New Center to Address Rural and Small Urban Transit Issues

Demand for transportation continues to grow in large and small municipalities and in the rural areas throughout the country. Mobility is a core requirement for quality of life. It is essential for people to work, shop, socialize, participate in the political process, worship, or be involved with numerous life enriching activities. Further, there are significant problems in the mobility of the disadvantaged. To them, public transportation is literally their lifeline to society.

Large metropolitan areas of the United States have captured much of the public transportation attention and funding while proportionately less attention has been paid to rural areas and small urban centers. The Small Urban & Rural Transit Center (SURTC) at North Dakota State University has been initiated to help address this inequity. SURTC is a research program within the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute.

SURTC was developed to conduct research, design educational programs, and coordinate training needs for transit systems in the small urban and rural areas. The new program is housed within the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute (UGPTI) at NDSU. There are a number of benefits of SURTC being at UGPTI. First, UGPTI has research staff that have a history transit research (for a list of these publications see www.surtc.org). Second, SURTC will partner with other research programs in UGPTI including the Advanced Traffic Analysis Center, TEL8, and the Mountain-Plains Consortium.

Public transportation has the ability to make a significant contribution to the economy and the quality of life. SURTC will provide the knowledge and train human capital that is necessary for transit to realize that opportunity.