Deviated Fixed Route

Deviated Fixed-Route Best Practices

Moving from Demand Response to a Deviated Fixed-Route Best Practices

January 2019

In 2016, as part of National RTAP’s direct technical assistance program, a service evaluation, and planning study of Wabash County Transportation in Wabash, IN was conducted and resulted in the Wabash County Service Evaluation Report. The goal of the project was to identify the most effective and feasible rural public transportation options for Wabash County residents. Moving from a demand response system to a deviated fixed-route system was one of the service improvement options evaluated in the study.


This Best Practices Spotlight article, based on the study conducted by RLS & Associates for National RTAP and additional references, provides best practices to assist rural transit providers as they explore service options related to moving from demand response to a deviated fixed-route system. First, background information is provided on Wabash County Transit. The next section presents best practices for evaluating current service and developing recommendations, followed by a summary of considerations to make when contemplating a transition from demand response to a deviated fixed route. Finally, two examples of deviated fixed-route services are provided with additional resources on this topic and examples from the Wabash study.


This Deviated Fixed-Route Best Practices Spotlight article will cover best practices from three rural transit agencies in different parts of the country. This article is longer than most of our articles so we are providing it as a PDF.

Thank you to the following three agencies for participating in this article:

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