Lessons Learned from Arrowhead Transit’s IMPACT Pilot Project

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Introduction

The Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency (AEOA) is a private, non-profit organization that serves as a community action agency providing a myriad of services across ten counties in northeastern Minnesota. Among other services, AEOA provides dial-a-ride public transportation services to rural communities through Arrowhead Transit. 

In 2020, the AEOA was awarded $952,807 from the Federal Transit Administration through the Integrated Mobility Innovation (IMI) grant. The project aimed to test logistics, demand, pricing options and the sustainability of a community-based volunteer driver on-demand program, and to build an online portal and website focused on coordinating rural and urban transportation services. Their goal is to link rural residents in northeast Minnesota to multiple public transit systems using on-demand transit and private taxi providers to enhance first mile/last mile options for riders.

Program History

This demonstration project builds on a local research project supported by a grant that AEOA received from the Blandin Foundation in 2018. Through that research grant, AEOA explored the feasibility of having volunteer drivers provide first and last mile connections to rural  community members in Itasca County outside AEOA’s existing transit service area. The idea, framed as a RUBER (i.e, Rural UBER), involved establishing a call center where a mobility manager would accept and process ride requests within a certain distance from Itasca County’s existing services to connect volunteer drivers with those with transportation barriers. The lessons learned from this research project prompted the idea of implementing this type of program to a more central area. Based on this original idea AEOA applied for the IMI grant to implement this transportation system on a broader scale.

Upon being awarded the IMI grant in 2020, AEOA developed the Innovative Mobility Project for Arrowhead Community Transportation (IMPACT) to offer first and last mile connections to people outside of the current public transit service areas around the City of Duluth and the City of Hermantown in Northern Minnesota. Intended users of the service included social services agencies, health care and wellness facilities, and public transportation users, with a focus on seniors, low-income individuals, and persons with disabilities.

While the initial application identified the service area as a 60 mile radius area around the cities of Duluth and Hermantown, the project team decided that a much smaller service area would be used initially and expanded as appropriate during the demonstration period. The revised IMPACT’s service area would encircle the Cloquet, Twig Station, and Two Harbors communities and include a portion of the rural areas between these towns.

The project goals were to:

• Provide affordable first mile / last mile connections to rural residents outside the current public transit service areas. 
• Develop and deploy a customer facing website and app for trip planning and payment integration with administrative and dispatching platforms also integrated.
• Integrate strategies for payment options through the program including options for unbanked and under banked individuals and invoicing options for social services and health care providers to schedule rides without initial payment requirements.
• Develop integration between multiple modes in a single trip planning platform.

This demonstration project hoped to tackle a known barrier for many rural transportation agencies in Minnesota, which is bridging the gap between low-density rural areas and the services offered in the more populated areas including the main urban hub in the city of Duluth. Rural areas often face unique challenges in providing traditional public transit services and attracting new for-profit transportation companies due to low population densities combined with decentralized trip destinations and origins.

Challenges

Integration of Rural and Urban Services

Individuals who reside in rural areas often lack access to alternative forms of transportation than a personally-owned car which can prove to be a major barrier in accessing healthcare services, employment, and educational opportunities. They must travel vast distances into more populated areas to acquire basic necessities and access essential services, such as medical care. It is not uncommon for individuals residing in rural areas to lack a driver’s license, not have the ability to afford vehicle and long distance travel expenses, experience medical-related issues that prevent driving, or be without a support network they can rely upon for transportation. Even when public transit services are available, they are primarily provided to targeted population groups such as seniors or individuals with disabilities which can leave out other community members who also need these transportation services. 

With this in mind, the IMPACT project looked to reduce the impact of these common rural transportation barriers by providing rural Northeastern Minnesota residents first and last mile connections to Duluth Transit Authority’s existing transportation system. Additionally, introducing a first last mile  service would expand the general public’s overall access to transportation options. 

The goal to develop seamless transfers between urban and rural public transit service requires multiple areas of coordination among the transit agencies (and sometimes other mobility providers as well). In the case of the IMPACT project, however, the lack of a strong partnership between Arrowhead Transit and the Duluth Transit Authority to support the project design from the beginning resulted in the latter playing more of an advisory role, rather than becoming a key partner in the project development. 

Since Duluth Transit Authority’s involvement in the project was limited to utilization of a free transfer program already in place between them and Arrowhead Transit, and other local mobility partners were not actively participating in the project development, there was not a significant development in exploring further multimodal integration through the IMPACT project. The limitations in interagency coordination weakened the coordination of partnerships and the quest for integration of rural and urban services.

Project Partners

When putting together the project proposal, Arrowhead Transit obtained support from many local organizations to partner on the IMPACT program; however, as the IMPACT project moved into its design and planning phases, COVID-19 challenges, funding shortfalls, and involvement conditions prevented partnerships from moving forward. 

The IMPACT project’s initial vision to provide access to transportation services included participation from local transportation providers, social services, and health agencies. Entities such as the St. Louis County Health and Human Services and Duluth Transit Authority expressed initial interest in the project and offered their participation as representatives on the project’s advisory committee but were not prepared to explore services integration. 

