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.
html?id=17c858b73a014fbfa55d712141847a73
FURTHER INFORMATION
Contact Dr. Sarah-Patricia Breen, Regional Innovation
Chair in Rural Economic Development at sbreen@selkirk.
ca Visit: https://sc.arcabc.ca/innovates_navigating_rural