Connecting Communities: Rural Solutions for Transportation Challenges

[00:07] - Divya Gandhi

Welcome to Critical Conversations in Transportation Planning, where we are bringing you a series of interviews with pioneers and industry leaders who are offering their insights into some of the most challenging issues facing our field. This podcast is produced by the American Planning Association's Transportation Planning Division. TPD connects planners working across all transportation modes to share innovation, foster collaboration, and advocate for sustainable mobility solutions. I'm Divya Gandhi, a transportation planner and a member of the Transportation Planning Division's Board of Directors.

[00:45] - Em Hall

And I'm Dr. Em Hall, an urban planning consultant and member of the TPD Board of Directors. In this episode, We speak with Luke Van Denend, an outreach coordinator at AECOM, and Zoe Miller, the executive director of Moving Maine Network. We really enjoyed this conversation. Let's get right into it.

[01:05] - Divya Gandhi

Well, welcome Luke and Zoe. You know, we want to acknowledge that your paths to the work that you're doing today have not been traditional ones. Can you take us back to the beginning and share how your journey kind of unfolded? Give us like a 2-minute version of the story of your life.

[01:21] - Zoe Miller

So my path, I think I always trace it back to talking to my mother when I was probably, you know, 6 or 7 years old about why the streets in my town looked the way they did and her explaining the history of urban renewal, which makes the name, makes it sound nice. But what it ended up doing in my town was that old buildings got torn down, new buildings never got built. So there were a lot of just big empty dirt parking lots and not a very welcoming pedestrian infrastructure. And I think I probably had a lot of other conversations with my mom that I don't remember, but she was an activist. She was really involved in— she was on the planning board in our town at one point, on the school committee. I just had that kind of in me to think about when you notice something isn't right, you do something about it. And that led me over the arc of my professional work to get really involved with community-based programs and working closely with low-income communities, often these really interesting diverse range of, you know, race and ethnicity families and living in communities and seeing a lot that was positive, but also seeing what I think of as like the downstream effects of bad policy in the US.

So people were, you know, they were struggling with how to get around. And that as I spent more time working in what I, you know, came to understand that I was working in public health programs and started to go more in that direction. And public health in like the 2000s really started to have this resurgence of its connection to planning and to having a conversation about our built environment and how the environments that we live in impact our ability to, to be healthy, to access the things we want and need. And that got me interested in bringing public health into planning. And so we've got a lot of opportunities to be influencing what's happening in planning. But I think people tend to feel intimidated by it and not know that they can show up and get involved with their regional planning council or their metropolitan planning organization. And so I just, once I understood that that's where the levers, a lot of the levers of change were, I kind of set my sights on working in that. So I think that's how I got into what currently now is my work on transportation access with a big focus on the needs of rural folks and non-drivers.

And how to make that connection between where the decision makers are and where the decisions are happening and bringing people who are using the system who are much more affected by the decisions into decision making.

[04:25] - Divya Gandhi

Wonderful. Thank you, Zoe. Luke.

[04:27] - Luke Van Denend

My name is Luke Van Denend, V-A-N space D-E-N-E-N-D, and I'm an outreach coordinator for ACOM. Uh, most of my project work is up here in Maine. My route to TDM and planning, um, fits the bill for what Zoe has just described. I originally, I grew up in the Midwest. Um, America's already a car culture, so is a lot of the Midwest in ways that some of the larger urban centers on the coasts, um, are not. And I originally went to school, uh, for history. And the reason I did that, most of my life, the study of history for me, and the big history nerd, and I will wear that with lots of pride, um, to me, the story of History is the story of the human experience. How does a nation grow? How does a town grow? How do our cultures and religions grow? It's people doing things and living and existing and having experiences. That led me to work in youth development and community programming for quite some time. My passion has always been for the places in which people are affected. That's so broad, it could not be more broad. But I say that because there's not been one thing that I've had my focus on.

It's just been that intersection of people and, and the challenge in front of them. And my work for many years in youth development was focused on community access, supporting families and kids, a lot of work in the K-12 space, not in the school system—after-school programming, care programs, workforce readiness, college preparedness. That space I lived in for quite some time. Every day was navigating challenges of, of who, who is this person or who is this family? What are the things in front of them? What are the resources they have? What are the barriers in their way? And how can the organization I'm at and the programs I'm working in support that? Transportation, no surprise, came up with frequency. In the role I'm in now, leading me to Maine, I saw an opportunity similar to Zoe to work with an organization and a team that was, was doing work specifically in the transit and built environment space. I saw an opportunity to both work in that space and make some forward progress on the built infrastructure that's needed to do a lot of these things, while at the same time making sure the lens or the focus of all the projects we're doing was focused on people.

