Rolling Through Rural Minnesota: Arrowhead Transit Connects Communities Together

I'm Paul Comfort, and this is Transit Unplugged, the world's leading transit executive podcast. I started my career in rural public transportation. I was the county's first transportation coordinator. We started out We started out running the system just for senior citizens and people with disabilities as part of the Department of Aging and then we grew it to County Ride, an official public transportation system. I even got my commercial driver's license so I could help drive the vehicles.

The public transportation in this rural county of 50, 000 people really was a lifeline. Many folks did not have any other options to get around to needed services. Such as hospitals, social services, but it also was a gathering place. I remember one of our regular passengers, whose name was Lester, rode to the senior center, rode on some trips we took, and rode just for the socialization of being with friends, even met his wife on the service.

Public transportation in rural areas is very different than that sometimes in urban areas, and it faces its own unique challenges. Only about a third of rural residents have access to airline, rail, or regular fixed route bus transportation. And the travel distances to get to needed services like hospitals is very long. And in the case of hospitals, it's on average more than twice as far for a rural resident to get to a hospital than it is in an urban area.

Today, we're talking with Brandon Nurmi he is the Director of Arrowhead Transit, a public transportation system in rural Minnesota. They operate services for 10 counties there, an amazingly big service area that they cover.

Brandon has been director of the service for many years, but started out 15 years ago as a driver, and then worked his way up in the agency, moving to a dispatcher, safety and training supervisor, assistant director, and then finally director, and he also serves as a board member for the State Transit Association.

He shares with us about the challenges that not only his system faces, but also many rural systems around America, and some solutions they're finding to help provide that needed mobility to this important segment of American population. let's now join the conversation with Brandon Nurmi Brandon, great to have you with us today on the show. Thanks for being with us, my friend. Well, a pleasure to be here. so you're, the Director of Arrowhead Transit out in Minnesota. That's correct.

Yep. Arrowhead Transit. we operate in Northeast Minnesota and all along the eastern border of Minnesota all the way down to the metro area and then over to International Falls, Grand Rapids and Aiken.

And this is an important year for you all. You're celebrating your 50th anniversary. Yep, we started in 1974 with three buses and this year we've been having a lot of ribbon cutting ceremonies celebrating 50 years in service. That's awesome. What kind of things have you cut the ribbon on? so we go to, individual, our larger areas and, bring in, local, public officials and chambers of commerce, that sort of thing, and, the general public.

And then we just, you know, do a little speech and stretch it across in front of the bus and take pictures of the employees there and And then share it out. And how many communities does your agency serve? Oh boy. or counties or whatever, yeah. Yeah, so we have 10 counties, grand total that we serve. I don't even know how many communities, well over 200.

So talk to us some about that, the geographical challenges of a transit system that's operating in a big, wide, sparsely populated area. Absolutely. So, our actual service area is just over 23, 000 square miles. However Holy moly! However good portions of those, service areas are things like the Boundary Waters, National Superior, Superior National Forest, and then a lot of really deep rural areas that don't necessarily have transit service itself.

So, we operate a, Demand response dialer ride in some of the larger or higher need communities, dependent on the community is how much we put out there. and then we've got some, Department of Health and Human Services routes we do for some, disability workshops and ODCs and that sort of thing. And then we've got some, route, deviated fixed routes, that we do in between communities that we call commuter routes.

So what would you say generally are the geographical challenges that people face in the rural transit in these large, like you and I were just talking before in the green room, there's other services like OATS and others that are serving multi county. I was just in St. Louis this week and I met another agency, the same kind of thing. They cover multiple counties. It's a big service area. one of the biggest challenges we have is customizing the service to what the needs of that specific area.

The deviated routes that we offer, don't work exactly the same in each community because there's different needs in each community, and so there's no template for cut and paste and add it on when we add a community or we have to make an update to a community, and our transit advisory committees are key in, determining exactly which, which services are needed, where they need to go, and being able to provide that, backup for our funding source to show that it is an unmet

need and something that people do need. But the other big problem we have is that there are needs that public transit just can't. address, simply because there just would not be enough ridership to, to support the amount of money we would have to spend to send buses out to a 150 person community where maybe one person or two people every month might ride it. Interesting, right. So do you have riders advisory committees in each of the counties that you serve? For the most part, yes.

