Rural Transportation in Central Illinois

The above map shows the network of service provided by SHOW BUS, a rural transit agency in Central Illinois.

POI data downloaded from the USGS Structures dataset , and queried in QGIS 3.6.3. Post offices, hospitals, and government offices are used in this project as convenient stand-ins for the sort of destinations people may need to access via rural transit.

Transit data collected by entering SHOW BUS route information from the agency's website into a series of tables following the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS). Rural transit networks like that operated by SHOW BUS are difficult to map. There are no fixed stops or routes, no GTFS data, and routes often operate on-demand. However, enough regularly-scheduled connections between towns occur that it is possible to use census places as a surrogate for stops and create a rough visualization of how this transit network connects the communities it serves.