We can build really great bridges and intersections and bus routes, but if we are too far removed from how the people who are using this the most and need this the most are using it, that's great that we built this cool thing, but how are people gonna be using it? How is it gonna change people's lives? That led me here, it led me to Zoe, and here we are. Not a straight line for me, but an easy one to get from point A to point B. The work that Zoe and I are doing in the state and the region is all focused on people. How are people being affected for better or worse by decisions we're all making and the things we're all building?

[07:19] - Em Hall

What I hear you saying, Luke, is so much about a desire and a need to communicate and coordinate. I hear that coming from both you and Zoe. It seems like it's somewhat born out of necessity when you're talking about a rural environment and the transportation planning challenges that are inherent. So, you know, looking at the Moving Maine Network and, and other what I'll call mobility management efforts that are happening statewide, you're bringing together really diverse sectors. So healthcare, faith-based communities, nonprofits, and your traditional public agencies. And so For each of you, you can talk a little bit about this multi-sector approach, what prompts it and how it differs from what those of us who work in more urban, you know, transportation planning situations are, are used to. The coalitions and approaches that we make are going to look very different in rural Maine. So Luke, why don't you start talking a little bit about those coalitions? And Zoe, we'll want to hear really specifically about how Moving Maine has brought those groups together.

[08:21] - Luke Van Denend

Yeah, sure, that's, um, that's right on the money. When I think about what my role is for this, this statewide TDM program, of course it's the resources and the options and the access to, to finding transportation solutions, no matter what that is— work, school, job, doctor's appointments. And as you said, in urban environments, in my head, two things jump to mind. There can be requirements— zoning, state, you know, requirements to report on transit plans, mitigation efforts. That drives some of— not all of, but some of— urban coalition building. It's required whether you're an employer or a city councilman, whatever it is. In rural spaces, those exist, but less so. You may not have a traffic mitigation requirement if you live in a town of 2,000 people, but those people still have to get to the places they need to get to. So as you said, um, Some of it's out of necessity. Folks living in rural spaces do not have less needs than those that are living in urban spaces, but the built infrastructure around them poses challenges that are different than, than those in rural spaces. And oftentimes what that requires is two main things: coalition building in the community.

What works in one town may not work in another, even if they are next door to each other and they are both rural. And then on top of that, an honest assessment of the infrastructure that's available. Some of the strategies that work in urban environments simply don't work. They're just not the, again, going back to the built environment. So most, a lot of what I do comes down to ensuring that community voices, whether they're employers, town councils, community action groups, churches, things like that, what are their needs? It is not up for me to dictate the needs of a community that I'm not a part of. It is my job to listen to them, think about the barriers, and help them overcome some of those challenges. It just does not happen without that kind of collaboration. Zoe's here on the call, and her and I are a great example of that, right? It's, it's how do you work together with large companies, with state programs, with nonprofits? And it happens in rural spaces, and it's just often not talked about. Folks are carpooling, they're ridesharing, they're getting to the doctor. It's just not clean, and it's just not as accessible as it should be.

And so our role is to listen to those needs and help make that more effective. That's right.

[10:36] - Em Hall

And Zoe, you really I think started your organization out of identifying some of those gaps and trying to find a way to fill them. Say more about that.

[10:45] - Zoe Miller

Yeah, I think, you know, coming from working within a public health program, there was already that orientation towards being part of a coalition and, and looking at issues as transportation access and transportation barriers are often seen as, you know, the problem of the Department of Transportation or the, the transportation provider. But when you take a public health lens to it, you know, it becomes a community problem that needs the whole community to come together around solving it. And so, you know, I don't think it's fair actually to say that the Department of Transportation is responsible for solving the problem. And, and they often aren't even going to be able to, you know, with all the money in the world, they still need— they need the levers of change that are available in other organizations. They need the for-profit sector, they need the nonprofit sector. And so where I was coming from early on in getting into this work having conversation after conversation with people from housing, from healthy aging organizations, from healthcare, from disability rights groups saying, we see this issue, can we come together to solve it? And I think that's not a skill that everybody has or an orientation that everybody has.

Fortunately, I was the person who was catching all those conversations and was like, yeah, we need to come together. And so what we get from coming together, I mean, it builds on what Luke was saying that none of us is going to know everything. And if you're working in a government organization that is bureaucratic, you're not out there on the streets having conversations with people. Community organizations are. I talk about them as the people who know the people. When you set a table, if you want to make an impact, we want to make transportation access possible for all the folks in Maine. We need to set a table where we have representation and thought partnership from all the different impacted people. And so, I mean, I think it's, I think it's a both how we do the work matters that we bring people together to inform what happens. And then I also really believe that we can't get the outcomes that we're looking for if we don't work together. And it's actually a big part of why we haven't been able to make progress because, you know, we might say, you know, okay, we need more public transportation in rural places.

