Mountain Climber bus system to reintroduce fares

The Mountain Climber, Flathead County’s public bus system, will reintroduce $1 fares for rides after more than three years of delivering free transportation.

The decision to reintroduce fares was approved unanimously by county commissioners on June 13. It goes into effect Aug. 1.

Riders will pay the fares via credit or debit cards processed through the bus system’s on-demand smartphone dispatching app or over the phone, according to Mountain Climber Director Elizabeth Wood.

Wood said that she hopes the move will increase bus availability by reducing the number of rides. She said a growth in ridership has strained the network, and that people requesting rides through the system’s mobile application and by phone are being denied at increasing levels.

“Folks are calling in and booking on the app and getting denied due to lack of availability,” she said. “By reintroducing the fare, it will hopefully cut down on the trips.”

During a February briefing, Wood told county commissioners that the system was meeting 86 percent of ride requests, down from 94 percent.

She told the commissioners that reintroducing the fare would reduce the number of repeated rides taken by people and disincentivize riders from booking the bus for rides that “maybe don’t have to be taking place.”

Commissioner Randy Brodehl pressed Wood to describe a specific group of people that were taking multiple rides per day.

Wood replied that homeless people were riding the buses for multiple trips because they don’t have a “place to hang out.”

During her June meeting with commissioners, Wood said that rides for homeless people to and from the Flathead Warming Center, a local homeless shelter, represented about 3,500 of the system’s more than 70,000 rides recorded during that fiscal year.

Those without access to a smartphone or without a banking account will have to purchase a prepaid debit card to pay for rides. The system will no longer sell monthly passes, and Wood would not say if the system would continue to provide vouchers for low-income riders as it had prior to 2020.

Bus drivers also will no longer accept cash fares, a decision Wood said was made for the safety of the drivers.

Transportation Advisory Committee member Jane Emmert said that she was told that the move was made in part to reduce the number of people who booked rides but didn’t end up taking them. She said managing the system was akin to “juggling jello” but was concerned the decision would disproportionately affect homeless riders’ access to public transit.

“I do believe that if they have skin in the game there may be fewer no-shows, but the barrier is that people who don’t have a smartphone or minutes can’t access the app,” she said. “We’re going to have low income folks who need transport who can't access it. There needs to be a way to use cash or vouchers because it’s going to impact our homeless.”

Emmert said introducing fares because ridership was too high seemed “counterintuitive to the reason we have public transportation.”

The service had not charged for bus rides since February 2020. Wood said the decision to suspend fares was made to provide assistance to riders during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2020, the bus system transitioned from operating along a fixed route — with a supporting paratransit service for elderly and disabled riders — to an on-demand service that allows riders to select pick up and drop off times and locations.

Wood said the money collected by the reimposed fares will not go directly to funding bus service, and that the system is funded by federal dollars. She said that any money collected will be remitted to the federal government and can be used as matching funds for system upgrades.

Wood declined to say how much the bus costs to operate on a per ride basis but called the cost “significant.” The county did not respond to questions asking what percentage of the fare would be taken by the company that operates the mobile application processing the transactions.

In 2019, the last year before suspending fares, the system collected about $40,000 from riders, Wood said. She said that the total only accounted for around half of recorded rides, with the rest paid for by contracts, covered by scholarships, or went unpaid. In 2019, the service provided about 116,000 rides, according to Transportation Advisory Committee meeting minutes.

Reporter Adrian Knowler can be reached at 758-4407 or aknowler@dailyinterlake.com.

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