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Eagle Transit curtails service due to COVID-19

by JEREMY WEBER
Daily Inter Lake | September 28, 2020 12:54 PM

Area commuters will be forced to use Eagle Transit’s “on demand” service to get around for at least the next few weeks as the Flathead County public transit provider announced Monday it will be shutting down its routes due to COVID-19 concerns.

According to Eagle Transit Transportation Manager Tom Schneider, the red, green and orange lines in Kalispell and all service in Columbia Falls and the Tri City Commuter will be canceled starting Tuesday in favor of Eagle Transit’s “on demand” system, where riders can make an appointment for transportation.

The move comes after a person who has tested positive for COVID-19 was found to have been on one Eagle Transit’s buses, but Schneider stressed that the person was not on a bus that was delivering service to the general public. Schneider could not confirm if the person was a driver or a passenger and said Eagle Transit was already preparing to make the move to appointment-based rides before the positive case was detected.

“We are going to move all of our drivers over to the on-demand service at this time because we are not sure how COVID is affecting our drivers at the moment. We are not sure how many we are going to have available, but we will have more information in the coming days,” Schneider said. “It may be inconvenient for some, but people will still be able to get good service from the on-demand system. We will be putting the other routes back in service as we can, but for right now we will have to stick with the on-demand rides.”

Public transportation service will be available to the general public, older adults and people with disabilities through the on-demand appointment-based system, just as it was at the outbreak of the COVID pandemic in March and April.

For more information about the changes, the public can visit Eagle Transit’s website at flathead.mt.gov/eagle or call the Eagle Transit Dispatch office at 758-5728.