Other entities, such as the Local Wellness Center and a taxi company, were interested in the project’s mission but could not remedy the impacts COVID-19 had on their finances, staffing capacity, and overall business operations to participate. While partnerships with local taxi services would have supplemented volunteer driver operations, the rise of ridesharing services and subsequent low ridership during the pandemic made utilizing taxi drivers for the IMPACT service cost-prohibitive.

Throughout the planning process, Arrowhead Transit found that partners’ support of an innovative idea does not automatically translate into participation and engagement in  project development and implementation. Creating spaces to ensure all partners – key partners and organizations expressing interest in the project – engage and collaborate in the project planning from the beginning (including pre-grant application) are critical for developing innovative mobility projects involving multiple partners.

Software Development

Throughout the project’s planning and development phase, Arrowhead Transit ran into issues establishing a contract with a technology vendor to develop a mobility as a service (MaaS) platform framework for IMPACT’s multimodal trip-planner. 

Arrowhead Transit originally consulted with Feonix – Mobility Rising as a vendor to develop the framework for the software platform that would allow users to book and pay for the project’s multimodal transportation services. However, since Feonix – Mobility Rising was not identified as a key partner in the project’s IMI grant application, Arrowhead Transit needed to address procurement requirements to incorporate them to the project team. This process delayed the project’s software development phase by several months while procurement and contracting was developed and worked out.

The IMPACT project’s technology framework featured many components: a public-facing mobile app and web-based interface where riders could book, plan, and pay for trips; a driver-facing dashboard where volunteers could track their participation and accept on-demand or scheduled trips; a dispatch platform; and an administrative dashboard, which would provide visualizations for key metrics in real-time and allow to download customizable reports. Regarding payment integration, the MaaS platform  would also have an invoicing feature so users could be billed monthly rather than for each ride request.

However, Arrowhead Transit ran into several difficulties during the development of the software. Certain features that Arrowhead Transit thought were important aspects of the platform could not be fixed. For example:

• The software had difficulty differentiating between Arrowhead Transit’s service area and Duluth Transit Authority’s service area because it could not geofence for individual services. Thus, the software would try to schedule Arrowhead Transit bus options in Duluth Transit Authority’s service area even though Arrowhead Transit cannot legally operate in that area. 
• The software application could not show available complementary paratransit options because it did not have the capability to ensure that a person requesting a paratransit ride was eligible. While the application and IMPACT service was open to general public use, paratransit services are provided to eligible riders only (i.e. individuals with disabilities, seniors, and sometimes low-income individuals)
• Micromobility options that were not available could not be removed as options on the admin side. Bike and scooter options had to be filtered out by the end user. 

While software development issues were not the main reason the program could not move forward, the inability of the mobility-as-a-service software development  to properly align with Arrowhead Transit’s needs and the vision for the IMPACT service emphasized the importance of discussing with technology providers the needs of the project early in the project design, as well as to understand procurement requirements to engage technology partners for FTA funded innovative mobility projects.

Grant Management

Throughout the planning phase, Arrowhead Transit was confronted with significant delays regarding the disbursement of awarded funds due to its status as a subrecipient. For the IMI grant, Arrowhead Transit is a sub-recipient of federal funding through MnDOT. Due to the sub-recipient status, Arrowhead Transit was never set up in the Transit Award Management System (TrAMS). To receive the federal funds, AEOA needed to work with MnDOT to establish itself as a pass-through agent. For MnDOT to spend any money received from the FTA, the Legislative Advisory Committee (LAC) had to approve the disbursement. This grant management process became difficult to navigate after the COVID-19 State of Emergency was declared because the LAC was only accepting new business if related to COVID-19 until November 2020. 

Since the FTA award recipient differed from the agency leading the project, there were significant delays in receiving project funds, which made it challenging to consolidate project partners at the time of the award.  

Volunteer Driver Recruitment

Since the backbone of IMPACT was to provide first and last mile connections trips served by volunteer drivers, the most significant barrier to IMPACT’s implementation was recruiting volunteer drivers. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the availability of volunteer drivers for existing programs was dwindling, putting already established programs at risk. With the program’s operations relying heavily on volunteer drivers, worsening driver recruitment conditions left the IMPACT project unable to reach the deployment phase. 

