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By Smart Growth America, July 27, 2023
Why should we invest in multimodal transportation for American rural communities and small towns?
A common misconception about active and multi-modal transportation investments to support walking, biking, rolling, and using public transit is that the demand for these initiatives is limited to urban communities, but recent studies have shown that people in rural areas are just as likely to walk to places as in urban areas if the options are safe and accessible. Our newly released report, An Active Roadmap: Best Practices in Rural Mobility breaks down this myth and others as we dive into the diversity of American rural communities and small towns to discuss rural transportation needs and challenges along with success stories from rural and small town communities across the country.
According to the US Census, about 60 million people, or one in five individuals, live in rural America representing 97% of America’s land mass and contributing to 10% of the country’s gross domestic product. The perception of what a rural area is varies extensively, but for many, what comes to mind is a landscape consisting of farms, rolling foothills, and shuttered factories, inhabited by predominantly white communities.
The truth is that rural areas are as diverse as they are vast in terms of landscape, communities, and people with almost 22% of the rural population identifying as non-white. The key point is that there is no one all-encompassing definition of rural. The diverse history, cultures, and needs of rural communities vary from place to place—while rural areas are different from suburban and urban areas, they’re different from other rural areas too. This diversity means that rural communities are on different paths; some communities have continued to thrive while improving their quality of life and experiencing stable or growing economies, while others have witnessed a long and slow decline.
In this report, we explore the different ways that rural communities can adapt to thrive in a changing America, with a primary focus on active and multimodal modes of transportation as a tool. The presumption that living in a rural area inevitably means being dependent on a personal vehicle and driving long distances to access essential services negates the identities, experiences, and needs of the people in these complex and diverse communities. The more than 1 million rural American households without cars face unique barriers as alternate modes are not always accessible or affordable. Rural non-drivers—including older adults, low-income individuals, school-aged children, and people with disabilities—need independent mobility options to take advantage of social and economic opportunities.
What does that look like in day-to-day life? Through various studies, we’ve known for a couple of decades that older adults who no longer drive make 15% fewer trips to the doctor, 59% fewer trips to shop or eat out, and 65% fewer trips to visit friends and family, than drivers of the same age. And, recent studies have shown that people in rural areas are just as likely to walk to places for leisure and transportation as those located in urban areas if the options are safe and accessible. But, rural areas face an increased risk of traffic death compared to their urban counterparts—while close to 19% of the US population lives in rural areas, they account for 49% of all traffic deaths.
It is necessary to re-evaluate outdated understandings of rural America to bridge these gaps, strengthen rural economies, and implement safer, sustainable, and equitable transportation networks and services for these communities.
The report is organized into four distinct parts –
Part 1: What is rural? Defining rural typologies.
In Part 1, we introduce seven rural typologies—ways to identify and describe similarities and differences across diverse rural communities. It is important to note that these typologies are not mutually exclusive, as rural communities may exhibit characteristics of more than one typology, but understanding a community’s relevant typologies can facilitate the implementation of strategies that may be more likely to succeed based on that community’s unique needs and challenges.
Part 2: What are the unique needs and challenges of rural communities?
In Part 2, we present a data synthesis and interpretation of key indicators that uniquely affect rural America, including demographics, economy, public health, travel patterns, and mode choices. We also revisit some of the common questions and popular notions about rural America using recent studies and literature to fact-check if they still stand true, including healthier living environments, driving trip distances, transit feasibility, and access to parks and nature.
Part 3: How can active and multimodal transportation be encouraged in rural America? Strategies for success.
In Part 3, we present strategies to address the issues identified in Part 2. These strategies for success are presented alongside success stories from rural communities across the country that have successfully implemented transportation planning, complete streets, and land use approaches to make their communities activity-friendly and increasingly accessible by walking, biking, rolling, and using transit.
Part 4: How can your rural community improve? The roadmap and takeaways.
The lessons, findings, and outcomes from the previous parts of the report informed the recommendations in this section. In Part 4, we discuss particular actionable steps to build more activity-friendly communities in rural America. Also included in this section are success stories focused on formulating strong visions, thoughtful community engagement, and the strength of building strong partnerships locally and regionally.
Key takeaway: Strategic transportation investments and improvements are important for building sustainable and resilient rural communities for people to thrive, not just survive. There is a demonstrated need to support and equip rural communities with tools to design transportation systems that meet the needs of their residents, as directly and cost-effectively as possible, now and in the future.
What is rural? Defining rural typologies.
