The National Rural Transit Assistance Program (National RTAP) has published a new report that highlights a path to unified data standards for rural, Tribal and small urban transit agencies.

According to the report, the systems used to run demand-response transportation (DRT) were designed to assist each other, and that while many rural agencies have general public DRT, a rider’s eligibility, trip history and service options can’t move freely between systems the way they should to efficiently provide necessary transportation services. 

The report notes the solution is a shared digital rulebook, as DRT standards allow different software to talk to each other automatically, each serving a different function. 

The authors of the report—Flexlynqs President and CEO Santosh Mishra, National RTAP Technology Tools and Community Grants Project Lead Al Benedict and AICP Independent Consultant Jana Lynott—note DRT serves different types of riders and services. Examples in the report include a dialysis patient with Medicaid coverage, a senior using a volunteer driver program, a college student hailing an on-demand van and a person with a disability using ADA paratransit. All those services depend on demand-response transportation. Their trips are funded differently, managed differently and operated with different rules.  

The report says that from a rider’s perspective, a trip has seven stages (apply, plan, compare, book, pay, ride, modify) and from the agency’s side, those same seven stages look like enrollment and eligibility verification, publishing service information, scheduling, routing and dispatching a vehicle, processing payment and claims, executing the trip and logging trip information for compliance reporting. The two perspectives run in parallel, but most existing standards were designed to serve only one side. 

According to the report, one of the most immediately useful things a small agency can do to make its service visible is to use trip-planning apps. The General Transit Feed Specification-Flex (GTFS-Flex) standard was formally adopted in 2024 and is now supported by apps like Transit, Moovit, open trip planner and planning tools used by state 511 systems. GTFS-Flex lets agencies publish its service areas, schedule windows and booking contact information in a format those apps can read. Riders searching for transportation see the service listed, not just fixed-route bus lines. States such as Vermont, Maine, Minnesota, Washington and others have agencies already using it. 

The report notes the Transactional Data Specification (TDS) for DRT, developed through the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP), is the standard designed to let different agencies and vendors exchange trip information electronically. Instead of calling the neighboring county to hand off a trip, an agency’s scheduling and dispatching platform using TDS can adhere to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and send and receive trip requests automatically.  

The National Emergency Medical Transportation Accreditation Commission (NEMTAC) is the only nationally accredited standards body focused specifically on non-emergency medical transportation. The report says that for agencies operating Medicaid, Veterans or other funded medical trip programs, using NEMTAC’s common definitions in vendor contracts and interagency agreements reduces disputes, simplifies audits and better positions agencies as DRT transactional standards mature. 

General On-Demand Feed Specification (GOFS) is a consumer technology industry-driven, incrementally developed open standard convened by MobilityData, an open standards development organization. The report details that GOFS is in early use by a multimodal mass market consumer journey planning application and transportation systems, including Pace On-Demand, Freebee Miami, and Taxi Montréal. GOFS displays microtransit and ride-hailing options, which is helpful for agencies looking to improve information on DRT in consumer journey planning applications.  

The full report can be found on National RTAP’s website.