AASHTO Journal - MnDOT Adds Rural Focus to Transit Planning Application

The Minnesota Department of Transportation recently expanded the data sets available through the Transit planning mobile application and its planning website to include more rural public transportation services.

[Above image by MnDOT]

MnDOT said residents can now plan statewide transit trips using the Transit app or the website mntransitplanner.com after the agency expanded its reach to help more transit agencies across Minnesota make their services more visible and accessible.

To complete the upgrade, MnDOT said it used nearly $500,000 in grant funding from the Minnesota Technology Modernization Fund; a $40 million fund established by the state legislature to help state agencies improve customer experience and efficiency.

“This is a big step for Minnesota and for rural communities,” said Nancy Daubenberger, MnDOT commissioner, in a statement.

“Transit agencies currently provide public transit services in all or part of all 87 counties in Minnesota, but many people are not aware of the services in Greater Minnesota or what their options are,” she added. “This will allow residents and visitors throughout Greater Minnesota to see their options and plan trips now or months into the future.”

The agency noted that multimodal trip planning via the Transit app is powered by standardized transit data. Transit agencies provide accurate and reliable trip information that is pulled into websites and apps so that travelers can plan trips statewide.

To expand transit’s statewide reach, MnDOT said it added six rural transit agencies to the Transit app – which more than 20,000 Minnesotans currently use each month – and will add the remaining 15 public transit agencies in Greater Minnesota by this summer. Prior to this recent expansion, only transit agencies in southern and western Minnesota were covered.

MnDOT noted it pilot-tested this data expansion with 12 rural Minnesota transit agencies in March 2023. Researchers from the University of Minnesota studied the pilot phase and found that the transit agencies that used the Transit app saw a 4.2 percent increase in ridership compared to similar agencies that didn’t have this technology.

“This Mobility as a Service platform is making Greater Minnesota transit resources visible in a way they were not before,” said Elliott McFadden, MnDOT’s Emerging Mobility unit supervisor, regarding the Transit app. “Minnesota is the first state doing this on a statewide basis. We’re proud to help connect people with transit options and strengthen our local transit partners.”