Abstract: Rural communities continue to face transportation challenges that limit access to healthcare, employment, education, and essential services. These challenges are influenced by limited transit systems, geographic dispersion, and operational constraints faced by local transit providers. Qualitative data from 60 interviews with rural community members and local transit providers from three states are analyzed to identify mobility barriers, service limitations, and differences in stakeholder responses.  The interviews revealed gaps in service awareness, current service limitations, and the role of informal community networks in meeting mobility needs. The interviews also revealed personal consequences of limited or unreliable transit service.

As a potential way to improve transit, flexible routing of microtransit vehicles was explored. The approach combines user and provider perspectives. Conflicting goals of minimizing unserved ride requests, passenger travel time, and operational costs are combined in different priority scenarios. Three test locations of varying population density provide insights into the relative success in addressing the varied stakeholder goals.