Rural Needs, Statewide Answers: SMART Transit
This video highlights Southern Minnesota Area Rural Transit (SMART) and features SMART’s overnight demand-response service in Austin — known informally as “the work route” — which is unique among rural Minnesota communities.
The work route, which primarily serves second- and third-shift employees, operates from around 9:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.; a second run serves customers from 5 to 7:30 a.m. Many of its riders work at the Hormel Foods Austin Plant and neighboring Quality Pork Processors, but others use the cost-effective service for door-to-door transport between their homes and employers such as a local printing company, retailers, restaurants, and other businesses that operate later in the evening or overnight.
SMART was formed in 2014 when rural transit agencies serving Freeborn, Mower, and Steele Counties consolidated (service in Waseca County was added in 2016). The overnight Austin service predates SMART by about a decade but has been maintained in some form ever since—even through the COVID-19 pandemic, which was an immense hardship for public transit agencies nationwide.
Kirk Kuchera, SMART’s transit manager, shares his understanding that the origins of the work route involved coordination with and support from a number of major local employers and the local business community. Keeping it running, though, requires the exceptional effort of SMART employees like night work-route driver David Holder who are motivated by service to their community. The story of the work route holds lessons from which other rural Minnesota areas could potentially benefit.
Read more about rural transit and the CTS Rural Needs series at https://www.cts.umn.edu/ruraltranspor....