But then if we go to the decision makers who are voting on the budget and they don't understand why this matters and they haven't heard from constituents that it matters to them, then they're not going to prioritize that over other things. So I think it's a big part of how we get to the outcomes that we want to achieve. Makes sense. Yeah, totally.

[13:58]- Divya Gandhi

Thank you, Zoe, for that perspective. Luke, you talked about listening to our communities and understanding, really understanding what they need, what they don't need. And of course, Zoe, you emphasized about— you emphasized that we cannot get to the outcomes that we want unless we bring everyone to the table and we work work together. So coming from a consultant's perspective, Luke, like, how do you think emerging technologies and innovations fit into that picture for rural communities? And, you know, how are those tools starting to show up? What, what are some equity concerns that communities should be thinking about to make sure no one gets left out?

[14:38] - Luke Van Denend

And right, yeah, that's a great question. And The backdrop of this, of course, with all of my background, has been in community programming, and, uh, scarcity of resources, be it financial, staffing, tech tools, is, is pretty common. If you ask almost any industry in the nonprofit sector, it's a challenge. Moving into a place and working for an organization that has almost all of those resources does not make the problem go away, as Zoe said. Without without having everybody at that table, you cannot tech your way out of this. There's a huge push across every industry into new technologies, use of AI, integrated platform tools. There's an app for almost everything that you do now. And that's not in and of itself bad. But how we implement these things to make intentional change, that those decisions, those meetings, those groups of people at the table that Zoe has said, that is where using these technologies, you'll find out what works and what doesn't. In rural Maine, low-hanging fruit, and it's not unique in Maine, but it is a significant challenge in Maine. The assumption that broadband connectivity, technology access, being able to use your smartphone when you're on the side of the road, you cannot assume those things.

And a lot of planning and decision-making happens in places where that is a given. You can get online, everybody's got a phone, or if you don't, there's one nearby. There's underlying assumptions in a lot of planning with technology that get brought to rural spaces. And it just— it's not that the technology does not work, but the approach and the implementation must look different. Zoe can attest to this. There are plenty of times where you try to tech your way out of a problem without having those other conversations. And then folks that funded some technology are wondering why AI couldn't fix this problem. And my question will always be, have you been to that town? Have you spoken to any of those people? Do you know what the employer's needs are? Yeah. And, and what are the things that we're trying to capture? There's this background noise of using technology, capturing metrics. Is it working? How are we calculating that? And as I spoke about before, zooming back out, human beings are using this. People's lives and experiences are the thing that should be driving these decisions because you can have the greatest app on earth.

But if I'm 5 hours north in Maine and there's no reception, it does not matter that you have the best app on earth. And that is even before we arrive at the efforts of rural transportation. Many organizations that provide rural transportation in Maine are community action programs, volunteer driving networks, churches. They do not have the infrastructure and the capacity to leverage tools. Once again, the built infrastructure, you cannot impose a tool that requires urban built infrastructure in an environment that doesn't exist. Aside from that, the other thing I'll note around technology is that it requires trust. That's not a new thing, but state mobility programs and large companies that want you to download their app, find your commuting options, folks are gonna have questions, safety, security, use things, even, even before they start using it and even before anybody even considers what you have to say. So you can't tech your way out of it. However, using the technology that we have and using expertise and teams that have that available in collaborative spaces is how you get it done. So an organization like mine has those tools, but if I'm not sitting with Zoe in a town that we've both been to and we know that the chief concern is a 50, a 50-mile one-way trip to a hospital, and that's the thing that has to be solved, and we're trying to get everybody to download a ridesharing app, there are, there's a mismatch between what the technology is built to do, the places it's driving and what's happening in front of us.

So there is excitement in the tech space. There are wonderful tools to make this all work easier. But once again, who's using your app? Is it another app or is it a person? So how are, how are we making sure technology is fitting the communities we are in? You cannot retrofit the human experience to a new technology. That this needs to be some sort of a symbiotic relationship and it's not clean. And what works in one rural space may not work in another. And TDM Lives in that room of, of being agile and adapting. I know that might have seemed more negative. I don't mean it that way. There's great tools available, but if you're working in rural TDM or transit planning anywhere, relying on tech is great, but if that technology is not accessible to the end user, you're kind of done before you start. So hopefully that, hopefully that answered what you're looking for.

