Mountain Line: Public Transit for Everyone

Mountain Line is the Missoula Valley's zero-fare bus system that helps residents and visitors work, play and connect to their community. From electric buses to a new facility by the airport, Mountain Line is anything but stationary. This week the commissioners spoke with Jordan Hess, CEO & General Manager at Mountain Line, about how the bus system keeps Missoula rolling.

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

10-29-25 - Mtn Line_final.mp3

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:11] Welcome back to the agenda, everybody, with your Missoula County commissioners. I'm Josh Slotnick and I'm here today with my friends Juanita Vero and our special guest, Jordan Hess from Mountain Line. Our buddy and fellow commissioner Dave Strohmaier is with his son, hauling out a gigantic bull elk out there in eastern Montana somewhere. So he's not with us today, so we're just going to dive right in. Yeah, great. Thanks for having me today. Yeah. You bet. Well, when? Welcome back. I know this is not the first time. If somebody has never taken the bus before, how would you walk them through the process of finding a route and getting on the bus?

Jordan Hess: [00:00:42] You know, the first thing to keep in mind is that it is so incredibly simple. I think people, when they want to establish a new habit or try something new, they treat it as this, this big hill to climb, you know, think about your New Year's resolution to go to the gym more and and really going to the gym that first time. It's not that hard. But when you think of this, you know, I'm going to change my commute patterns or I'm going to I'm going to change my behavior. It becomes this insurmountable issue. And so the bus stop, I mean, it's as simple as locating where the bus goes, where it stops and where you want to go. We have an app that assists with that. It's called the Transit app. We have a really excellent customer service person, Bethany, who will answer your call and walk you through it. And all of our supervisors do travel training so you can call us up and say, hey, I'm trying to go from this address to that address at I need to be there by 9 a.m., how do I do it? And we'll walk.

Juanita Vero: [00:01:31] During what hours of the day can I call this number and get a human being to walk so you can get a.

Jordan Hess: [00:01:36] You can reliably get a human being, uh, Monday through Friday, say 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. but really, anytime we're opening, you most likely will get a human.

Juanita Vero: [00:01:44] Being. Fantastic.

Jordan Hess: [00:01:45] And we staff up, you know, if there's weather or if there's any anything that that causes a higher call volume, we'll make sure that we're resourced for that. So we really try to help people out. If they have a question about when the bus is coming or what stop to get off at. We try to make it as easy as possible and again, like, you know, like for someone who maybe haven't ridden the bus, it can seem intimidating, intimidating, but it's not. Our drivers are all friendly. The service is super straightforward. There's no fare to pay. So you just find the bus and you get on and and that's all there is to it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:18] And there's an app.

Jordan Hess: [00:02:18] And there's an.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:19] App that's super great, super great. So I've heard that Mountain Line is in the process of converting over to an electric fleet from a diesel fleet. Where are you guys at with that.

Jordan Hess: [00:02:28] So we are.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:29] Oh wait first, but when did you start?

Jordan Hess: [00:02:31] We started before the pandemic. We you know, actually the university got the first two electric busses in the community and we Mountain Line followed suit a few years later. We started in 2018 and we got six battery electric busses at that time. And you know, the the market has been changing a lot. There's been a lot of technical developments, a lot of technical advances. And so we decided early on that we were going to pilot a couple of different manufacturers and really see which one was the most efficient, which ones did the best in winter weather, which ones were the easiest and most and most cost effective to maintain. And we really settled on a on a single vendor out of the three that we tested. And we just took delivery of another ten battery electric busses from that vendor.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:15] Ten busses.

Jordan Hess: [00:03:16] 1010 this summer and four last fall. So so 14 in the last in the last calendar year. So we're up to 26 out of our 29 busses are electric at this point.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:25] Oh my gosh. So you only have three left.

Jordan Hess: [00:03:27] Yeah. We're so we're.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:28] So the three dinosaurs that I, you know, you run into around town that are from like the 90s, 80s.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:34] The old colors.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:35] The pale, the colors.

Jordan Hess: [00:03:36] Yeah, yeah. The oldest ones we have now are from 2009, but they, they definitely have a different color scheme.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:42] And a different odor. Yeah. Get stuck on your bicycle behind one.

Jordan Hess: [00:03:44] You know.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:45] We.

