Research and analysis

Rural Mobility Fund phase 1 evaluation: final report

Summarises lessons learnt, operation and performance of the demand responsive transport pilots in rural and suburban areas to date.

From:
Department for Transport
Published
17 December 2025

Applies to England

Documents

Rural Mobility Fund phase 1 evaluation: final report

PDF, 3.42 MB, 120 pages

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Details

The Rural Mobility Fund (RMF) provides funding to local transport authorities (LTAs) to trial demand responsive transport (DRT) in rural and suburban areas of England.

DRT is a flexible service that provides shared transport to users who can specify their desired location and time of pick-up and drop-off. The RMF pilot schemes all offer passengers a mobile booking app and use technology to schedule and route vehicles to optimise service efficiency.

The report documents findings from phase 1 of the RMF programme evaluation. It presents lessons learnt from process evaluation and uses monitoring data to describe operation and performance of the pilot schemes to date.

The evaluation was conducted by the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol).

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Published 17 December 2025

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