[19:29] - Em Hall

Yeah, and I, I think, you know, gathering data is obviously extremely important for all of us. And I would think it would be specifically or especially challenging in a rural context. You kind of run into this chicken and egg thing where, especially with like not having a, you know, fixed public transit service or something, you know, oh, we don't have enough demand to justify this service. It's like, well, but the service isn't there to like create the demand, right? And so you're running into that issue a lot. And so whether it's a data-driven approach, information gathering, information sharing. You know, I think, Zoe, how do you kind of look to break that cycle? Or what are some ways that you found to, to get out of that sort of trap, if you will, to get people what they need to get them where they need to go?

[20:16] - Zoe Miller

Well, I think a lot about communities know what they want and what they need, and they might not know everything about the solutions that are available, but they have so much wisdom and we need to support community-driven solutions and really put more capacity into supporting communities to solve problems. And so it's going to look really different in each community in terms of where they want, what they want to prioritize. But I think what's not different is that you need champions, you need folks whose job it is to carry the solutions forward. And so I think that's one of the challenges that we've seen come up is there isn't enough, there isn't enough of an understanding of how much more communities, you know, whether they're municipalities or groups of municipalities, I think there isn't enough understanding of how much more they could be doing if they were properly supported. We just keep saying that. And I think it's hard sometimes to then— it's a both-ends proposition, I guess, that, yes, let's look at all the tools that are out there and all the resources that are out there. And we need statewide organizations to be supportive.

But the orientation should be, What do you need as communities and where can we help you? And so having that be the way policy is being written, the way infrastructure is being supported, I think that's really important.

[21:59] - Em Hall

Yeah. And Luke, add on to that.

[22:03] - Luke Van Denend

Zoe's right on. I'm not going to dispute the need for data-driven approaches and collecting outcome measures. Those— we need those things. A picture of me riding a bike is not going to give me a million-dollar grant for a biking program. I, if wishing could make it so, right? Right. So I know we need to collect data, we need to report out on things, especially when there's public funding involved. You want to be responsible about how it's being used, no matter where that funding's hitting, at whatever level, if it's hitting an organization right on the ground, what have you. But what, what are you measuring and why are you measuring it? So what you measure in an urban environment may be volume of riders on a bus, but if a local community in a rural space needs to get to the local community college or a hospital or the town over for the VA site, whatever that happens to be, the metrics you collecting should be different. And making sure, to Zoe's point, whether it's a, a member of the legislature, a company leader, a state agency, a nonprofit, whoever, everybody has to record and report out on how they're doing in some way, shape, or form.

But being intentional about what that looks like— 30 rides to the hospital a month in a rural community may seem like nothing if you're in New York or Boston or LA or Chicago, but in a community where 60 people need to get to the hospital and now half of them are getting there and they couldn't last month is a tremendous thing to do in a rural space. So just thinking about what are you collecting and why are you collecting it? Are you collecting data because you have data? That's great. But are you impacting lives and communities in a way that's going to transform them and transform the built infrastructure? That's not going to happen if you're getting metrics for metrics' sake. So being intentional about what you're collecting and reporting out is spot on, both for sustainability of programming but also supporting these communities and what they really need.

[23:48] - Em Hall

Well, and it comes back to that human factor, I would say. And you are probably all very reliant on hearing individual stories and individual feedback, right? And I, I think that's fantastic. But also sometimes in planning, the burden of deciding what needs to happen or telling what needs to be different can fall onto folks who already have a lot of burdens placed upon them. And that's That's why I was so intrigued by the mobility liaisons program that the state has, where folks actually receive money to participate in this program and kind of become those, those champions or ambassadors. You're gathering feedback from them. I don't know if either of you have direct experience with that program, and if you do, it's great. But I think just the idea that you go to folks with lived experience, you're compensating them for their time, and you're using that information to make changes. That, that sounds very intensive and intentional. I wonder if you could talk about how that approach has worked and how it just fits into the overall picture of what you're trying to do here.

[24:50] - Zoe Miller

Yeah, well, I can speak to that. I mean, that's something that the Moving Maine Network— and I'm actually just curious, you're saying you've seen info about that in Maine?

[24:59] - Em Hall

Yeah, like, I did see it in Maine. I'm trying to think of where the—

[25:03] - Zoe Miller

Yeah, well, so Moving Maine does that. So you probably saw it. On our website. Okay.

