Ideas for Rural Transit Day Celebrations
Get Ready for Rural Transit Day!
- Take the Rural Transit Day Pledge to show your commitment to rural transit. It's on our Rural Transit Day webpage.
- Participate in our #RuralTransitDay Chat. It's on July 16 from 2:00-3:00 PM ET. If Rural Transit Day falls on a weekend, the chat will be held on the Friday before.
- Honor your staff. Send them a Rural Transit Hero card (downloads available on our webpage), surprise them with a special meal or snack, or have staff nominate others to win a Rural Transit Day award (share their story on your social media - if you tag us socially, we will enter them in a contest).
- Honor your riders. Make Rural Transit Day fare-free, invite local celebrities, musical performers, or elected officials for a ride-along, or give riders a special small giveaway.
- Partner with a local school, library, or recreation department to host a Touch-a-Bus event, hold an art contest for young riders to draw the bus or driver (and showcase these proudly), or have a transit career info session where drivers, mechanics, dispatchers, etc., can talk about what the job entails.
- Schedule a special ride or route on Rural Transit Day to somewhere in your town people would like to go (a park, farmer's market, beach, concert, etc.).
- Write an article and take a photo about something wonderful that your agency has done recently and submit it to National RTAP. We'll post it in our social media and/or newsletter. We can also interview you and write an article. Contact us at info@nationalrtap.org.
- Use our social media infographics toolbox and countdown clock to post on your website and social media. They are available on our webpage.
- If you'd like to buy an official Rural Transit Day t-shirt, contact us and we will let you know where they are sold.
- State DOTs or RTAPs can ask their subrecipients to all do something special to celebrate Rural Transit Day.
- Print and/or publish your Rural Transit Day Proclamation. Contact your elected official and ask them to proclaim Rural Transit Day. Invite the media and photograph or film the signing to share the proclamation. We have included a downloadable Rural Transit Day Proclamation Template on this page that you can use.
- We started a Rural Transit Day time capsule. Last year we collected bus passes. Thank you to all who sent them to us. This year we are collecting bus tokens. If you have one that you can send to us, please mail it to Cara Marcus, National RTAP, 5 Wheeling Avenue, Woburn, MA 01801. When we fill the time capsule, we will announce when we will open it.
A program of the Federal Transit Administration administered by the Neponset Valley TMA
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