The project team identified three leading causes of volunteer driver retention and recruitment challenges: 

• Fear of exposure to COVID-19 in providing public transportation services.
• A hike in fuel costs, exacerbated by the inability to offer volunteer drivers additional funds and mileage reimbursement to mitigate the increased fuel cost. This situation made reimbursement levels inadequate to meet driver costs.
• The lack of an IMPACT service rider eligibility criteria. Volunteer driving for a public transit program was an extremely tough sell. Many transportation programs that utilize volunteer drivers have rider or trip purpose stipulations that make it easier to identify how participation in these programs addresses needs and provides community benefit. These rider eligibility criteria usually correspond to the community or interest group that a volunteer driver program serves. When programs open their services to all members of the general public, it can be more challenging for volunteer drivers to identify their impact and justify their participation in such programs. 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Arrowhead Transit had an established contract with medical assistance (MA) providers, which allowed the agency to provide coordination and schedule non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) for clients. Since volunteer drivers offered these NEMT services, Arrowhead Transit planned to utilize most of this volunteer driver pool for the IMPACT service. Unfortunately, the volunteer driver pool gravely decreased once the first wave of COVID-19 hit, leading the agency to go from 320 drivers to 92. Months later, when it was time for the IMPACT service to hit the ground, the agency only had six volunteers signed on to provide rides, making the program launch unfeasible. 

Accessibility

An important consideration for the IMPACT program was addressing accessible transportation options for those within the service area who must navigate travel with assistive mobility devices, strollers, or a disability. Arrowhead Transit was aware that volunteer drivers’ personal vehicles were likely not to be retrofitted with accessible design features like wheelchair lifts which would burden certain user groups. With the knowledge that service usage correlates with accessibility, Arrowhead submitted an application to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT)  to fund an accessible bus service that would supplement ongoing service operations, but it was ultimately unsuccessful.

Project Approaches

Outreach and Marketing

AEOA’s mobility manager utilized many engagement methods to recruit volunteer drivers and gain community support for the service.

• Spoke at local churches on Sundays
• Set up a table in the local mall to engage potential volunteers
• Rode the bus services in the area engaging with passengers to collect survey data and discuss volunteering opportunities.
• Partnered with the local Area on Aging to advertise the need for volunteers on their website.
• Held several public meetings to invite both current volunteer drivers from our medical rides program and those in the community interested in hearing about volunteer driving opportunities.

Despite these outreach efforts, the project team found that safety concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic made drivers less inclined to volunteer their time to transport individuals over long distances. Many volunteer drivers are often seniors or retired individuals who tend to be at a higher health risk. The nature of spending time in a confined space with no real assurance of a passenger’s health was a challenge that made it especially difficult to garner support.

Peer Exchange

Taking on the task of developing and demonstrating an innovative mobility pilot can come with unforeseen challenges that project teams must navigate. Because innovative projects, by nature, are usually new and unique to the communities leading them, there is no prescriptive way to address problems. Yet, peer agencies may have valuable lessons learned from their innovative endeavors that can be applied broadly to other agencies’ projects; Thus, engaging in information exchange with mobility practitioners can be advantageous. 

In an effort to recruit volunteer drivers to connect rural residents with current transportation systems, AEOA connected with Independent Transportation Network America (ITNAmerica) to discuss current recruitment challenges and possible strategies to address volunteer shortages. Like AEOA, ITNAmerica is undergoing an IMI project that utilizes volunteer drivers to provide rural transportation services. 

Establishing Partnerships

AEOA worked with the Local Area on Aging and Regional Transportation Coordinating Council to communicate program goals, boost volunteer driver recruitment efforts, and recruit partners for the program.

Lessons Learned

Volunteer driver programs can support public transit service but because of its different service model, transit agencies need to learn the possibilities and the limitations of relying on volunteers for operation.

Volunteer drivers are a great low-cost resource entities can leverage to fill transportation gaps. Still, to provide fully accessible first and last mile coverage, a public transportation service needs additional options to maintain an acceptable level of reliability and accessibility.

Clarify the roles and responsibilities of your project partners prior to implementation

Partners may express interest in supporting an innovative mobility idea, however they may not intend to pursue a dedicated role in the project’s planning and implementation. When developing a mobility pilot, it’s important that the project team clearly communicates the intended vision of the partners participation in the project and ensures their roles and responsibilities are clear.

Consider the benefits and limitations of recipient status when applying for federal funding

Agencies need to consider the pros and the cons of establishing themselves as direct recipients or use a pass-through entity to receive awarded funds from the FTA. For agencies who usually receive federal funding through pass-through agents, becoming a direct FTA grant recipient may require agencies to establish themselves within grant management systems such as TrAMS. While navigating these grant management systems can be tedious, it allows agencies to independently manage the awarded funds and overall project themselves rather than rely on external entities.

Conclusion

Due to the difficulties in moving forward with the project partners and the many challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Arrowhead Transit decided to cancel their IMPACT project. The communities Arrowhead Transit was hoping to serve remain outside the areas of available transportation service. 

Transportation still continues to be one of the largest barriers to access services for people living in rural and deep rural area access that have limited or no personal transportation options. Arrowhead hopes to develop a new program to try and address some of these gaps, but are currently prioritizing working on COVID-19 recovery.

Arrowhead Transit will continue to work with their local transportation and transit partners through the Regional Transportation Coordination Council to identify and address transportation issues in Northeast Minnesota. Current research includes vehicle sharing opportunities, collaboration with Healthcare organizations, and addressing volunteer driver recruitment barrieres. In future transportation projects, Arrowhead Transit will ensure that mobility solutions are planned and deployed collaboratively.