[25:07] - Em Hall

Yeah. And Greater Portland Council of Governments. I read about it there and I read it about on your website. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

[25:14] - Zoe Miller

Yeah. So I actually— so I worked at Greater Portland Council of Governments from— oh goodness, for about 5 years. But that was where I really got to kind of cut my teeth on, okay, how do we do this? How do we bring folks into the decision-making process who are not an elected leader, they don't have an appointed role in a municipality, they don't work for one of the legacy stakeholder organizations. And so one of the first things that we said, okay, well, we've got to make more space in these groups. If the only way you can be on one of these decision-making bodies is that you work for a town or are elected, or you work for an anchor institution, then we're never going to have— I mean, I guess I shouldn't say never, but it will take much longer because then the effort would be like getting people elected, which is a much bigger, heavier lift. And so, so we set out to change the structure of the decision-making organizations. But at the same time, you know, so much of the work that I had done and similar to what Luke was talking about of like being really close to the community, like talking to youth every day, talking to families every day, and folks feel very intimidated by official processes.

And that doesn't mean that they can't do it. And I think often it gets sort of conflated as, oh, this is too technical. We can't have these people join the group. They won't understand. I mean, I literally have heard that. I've heard that at least 20 times from people who are in decision-making roles. And it's really disappointing because not only is it patronizing, but it's also, it's like a self-perpetuating cycle. So what we looked at testing is if we looked at all the different barriers that get in the way of people being at the table, how many of them could we directly address? And so we set out to do, we said, we're going to give people a title because people feel uncomfortable introducing themselves. I heard people introducing themselves over the years in my community work, and they would be the person in the room who had truly the most expertise in that neighborhood. And they would say, oh, well, you know, I'm John and I'm just here because they couldn't say they were the director of something or they were the president of something. So, so we said, let's give people a title, let's give them a stipend.

Let's look at how they're going to get to the meeting, right? So address transportation in whatever way is most helpful to them. Let's give them some education on, you know, what are all these acronyms? How does this process work? And then I would say one of the most important things really ended up being let's make a community of folks. So creating a cohort. Because again, all the people who do this type of work professionally, they go back to a workplace, they go back to their group of their colleagues, their associations that they're part of. And so often I think folks with lived experience will be split. They get seen as, oh, here comes that guy who always complains or that woman who raises her hand. So instead of seeing them as this incredible resource for getting— for doing planning well, they're seen as complainers. But once you give them a title and you make them part of an official group, that perception starts to change. And so we've just seen it be really powerful. And this is going back to 2017. And I'm so proud of seeing that over the years. I mean, it's been built into the work into how the committees work at Greater Portland Council of Governments.

So I'm so thrilled that I, you know, I'm not there anymore. I'm not involved with it directly and it's still happening. And I mean, that's the dream, right? That's what you want to see. And it was labor intensive to start. But I think once people come to understand that it's like any other, any other investment that if you put a little bit more time in helping people prep for a meeting, then it pays off because that person's going to tell you things that nobody else around the table can tell you because they use the service. They talk to other people who use the service, you know, and we've had people who, through a couple of the different programs I worked on, who are— well, I just had somebody who's been accepted to be on the Public Transit Advisory Council for the state. He's blind, he's a non-driver. And so I think, you know, have we completely solved the problem? No, but I think we're moving in the right direction because we're bringing people with deep lived experience into the process.

[30:31] - Em Hall

Just the idea of giving people a title, I think you just like kind of blew my mind. That's— it's so obvious and so not hard, and yet it's not something I've— I don't think I've seen that before. Thank you for sharing. That's incredible. Very practical things that anybody could adapt.

[30:50] - Zoe Miller

So yeah, and I guess I just want to jump in and say we do— I can point you to a couple handbooks that have some of the information about the programs that I've worked on. And I mean, I truly love talking to people about how they can adapt it in their community. So if people think, oh, that's too much, we can't do it. I would— I'm happy to have a conversation about what can you do, what are like small pieces you could do, or to start to move things. Because I think it is a lot easier than people think. And I also think that people don't like letting go of the status quo or their power, and they do need to accept that that's part of what's going on for them. So when people say, oh, this is too technical, people won't understand, I mean, at any given point, there are people showing up at a meeting who have high-ranking positions who didn't read the packet, go off topic, have to be kind of reined in. Yep. How is that okay? But having somebody who has lived experience and doesn't have a college degree at the table is too hard.

Right? So I think it's just getting like, you know, having like some real talk about like, what is it you're afraid of? And is it really going to happen? Or are you actually going to get— I mean, I think like Greater Portland Council of Governments has gained so much positive regard and credibility for having people with lived experience at the table. And I think, you know, that goes a long way. So I'm a fan of talking through how it could work in your situation and not being intimidated by thinking that you have to pull like a big pot of money out of nowhere to, to start it up.

[32:45] - Em Hall

Yeah, and we always include a list of resources in our, our episode description, and I will follow up and, uh, the listeners will be able to find those, uh, and download them and maybe contact you.

