Rural areas are not the typical focus of urban planners. But reaching essential destinations is no less important for rural Minnesotans, who make up a fifth of the state’s population and include many people who cannot drive for age-related, economic, or other reasons. The daily travel needs of rural residents may involve driving long distances and having fewer choices. But is this stereotype of a lower level of access to essential destinations justified, or does access vary depending on location and type of destination? What range of travel options really do exist?
As part of the Center for Transportation Studies' "Rural Needs, Statewide Answers" 2024 focus, researchers at the Accessibility Observatory (AO) sought to answer these questions, examining access to essential destinations—in this case, high schools, food retailers, and trauma centers—in rural communities across Minnesota. By investigating travel opportunities, they gained insights into how access differs by destination and region, shedding light on the unique challenges and opportunities that rural residents face.
Their research is presented in an online storymap, “What’s Local in Rural Minnesota?,” now available through the Accessibility Observatory website.
Access, also referred to as accessibility or access to destinations, refers to how easy it is for travelers to get to the places they value or need to go. Access depends on several factors, including the starting place, type of destination, available transportation infrastructure (such as roads, bike paths, and public transit service), trip length, and time of day.
According to the US Department of Agriculture, around 20 percent of Minnesotans—or more than 1.2 million people—live in a county classified as rural, and rural areas comprise most of the land area in Minnesota. So rural areas, while less densely populated, are home to a substantial and diverse segment of Minnesota's population and infrastructure. In these communities, access to essential destinations plays a crucial role in daily life, economic stability, and overall well-being. To quantify rural access, the AO researchers used data and methods from the National Access Evaluation project, in which travel times are calculated from every census block in the country to many different destination types. To represent a cross-section of essential destinations in the study, the team chose to focus on high schools, grocery stores, and trauma center hospitals.
High schools serve as a proxy for educational access, a key factor in long-term economic opportunity and community development. Unlike those in urban areas, rural students often experience longer travel times to access a school. In addition, many rural areas have limited access to fresh and affordable food, contributing to “food deserts” in which residents must travel long distances to reach a grocery store. Finally, rural residents often face significantly longer response and transport times to access life-saving emergency care compared to urban populations, making trauma access a key indicator of health care equity.
Using fine-grained travel time data, the AO researchers demonstrated widely different access metrics throughout rural Minnesota depending on travel mode, destination, and rural context. For instance, in evaluating travel to high schools, auto access was found to be high, with most district public schools reachable in under 10 minutes by car for a typical resident. This is true in urban and rural areas alike. But in evaluating the options for the large number of high schoolers who cannot drive themselves, structural differences arose. Among them, students in rural areas require approximately twice the time to bike to the nearest high school via safe routes as their urban counterparts. The researchers showed that investments in safer routes to school could save substantial travel time (12–13 minutes on average), but would still require the typical rural student to bike more than twice as long as urban students.
A larger geographic difference was apparent in access to groceries. The researchers used travel time by walking, since that captures the connection between people and their destinations, regardless of whether they are able to own and operate a car. For destinations, retail locations participating in the USDA SNAP program were used, since these met requirements for produce and other nutritious foods. Contrary to the rural stereotype, typical residents in places such as Cottonwood and Watonwan Counties in southern Minnesota had the same or better walking access to groceries as a typical resident of the urban metro counties of Ramsey and Hennepin. The reason for this stems from the concentrated development patterns that resulted from railroad-oriented development in the late 19th century—still reflected in these towns today.
In contrast, many residents of counties across central and northern Minnesota cannot reach a food retailer within a 60-minute walk. This stark contrast highlights not only regional disparities but also differences in the geography—existing lakes and rivers, for example—resulting in more dispersed development patterns.
In the final destination investigated by the AO researchers, access to critical trauma care was measured by estimating response time to a hypothetical crash occurring at each mile marker in the state highway system. Trauma centers provide life-saving emergency care when every minute matters—especially for victims of car crashes and other accidents. Estimates were combined from two travel times: the travel time from an EMS facility to the crash site, and the subsequent trip to the nearest trauma center hospital. The researchers found that EMS travel times from ambulance depot locations to a crash were typically 20–30 minutes, excepting some more remote northern Minnesota origins. But travel time from the site to the nearest trauma center varied widely.
Taken together, the findings of the research emphasize that not all rural areas are alike when it comes to access— especially for travel by modes other than driving. Infrastructure matters, especially for access by bike to schools and groceries. And in certain areas, residents are more vulnerable to injury or death from car crashes because of the relatively low access to immediate trauma care. These results highlight the need for targeted interventions tailored to specific community needs so that rural Minnesotans can reach essential destinations more equitably.
—Eric Lind, Accessibility Observatory director
