We should embrace informality in transit.

According to data from this project, informal transit is abundant in Appalachia and presumably other rural and working-class regions. Informal transit should not be cause for punitive measures or decreases in agency-provided service; “formal” and informal networks have been shown to complement each other. For that reason, agencies should study, embrace, and interface with informal transit in order to more effectively fill transit gaps in rural communities. ‘Revving Up Rural Public Transit’ by The American Prospect discusses this process. Additionally, communities with active informal transit networks should be mindful that informal arrangements are sometimes unsafe or uncomfortable for certain marginalized groups, namely people with disabilities. Formal and informal networks each serve vital roles in a community’s range of mobility resources, and each must be aware of the other to effectively partition roles.