[32:56] - Zoe Miller

You might get some. Awesome, I love it.

[32:59] - Divya Gandhi

Totally. Wow, Zoe, thank you. Thank you for that perspective. It is tremendous. It's such an important point about, you know, bringing how many— how community members that are not elected officials are involved in that way, or stakeholders of those big organizations can feel so intimidated and also feel like shut out of the formal decision-making process. So this is actually genius. So thank you. You know, for sharing that perspective with us. Now we're thinking— we're starting to think about TDM, and you know, for a rural community that is just starting out to explore transportation demand management, so almost like a TDM 101 stage, what would you say are like the top 3 quick win strategies that they can, you know, implement right away to start making a difference?

[33:51] - Luke Van Denend

I'll jump on that one first, and Zoe, you know, fill in with all of the things I don't include, you know, because this list could be long. But a couple ones that jump to mind right away— we spoke about it a little bit before, but what are your goals in your community? If you are trying to implement a TDM program because you've heard of it, or you've heard it helps with transportation, or you're not sure about planning, and you say, okay, let's look at what this town is doing, let's do some research online, let's pull something up, and I'm in a town 3 hours north in Maine, and I'm looking what the Greater Portland Council of Governments is doing and hoping that's the thing I'm going to do in my town today. It can be overwhelming. It really can be. And thinking about what those needs are, and as Zoe said, putting together a group from your community that represents all of the parties, not just elected officials and business owners. You need those people too. Like what are the employment needs, are the forced transit needs, what are the medical—

[34:49] - Em Hall

Just a second, your audio's cutting out on our end.

[34:56] - Luke Van Denend

I'm unsure if that was, I live in Maine, so this is a really good example. And I think we're just catching up. Yeah, that's a great example. Losing, dropping calls and dealing with connectivity issues is very real up here. Yeah. So anyway, let me kind of, I'll backtrack and start that over. So if I'm just starting with TDM, a couple things that are really important are thinking about what the needs of your community are, who are the stakeholders in that community, and who should be at the table to decide what you're doing. Whether that's like parents, schools, medical appointment needs, workforce at employer sites, what are the actual needs? They are going to vary no matter what community that you're in. Rural community to rural community, It is different. Zoe and I see this all the time. What works in Western Maine does not work up in the county. If you're in Presque Isle, that far north, what is working up there is not the same thing that's going to work in Western Maine, even though at just a raw kind of demographic geography view, there's a lot of similarities in the rural makeup of those areas.

Just incredible difference in what the needs in the community are and what the access and infrastructure may be. So what are your needs? That sounds incredibly simple, but a lot of folks move into TDM with Oh, let's come up with transit solutions. There's a lot of them. Let's pull out the handbooks and look at the DOT or check this company or look at the big city. Before you do any of that, think about what your community needs. What are the things— you don't have to do everything in TDM. TDM occupies this interesting space under transportation that is quite interdisciplinary. It requires the viewpoints of folks that have different needs, can voice different opinions, The TDM example I'll give you is the idea of paths of desire. I can build an intersection, right? I can design a lovely intersection with a crosswalk and it can move cars through efficiently and it's got buttons you can push and flashing lights and that's great. And every corner of that intersection has a dirt path cut through because that's not where people are walking and moving. That's just one little example of you can, you can build a thing, but if you're building a thing for efficiency or a good plan without looking at how are the users, cars, bikes, people, people, shipping, whatever it happened, medical emergency vehicles, that happens all over Maine.

If you want to talk about getting a medical ride and you live on one of our island communities, you can't build that the same way that you can if you're on the mainland. If you're at one of our naval shipyards and an emergency vehicle has to come in and the road is 8 feet wide and you're in a 50-foot truck, you, you've got a problem. So there are things to think about in your environment that affect your, your workplace or your community that, that will be inherently unique to you no matter where you live. So So start there. What do you need? What are the obstacles in front of you? And then the next couple of easy TDM wins, it's not to say they're easy to do. Carpooling has been around in this country for a very long time. We have had seasons in which we've been good at it as a country, and we've got seasons in which we've been bad at it. Oftentimes necessity, often linked to large-scale warfare, have been the times I can point to really, really top-down federal government to local government pushes for things like carpools and rideshares. There are a lot of lessons in the history of TDM just in this country, let alone lessons from around the world, that still work today.

