Achieving mobility is more difficult for people living in small and rural communities, particularly for those who have little or no access to a personal vehicle. This study investigates the transportation experiences of people with limited or no vehicle access living in small and rural communities. Using qualitative interview data with residents of the Northeast Kingdom, a largely rural region of Vermont, and rural towns and small cities that serve rural areas of the San Joaquin Valley in California, we evaluate the connection between mobility, wellbeing, and quality of life in rural U.S. communities. Through thematic analysis, we find that owning a vehicle and having the resources to maintain and operate it are important determinants of mobility. Living in a town center and leveraging social connections can also support mobility. Many people without their own car still primarily get around by car, by getting rides. Some also rely on transit, walking, biking, and hitchhiking. Securing consistent vehicle access is difficult for many due to high maintenance costs, the unreliability of less expensive vehicles, and a lack of access to local mechanics. Collectively, these experiences have major quality of life impacts through missed trips for social connection and healthcare, among others. Strategies to improve rural mobility and accessibility include increasing affordable housing in small town-centers, expanding access to essential services in rural population and activity centers, expanding individual and shared vehicle access, formalizing informal community ride networks, and expanding on-demand transit services.

Fast-moving wildfires pose significant challenges to evacuation, especially for transportation-insecure households with limited access to personal vehicles. The January 2025 Los Angeles fires marked a rare and alarming shift in wildfire events: blazes spread into highly populated urban areas across Los Angeles County, forcing tens of thousands of residents in the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and parts of Hollywood communities to flee with little notice. Smoke from the fires created widespread health risks, especially for transit riders and people with preexisting health conditions. Yet because no-notice wildfire events have seldom struck urban areas, little is known about how people without reliable access to vehicles evacuate — or the health challenges they face when doing so.

In response, this policy brief highlights key findings from a survey conducted through the Transit app in February 2025, collected among transit riders who did and did not evacuate. By centering the experiences of Los Angeles’s transit-riding populations amid unprecedented wildfire smoke and mobility disruptions, the findings offer urgent evidence to inform equitable, health‑conscious emergency and evacuation planning for cities across the United States facing future climate-exacerbated wildfire threats.

We explore how perceived access to destinations supports broader human capabilities such as play, health, joy, and wonder. Drawing on Nussbaum’s (2011) framework, we surveyed over 1,400 residents of Melbourne, Australia, asking whether their neighbourhoods support their capabilities “to do or be” in 26 aspects of life. We then applied a structural equation model to examine the interrelationships between demographics, perceived access, observed access (walkability and transit), activity participation, and life satisfaction. The models show that being male, owning a vehicle, and having more friends nearby are associated with higher perceived access, while financial difficulties and disability predict lower perceived access. Although walkability and transit access have a small negative direct association with life satisfaction, they exert positive indirect and total effects through increased perceived access and activity participation. These results underscore that accessibility—particularly as it is perceived—plays a meaningful role in individual well-being.

Wildfire evacuations are expected to increase, including evacuations from fast-moving wildfires. Risk perception is an important element that determines evacuee decision-making. However, research has not looked at perceptions of safety while evacuees are on their evacuation route. This study addresses safety perceptions while evacuating, and specifically asks what personal, built environment, and evacuation factors contribute to feelings of safety during a wildfire evacuation? Using post-disaster survey data from the 2018 Camp Fire evacuation, we build an ordered logit model which estimates perceived safety as the outcome, accounting for several factors including evacuee proximity to the oncoming wildfire, socio-demographics, evacuation decision-making, and traffic conditions. The results show that later departure timing, shorter travel time, and pre-planning for evacuation routes and destinations to be associated with increased safety while on the evacuation route. These findings have important implications for emergency planning for wildfires, including fast-moving wildfires as well as evacuation modeling for these events. This research is a valuable first step in understanding perceived safety of evacuees while on their evacuation route and modeling evacuee decision-making while on their evacuation route.

In early 2025, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) presented new criteria for discretionary funding prioritization based on marriage rates, birth rates, and compliance with Federal immigration policy. This policy diverges from the previous equity and justice-focused prioritization. We analyze how the new DOT policy will affect discretionary transportation spending priorities across geography, sociodemographics, transportation burdens and barriers, and voting lines. The new 2025 DOT policy shifts funding priorities towards white, Trump-voting areas and away from Black, Latino, and lower-resourced populations and those experiencing higher travel burdens and barriers.