There is no one all-encompassing definition of rural. The US government has at least 15 different official definitions of the word rural, including 11 at the Agriculture Department alone. The diverse history, cultures, and needs of people that make up rural communities vary from place to place—rural areas are different from suburban and urban areas and different from other rural areas. Understanding these differences is essential to support evidence-based decision-making at the local, state, and federal levels.
Rural areas are as diverse as they are vast in terms of landscape, communities, and people. In addition to representing 97% of America’s land mass and contributing to 10% of the country’s gross domestic product, almost 22% of the rural population identifies as non-white.
As discussed in the section on community health outcomes, the relatively wider open spaces in rural communities don’t necessarily equate to improved health outcomes overall. In fact, rural areas face a number of health challenges.
The section on trip distance and access to services explains how living in a rural area doesn’t necessarily mean longer driving trips, and that in fact there are similarities between some urban and rural areas. Although, longer trips have the potential to create much greater burdens on rural Americans with loss of services.
Although transit is sometimes thought of as an urban solution, the transit availability section shows not only that there is demand for transit in rural areas but also that transit can be a feasible and affordable option for these areas.
As the section on access to recreation and parks shows, proximity to natural areas is not the same thing as access. Especially for those rural residents without access to a car, visiting parks and recreation areas can be a challenge, even when those areas are relatively nearby.
What are the unique needs and challenges of rural communities?
Rural communities are often thought of as opposites to urban areas when it comes to economies, demographics, culture, and other factors. While there cultural differences across US communities do exist, dividing our nation into such a binary has immediate, lived consequences for people in all corners of America. It is necessary to re-evaluate outdated understandings of rural America to bridge the gaps, strengthen rural economies, and implement safer, sustainable, and equitable transportation networks, and services for these communities.
Read more below about the unique needs and challenges of rural communities, addressing misconceptions, and setting the stage for the strategies that can strengthen them.
Rural communities are home to more people over the age of 65 than urban communities (see Figure 1), and studies show that the share of older adults may continue to grow in the next few decades. An analysis by the Urban Institute suggests that by 2040, 25% of households will be 65 years or older in rural communities, compared to only 20% in urban areas. As more older adults continue to live in rural places, active transportation, and transit options can allow more older Americans to maintain their independence without relying on a personal vehicle.
Rural counties also have higher proportions of people with disabilities. According to the CDC, about one in three adults in rural communities live with a disability, compared to one in four in the US overall.
As the decades have passed, communities once classified as rural have graduated to urban areas as their populations and local economies grew. Successive US Census efforts have reclassified many of these locations as urban over the decades, despite these communities often having more in common with rural places than with cities. Due to the reclassifications, the 2020 Census showed a population loss for rural areas, hitting an all-time low of 14% of the total US population. Of those areas still classified as rural in the 2020 Census, some are growing and thriving, but many others are disadvantaged and experiencing a population decrease.
These communities are often characterized by a history of waning industry such as mining, logging, farming, nuclear, or other resource-based activities. When these industries decrease, the population and economy lost are difficult to recover. Rural areas in decrease appear to be concentrated in the Great Plains, Appalachia, the Deep South, and other areas where little replacement industry has developed. Conversely, rural areas in the Mountain West, West, and other recreation-oriented areas nationwide have grown and thrived.
Still, numerous rural communities throughout the country have shown that they can diversify their job base, attract new residents, and thrive once more.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has also had an immediate impact that appears to have at least initially reversed the overall rural decrease shown in the 2020 Census. According to the Census Bureau, between April 2020 and July 2021, the US rural population grew by 77,000 people. While this is encouraging on the whole, the majority of this gain is attributed to migration into high-amenity recreational (gateway) and retirement, second-home rural communities. Rural areas without these amenities continue to lose population. It is still too early to tell if this trend will continue or revert to previous trends over time.
There is a relatively common assumption that rural communities enjoy a healthier living environment than urban areas. Rural America is often portrayed as having fresher air, fresher food, and nearby access to the natural environment for recreational and physical activities. While these can be true in some rural communities and small towns, those factors don’t necessarily make rural Americans healthier than their urban counterparts.
Access to healthcare
Accessing health care can be difficult because, on average, rural residents have lower incomes and lower rates of health insurance compared with their urban counterparts, and they live farther away from health care resources. In 2017, on average, US residents traveled 9.9 miles one way for medical/dental care, but rural residents traveled more than twice the distance for care than urban residents—8.1 miles for urban residents and 17.8 miles for rural residents.
Rural Americans are more likely to die from heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease, and stroke than their urban counterparts. Access to health care or emergency services can be the difference between life and death. Longer travel distances may mean more people skip preventative care like routine cancer screenings that can help address risks before they become more dangerous.