There's a couple of counties that we do together as their own advisory committee, but, otherwise, yes, we have nine advisory committees across our, uh, So Yeah. Yeah. I remember, not that it was a rural community, but, and at WMATA, Washington Metro, when I ran the paratransit system there for five years, there was two advisory committees.

I met with, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of our riders to tell us, you know, what we were doing wrong, mostly, and what we had to do to make it better.

you know, I've got a background in rural transit and I really understand, it, I think, well, still, tell us some more about, how important technology is to rural areas. I mean, in rural transit, it becomes, it becomes part of the key, doesn't it? It absolutely does. So, to be able to provide transit or transportation service to all of these different areas, it all comes down to, which I'm sure everybody's heard about, mobility management.

Coordinating the different types of services to be able to connect them all together so that a volunteer driver can go to this community and pick somebody up and then be able to bring them to where there are like transit services that sort of thing so Being able to coordinate all of that without the use of technology would be horrible and when you've got 109 routes and you're continuously making changes here or there or adding an hour here or removing an hour there trying

to keep track of all of that without the technology would be Impossible. And then, of course, our customers, you know, how do you keep track of who your customers are if you're not sitting in a, in an office in that area without at least some sort of a, a way to be able to, provide them the individualized service with, you know, where do you usually go and where do we pick you up?

Let's talk about volunteer programs a bit, because people in urban areas maybe aren't familiar with that, but those of us who, work in rural areas, volunteer drivers through, non profit groups are super important, aren't they? They are absolutely important. So, they've been found through multiple studies, to be the most cost effective way for providing transportation, especially in low population areas, and, the volunteers are They don't get paid anything.

The only thing they get is reimbursement if they're utilizing their own vehicle for the mileage. So, for them to be available to be able to bring people to medical appointments, provide seniors rides to social events or, services or, just anything, shopping. it's really the key especially in Minnesota, we have an aging population, our senior population is looking to increase by, I want to say it's like 20 percent over the next five years.

Wow. So, so the aging in place is really a big, topic here, and being able to allow people to have that, those transportation services, without having to move into a urban or metro area, is really important. kind of is a key for a good longevity of life and happiness of life. And where do these volunteers come from, Brandon?

it depends on the organization, but it's basically just community members, so we go out and we recruit, we talk to people, and, bring them on board, and then, we have, like, we have a medical rides program, and we go out and recruit our volunteers, and then, as we get requests from insurance companies, or, whatever, counties to, provide a ride for this person from here to there. Then our dispatchers will contact volunteers in those areas and, ask them if they're willing to take those rides.

So, Brandon, one of the things we talked about was funding and the resources that are required for public transportation in rural areas. I know here in Maryland, where I'm at, we have a program called ESTAP, the Statewide Special Transportation Assistance Program and it's dedicated funding from the state for elderly and rural and disabled transportation. Do you have something like that in, in Minnesota? Yeah, so the, the organization in Minnesota is called, the Minnesota Area of Aging. yes.

And they, they do most of the funding for, senior transportation, senior and disabled transportation outside, the normal, transits and TNC is that sort of thing. Okay. we also have a, a company called ConnectAbility here who actually pulls money directly from caddy waivers to put it on to Lyft, accounts, and then they can just utilize their transportation funding from the county, or the state to, book, Lyft rides in their community. So that's interesting.

so let's talk a little bit about the role of rural transit in community development because it is critical. Brandon, I remember back, this was quite a few years ago, but I've told the story a couple times, but when I ran the Queen Anne's County Department of Aging's transportation program, we started a local community bus system called County Ride. It was public transit run by the Department of Aging.

And, I remember one of the county commissioners telling me at a meeting, It was Commissioner Baker. He said, Paul, do you have blow up dolls on those buses? Because they always seem full, but I don't know anybody that rides it. And I said, well, you know, there are people that rely on this every day, Commissioner. And, it's critical for them to get to their jobs, not just for medical appointments and social services, but also to get to jobs.