But there's a lot of hurdles. Zoe mentioned releasing your power. Not getting in my car when I want, exactly when I want, all the time, is a hard thing to give up. If you're in a rural community and you're thinking about ridesharing to work, what are the shifts at that place? What does the employer need? What does the town need there? If there's a hospital, who's going there? So, so thinking about about things like carpools and rideshares. There are incredible models for that working in rural spaces. There— it's not all perfect. If there was a silver bullet for transportation, we've— we'd have used it already, but that does not exist. But there are really great practices for rural transportation efforts that are not a fixed route bus or building tons and tons of roadways where maybe you don't need to. So I would, I would think about some of those TDM solutions that are there. And as Zoe said, we are all around. If you are in one of these spaces, reach out to folks. I talked, I talked to folks in rural Virginia. I talked to folks in Montana. There are people all over this country that are navigating rural transportation barriers, and there are great lessons and models in our state of Maine and all over.

And you're going to hear it 1,000 more times from Zoe and I, but collaborating and communicating together. There are solutions out there. They may not solve the systemic nature of our built infrastructure, but if you're a town or a community or a government agency that's looking at how to do this, talk to the folks in your state. The amount of times I go to meetings in Maine where folks say, I don't know how we were going to start this volunteer driving network, or what do we do to solve this workforce problem? And the first thought is, the town next to you is doing that. Are you talking to them? There's a lot of rowing in the same direction separately that happens in the TDM space. So let's get in— to put a poster on a wall, let's get in the same boat so we're all rowing the same boat rather than doing similar things without communicating with one another. So CARB carpooling, ridesharing, communicating together, and then thinking clearly about what your community's needs are, are really easy ways to, to start, um, and foundations you must have if you want to build anything to scale and with, with a sustainable mindset.

[40:32] - Divya Gandhi

Yeah, that's pretty solid out there, Luke. Thank you, thank you for sharing that. Um, I know Em had a follow-up question.

[40:42] - Em Hall

Yeah, and maybe You can think of some quick wins from this angle. Zoe is really thinking about like rural poverty rates and then compounding that with barriers to transportation that can create significant isolation. I'm sure you think of that a lot in terms of public health and those social determinants of health. What sort of TDM strategies have you seen to address these issues like affordability, access for non-drivers to help combat that isolation and just, you know, help folks live the lives they want to live?

[41:14] - Zoe Miller

Something I do want to add is that I think we need urban and rural to work together in order to win the— particularly the public transportation system that our country needs. I think it's like a, you know, we can walk and chew gum at the same time proposition. It can be both true that the needs are different and that the needs are are similar enough that we should be working together and championing more of an investment together. One thing that I think is a real bummer for us in Maine, and I'm sure this happens in other states, is the splitting that goes on to say, like, you know, when you bring forward a policy solution or when we're advocating for more investment in transportation, that it gets seen as urban. And so part of the work that we've really been doing in Maine is to try to shift the narrative and build people's understanding that we already have public transportation in the most rural parts of Maine. It just looks different. And, and to the point that Luke was making earlier, we also need our state leadership on these issues to see the nuance so they don't unintentionally divide.

So like those, you know, if we're saying like, how do you justify your funding level? It's not appropriate to ask rural providers to be demonstrating need based on, you know, ridership. So we're seeing some challenges there where I think there's a need to understand that, you know, we can say like the outcomes are the same, that we want people to have transportation security. And that's a paradigm that we're using a lot now is to talk about, you know, can people get— can they conveniently, affordably— and I'm forgetting what the third one is, but can they conveniently and affordably get where they need to go? Are they able to, you know, have social connections, have the work or education that they want and need? Do families, are they able to access the healthcare and the health supporting activities that they need? So great, let's all agree those are the outcomes we want. The exact strategies of how we make that happen will look different. And therefore the measures need to be different. And so, for instance, in rural places, volunteer drivers using individual vehicles is an amazingly effective and cost-effective strategy when it's done well. It leverages the goodwill that people in their communities have.

They want to help each other. Yeah, they want to know that help will be there when they need it. That's a, that's a huge attraction for them. People want it to be local. So we have to be careful not to have it perceived as this big thing that the state creates, you know, and microtransit or, you know, whatever we want to— if we want to call it microtransit or demand response. But I think that's showing greater potential now. But again, we can't use the same metrics that we're using in urban places where there's density and we just shouldn't. And we, we, I think we just need to agree that it's going to be different, but we need it all because the people who are, you know, we've got so many people living in places where they have to travel into the urban centers to get care, education. And so it's not like it's actually two different places. We're all one place. And, you know, let's let's try to leverage that instead of have it used to divide us. Wonderful.

