Return on Investment for Rural Demand-Response Transit in Illinois

Details

• Creators:
  Sriraj, P S ; Jang, Jin ; Sreniawski, Lucas
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Illinois at Chicago. Urban Transportation Center
• Corporate Contributors:
  Illinois. Department of Transportation
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Rural areas
  • Demand responsive transportation
  • Public transit
  • Return on investment
  • Transportation planning
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States ; Illinois
• Corporate Publisher:
  University of Illinois at Chicago. Urban Transportation Center
• Abstract:
  Transit is frequently treated as a financial burden rather than a public investment, where the value is assessed primarily in terms of ridership or farebox recovery. This framing misses a wide range of external benefits, including workforce participation, healthcare access, and local economic activity. Additionally, public discourse and scholarly research around transit are often focused on urban systems, leading to policy and funding that inadequately reflect the needs of rural communities. Despite their importance, rural transit programs face underinvestment and are seldom evaluated in terms of their full economic return. In order to rectify this disparity, this report presents a state-level return-on-investment analysis of rural transit services, focusing on demand response transit systems in Illinois. Through a review of the existing literature, this report creates a conceptual framework for the benefits accrued by rural transit, formulates the conceptual model into an equation, applies the equation in various case studies, and discusses the results of the analysis.
• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/86614/dot_86614_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 513.15 KB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:148a6f6dc8779fff8c71a1047e0d2783ae3ca1277aa3767ce94b2b162a70d280107f941101cec5cf2685542ae5b6d874f26a01b7d614681f4166ff0a3df500d7