It does play a role in community development, doesn't it? It absolutely does, yep. being able to, access employment and services, utilizing transportation that they may or may not have. has always been key for development. And additionally, a good portion of, some of the community development funding, one of the questions they asked on there is, do you have local transit, in that area?

So, having transit helps the community to get more money to be able to develop even more, infrastructure, housing, that sort of thing. And it also gives people access to health care. Do you operate non emergency medical assistance transportation as well as, you know, elderly people with disabilities and fixed route there? so not as a standalone. our, volunteer driver program is a medical rides program. Okay. So we are providing medical, transportation, utilizing, volunteers.

All over, the Northeast and, East Minnesota. in Minnesota, we call it STS. So, special transportation service. Yeah. Where special transportation services, volunteers, and public transit are exempt from those STS requirements, but can still provide those STS, rides. there are quite a few NEMT providers around the area, but they have been Slowly, closing shop and evaporating, especially in the northern area.

One of the things that people in urban areas may not understand about rural passengers is the unique nature of there not being a lot of other resources available sometimes. You know, if somebody's living in a city and they're not able to get the bus, they may be able to get a taxi cab or some other type of ride. But in rural areas, a lot of times, Brandon, there's no other options, is there? No, there absolutely isn't.

Sometimes there's the only way for a person to get to a medical appointment is by utilizing the bus. also, in the rural areas, a lot of these smaller clinics and, county offices have been closing and moving to a more centralized model. And so it becomes even more imperative, that those bus services are available to them to be able to even reach a community that has those services for them.

I think one of the other kind of, hidden benefits or aspects of public transportation in rural areas is the social connectivity. So, you know, beyond just transportation, rural transit systems can help reduce people's social isolation, can it? They absolutely can.

We, we do, service for a elderly group or elderly disabled group in Pine City, and probably four or five times a year, they will, gather up the, their, their people in that club and go to, plays in, St. Cloud or wherever, wherever the, the plays may be, and so, because we have that service available to them, some of them are in wheelchairs, some of them have walkers, we're able to, allow them to get together, have fun, go watch a play, get

some dinner, that sort of thing, rather than, you know, just sitting in isolation. Anytime we can do anything like that, it's always, it's always exciting for us. Yeah. and. One of the other things that I think is unique about an organization like yours is the partnerships that you rely on, the collaboration. Tell us about that. yep. So, we're involved in, quite a few of the regional coordination, councils.

And, with rural transit, creating the connections between each of the individual rural transit, systems, helps to expand the destinations available to the people living in those areas. we have transfer passes with, a metro system called Duluth, Transit Authority in Duluth. Yeah, sure. We have a transfer agreement with, FTL, which is, Fond du Lac, Tribal Transit outside of Colquet, where we can just hand people off, and give them access to all of the destinations that each one of us have.

And what, what plans do you have to expand in the future, Brandon? so we just got done expanding a little bit.

So, beginning of August, we began doing the in city service for Hibbing, public transit, which is, the largest, The largest city north of Duluth, so we've always done, transit around and to and from there, but not actually in, and so, being able to integrate the internal dial a ride with, Hibbing with our external services from Arrowhead Transit has been very big for us, other than that, At this point, we start asking the question, you know, how big is big enough?

So, any further expansions would be internal expansions. So, we might look at, like, a Little Fork or, something, in, like, Bram or, you know, some sort of area inside of our area that we are not already doing transit in. But as far as expanding our borders at this point, I feel pretty comfortable with where we're at. But you never can tell exactly what's going to come up and what the need is going to be. Well, it looks like you're doing a great job there, Brandon.

The work you're doing is helping the lives of thousands and thousands of people across this massive service area you have there. Thank you for sharing that with us today and for the work you're doing. was a pleasure to come on board and let you know what we were doing.

you for listening to this week's episode of transit unplugged. And our guest Brandon Nurmi. Transit Unplugged is brought to you by Modaxo . At Modaxo we're passionate about moving the world's people and at Transit Unplugged, we're passionate about telling those stories. So until next week, ride safe and ride happy.