[45:18] - Divya Gandhi

Thank you for that perspective, Zoe. You talk really well about the fact that urban and rural communities can work together, and we need to work together more intentionally, though our needs are different but similar enough. But we also need to identify different metrics and the fact that we need to learn a lot from each other. I also really loved how you reframed the whole narrative about the fact that, yes, public transportation does exist in rural places, it just looks different. And for that nuance to be seen and supported, we need, you know, stronger state leadership and more deeper understanding of what rural mobility truly requires. So, you know, bringing us all to a close and thinking more about the future, what gives you hope for the future of rural transportation planning? And what's one thing that you wish every transportation planner understood about rural TDM?

[46:16] - Zoe Miller

Well, I'll jump in and I'll be short, but I mean, having awesome people that I can call up and, and, you know, figure things out with, like Luke, is one of the things that gives me hope. I think the people doing the work I think being able to support each other, talk to each other is huge. And so I find it encouraging that we do have like a generation or a cohort of people who I think are approaching things a bit differently, and that's really encouraging. And then, you know, I think that there is an increased interest in mutual aid. And, you know, as somebody who's in my— so I'm Gen X, I'm in my 50s, and I'm now hearing folks in their 20s, I mean sometimes teens, but like 20s and 30s talking about mutual aid. And I'm like, wait a minute, we haven't really been talking about it that way for a really long time. And to have it be much younger folks saying it, I think it presents a pretty great opportunity to then meld it with what we've been talking about to say, oh, you're interested in mutual aid? Well, you know what's one of the best things you could do is just give other people rides.

And so something I've been pondering, Luke, you're going to hear more about that from me, but it's like, I think there is all the struggle, growing up through COVID and then the tumult of the last, I don't know, we'll just say the tumult of the last several years. I think there is a resurgence in an interest in hyper-local community engagement and mutual aid. And that is— that encourages me.

[48:24] - Luke Van Denend

I'll add to that, but I couldn't have said it better myself. I think she's real right on the money. There are shifts happening that are quite encouraging. To add to that, one thing in the programs that I'm particularly involved in day to day has a lot to do with connecting with employers and kind of nodes of transportation, whether it's a school, a medical site, employer. Are there lots of people going one place? Where is that place? And is that entity, organization, or community involved in the conversation about transportation? And the places where some of these things we're talking about today is working well, they are. And the places where it is not working so well, some or all of those people are not communicating together. Quick example for that would be, um, I am seeing an increase in employers whose And understandably, an employer is going to say to themselves, we can't buy everybody a car and pay their rent and do all this. I get that, right? But you know what an employer can do? They can show up to a conversation that directly affects their workforce, their customers, their care seekers, whatever space they're living in.

Like it or not, they are involved in the transportation conversation. And especially in rural places, employer sites, medical sites, schools, those are the anchors. That is where people are going. And I am seeing more of those places reach out to say, we might not be sure what to do, but we think we should be talking to you. And that is an encouraging trend, as Zoe said, to say, yeah, the lumber mill can't buy everybody a car, but if 1,000 people are going there every day, we should be talking to them about their involvement and their role in transportation solutions. Even for something like, do you have an integrated rideshare platform that is incentivized as an employer to get your folks to commute together and help one another out? There are a lot of examples in Maine of that going well. When employers show up to that conversation, Maine, if any employer's listening to this, you don't have to know what to do. You really don't have to know what to do, but know that you're affected, whether you can't— I need to hire people. The market is so bad. We don't want turnover. We want more people to visit our site to be consumers.

We are We're a medical site. We need to provide care. No matter what you are doing, you're involved in this. So come and talk to the folks, the Zoes of the world, the mes of the world. There's a lot of resources. There's a lot of tools available. But just like you can't tech your way out of the problem, if folks who are decision makers, drivers, anchors in their community are not showing up to the conversation, that's hurdle number one. And the encouraging thing is seeing more of that happen. Hey, we're not sure what to do, but we're happy to sit down and talk about the resources available and what we can do. What can we do? And that's been quite encouraging. Some of it's out of necessity. Some of it's out of this desire Zoe's talking about. And TDM lives in that space of, hey, listen, if it gets you to the table, let's get you to the table. Welcome. No shame. It's okay that you weren't doing it before. We can talk about how we wish we were here 30 years ago. That doesn't matter though. What are you doing today? You showed up today.

Thank you for being here. Let's find out how to work together. That is the— and I'm seeing more of that in, in kind of the statewide efforts around bringing folks to that space. So, and everything said, Zoe's correct too. She's lovely.

[51:56] - Em Hall

Luke, Zoe, we've learned so much today, and we know our TPD members and many others really appreciate your candid insights. Thank you for facilitating this. Facilitating critical conversations in rural communities across Maine. And thank you for being part of this critical conversation in transportation planning.

[52:15] - Zoe Miller

Thank you so much for having us.

[52:18] - Em Hall