Abstract
The Quaboag Valley Community Development Corporation (QVCDC) is partnering with local and state organizations and community members to implement the Quaboag Connector: Solutions for Rural Transportation. Funded by The Health Foundation of Central Massachusetts and developed through a Design Thinking process that elicited authentic community involvement, this project reflects community members’ need for a rural transportation system for travel to destinations for social determinants of health activities such as healthcare and employment.
The CDC’s Health Impact Pyramid shows that interventions with the greatest impact on health target conditions at the community level where people live, work, play, pray, and age. The National Advisory Committee on Health and Human Services recognizes the important role transportation plays in improving health and wellbeing in rural communities.
The pilot aimed to include both fixed-route shuttle and demand-response options, as well as support for accessing transportation resources via a call center and app (Ecolane). The Quaboag Connector Leadership Team includes representatives from the Towns of Ware, Belchertown and Palmer, a community resident, and experts from UMass Medical School at Baystate, Baystate Health, MassDOT/MBTA, MassMobility and Brandeis University. The project also links with the Quaboag Region Coordinating Council to further public transportation opportunities in the region.
Services are available to residents in the Quaboag region, with a specific focus on: older adults, residents with disabilities, and low-income residents. During the pilot, QVCDC’s goals were to improve the Quaboag Connector demand response service, adopt the Ecolane app and improve the operations center, and establish and test a new Route 9 fixed-route service.
The Quaboag Connector served 264 riders during the 2021 pilot year and provided 9,045 passenger trips. Quaboag Connector trips in the last quarter of 2021 exceeded comparable quarters in all earlier periods since 2017, demonstrating a need for rural transportation services. QVCDC partnered with the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority to develop the Amherst to Worcester inter-city bus route, the Town of Palmer to launch the Palmer Rides to Work program, and Bay State Medical to launch the Quaboag Health Connector. The Population-based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) program on the UMass Chan Medical School Baystate Health regional campus supports the initiative with student advocacy focused on transportation as a social determinant of health. With its collaborators, QVCDC is working to build the path to rural equity. The next steps of this effort should include robust implementation of a fixed-route service and continued community input.