Between 2005 and 2014, nearly 200 rural hospitals across the nation closed, and the financial viability of remaining rural facilities is of ongoing concern. This makes getting to a health center for a job (the largest national employment sector with 20 million employees nationwide) or for medical care an increasingly longer trip.
This reduction in services and lack of convenient access to them doesn’t impact all rural residents equally. There are significant disparities by race and income level. For example, at the peak of the Omicron wave during the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus killed Black Americans in rural areas at a rate roughly 34% higher than white Americans.
Obesity
It has been estimated that the prevalence of obesity is approximately 6.2 times higher in rural than in urban America.Okobi, O.E., Ajayi, O.O., Okobi, T.J., Anaya, I.C., Fasehun, O.O., Diala, C.S., … & Okobi, R.K. (2021). The Burden of Obesity in the Rural Adult Population of America. Cureus, 13(6). doi: 10.7759/cureus.15770 The growing prevalence of obesity in rural communities makes improving opportunities for daily physical activity through active transportation a key opportunity to increase physical activity as well as access to healthy foods—two components found in the built environment that influence obesity (see Figure 2).
Rural residents are less likely to meet federal physical activity guidelines. In 2017, only one in four (25.3%) urban residents and one in five (19.6%) rural residents met the combined aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity guidelines. According to the 2016–2017 National Health Interview Survey, 17.9% of rural Black adults met physical activity guidelines, compared with 27.8% of urban white adults. Regionally, states in the South (27.5%) had the highest prevalence of physical inactivity, followed by the Midwest (25.2%), Northeast (24.7%), and West (21.0%). Rural areas may lack access to the types of places and infrastructure that encourage residents to walk and be active, like parks and sidewalks.Whitfield, G.P., Carlson, S.A., Ussery, E.N., Watson, K.B., Berrigan, D., & Fulton, J.E. National-level environmental perceptions and walking among urban and rural residents: Informing surveillance of walkability. Prev Med, 123:101-108. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2019.03.019.
Additionally, the obesity rate for rural children ages 2 to 18 is 22%, compared to 17% for urban children. Transportation options for children, especially school buses, vans, and ride-shares scheduled for students in after-school activities, can potentially expand opportunities for rural children living in remote areas to take advantage of after-school physical activity programs.
Other health concerns
According to the CDC, rural Americans tend to have higher rates of cigarette smoking and high blood pressure, report less leisure-time physical activity, and lower seat belt use. Unintentional injury deaths are also 50% higher in rural areas than in urban areas, partly due to greater risk of death from motor vehicle crashes. When it comes to some of these disparities, increasing access to physical activity in rural areas would help create a built environment that would encourage daily physical activity.
Tribal and Native American communities face particular challenges to overall community health as a result of disruptions to traditional ways of life, loss of land, and government policies that have resulted in historical trauma. These factors contribute to higher rates of chronic disease and underlying risk factors, such as obesity and tobacco use.
While rural communities play a major role in the country’s food production, unfortunately, they experience overwhelming levels of food insecurity and hunger with 87% of the nation’s food-insecure counties being rural. These areas are called “food deserts” (i.e., areas with limited access to fresh, affordable foods). Many rural areas don’t have a population base large enough to support a grocery store that stocks a variety of affordable and healthy food, but limited transportation connectivity also makes it a requirement to own a car or personal vehicle to get to the nearest town to access healthier food options adding financial burden.
Long car trips aren’t a part of daily life for all rural residents. More than 1 million rural American households without cars face unique barriers as alternate modes are not always accessible or affordable. And for households with cars, research from Transportation for America and Third Way finds that households in rural areas and urban areas alike are driving significantly farther per trip on average as of 2017 than they were in 2001 to accomplish their commutes and daily tasks, 12 percent and 10 percent farther, respectively. Trip distances have increased across all types of trip destinations, especially for work and shopping. Most people wouldn’t choose to drive farther than they did a decade ago for the same basic trips, but development patterns in much of the country, and some loss of services in rural communities are driving this trend. And while these trends look similar across rural and urban areas, longer trips have the potential to create much greater burdens on rural Americans, negatively impacting their economic opportunities, quality of life, and healthcare access.
Many rural communities today are heavily reliant on just a few employers and medical facilities that serve a large share of the dispersed population. If any of those employers and institutions consolidate, close, or relocate farther from housing, residents may not have any other options, forcing them to take longer and more costly trips at best, or lose access to that work or service altogether.
Small and rural towns have great potential for creating viable networks that serve residents and visitors. In many rural communities, residents live long distances from services, © 2025 Smart Growth America. All rights reserved Site By3Lane MarketingRelated News
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