Jordan Hess: [00:03:45] Run them into the ground. I mean, we'll put we'll put well over a half million miles on them over their life. Wow. So those busses have they have, um, Seen a full life.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:54] They don't owe us anything.

Jordan Hess: [00:03:55] Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:56] Yeah. So with this, with the vendor, these busses. Does does training and maintenance come along with this? Because I imagine this is a new a new world right now. And there are a lot of skilled mechanics out there, but probably not that many that know how to do electric busses.

Jordan Hess: [00:04:09] Yeah. You know, and we we've been very fortunate. One of our longtime mechanics, Cody, has just really taken the reins on training. He's our training foreman and he has he's done a ton of research and gone to a ton of trainings and is really adept at maintaining these vehicles. I think that's the biggest thing is that, you know, his his enthusiasm and willingness to to learn the new technology has really inspired the rest of the crew to. That's fantastic to do the same, you know, at their base, you know, so they have a lot in common with the diesel bus. You know, a lot of a lot of things are very similar. Um, and then at their core, you know, there's there's a lot of things that are a lot simpler. So there's no there's no oil changes, for instance, there's no a lot of the cyclical preventative maintenance just doesn't occur on the same cycle. We replace brakes a lot less frequently because because the vehicles have regenerative braking, so they charge the batteries up with, you know, when they're stopping rather than than wearing down brakes, which are consumable part. So a lot of things like that really make for a simplified maintenance. And the busses cost more upfront. But over the life of the vehicle they cost significantly less to maintain and operate.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:15] And are we hoping to get how many decades out of each bus?

Jordan Hess: [00:05:19] So when you buy a bus with federal money, it has to last for depending on the type of bus, usually 12 to 14 years or a half million miles, whichever comes soonest. I always joke that busses are designed just like anything under warranty. Busses are designed to disintegrate on the.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:33] On the day, the.

Jordan Hess: [00:05:34] Day.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:34] After.

Jordan Hess: [00:05:35] But um, but I mean, in all honesty, we get a lot of life out of them. Our oldest busses now are from 2009. We'll keep those on the road for a while longer yet, and we just, you know, we really our team does a really good job of keeping them maintained, keeping them on the road, keeping them running.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:53] Were there any infrastructure, major infrastructure changes you had to do at the shop to accommodate this electric fleet?

Jordan Hess: [00:05:59] Yeah, so we are. We put in charging infrastructure is the biggest thing is, you know, we put in chargers for for all the busses. And right now we're maxed out with our feed coming in from the utility. So we at our current location we really can't add any additional electric bus charging infrastructure because we're, we're just maxed out without, you know, without upgrading the, the incoming feed from, from the utility. So one of the things that's on the horizon for us is this new facility that we're building with federal funds out by the airport, and that'll be that'll be our forever home, I guess, if you will. Right now we're on two, 2.2 acres. So if you come by at night, it's like a game of Tetris trying to park these busses. I mean, they're just.

Josh Slotnick: [00:06:35] One in, one out.

Jordan Hess: [00:06:36] Exactly. Yeah. And, you know, and like those, those puzzles where you have to slide the blocks around, it's not very efficient how we how we are right now, how we're stored right now. We've just outgrown our space. We've been there since the 80s. So this new facility will accommodate a significant expansion in transit service, and it will also accommodate. You know, it'll have the power supply to to accommodate a much larger electric fleet as well. It's not that sexy to to think about a bus storage facility.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:02] There's nothing more sexy like that.

Jordan Hess: [00:07:06] But, you know, the ability to store and maintain busses and to hire and train more drivers, you know, to to adequately have space for our admin staff. Everything about this facility will create a strong foundation for future growth of transit in Missoula and in the surrounding area. And so that's I think what's really exciting about this facility is that we're we're leveraging $40 million in federal funds to build a significant facility that will serve us for, I mean, truly, for decades to come.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:35] That's great. Yeah. That's great.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:37] Tell us, what's the project timeline for that?

Jordan Hess: [00:07:39] Yeah. So, um, you know, like any major construction project, it's complicated. We're actually closing on the land, possibly before this podcast hits the airwaves.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:48] Whoa. Okay.

Jordan Hess: [00:07:49] Within, uh, within a day or days, we're going to get the closing done. Wow. So that's. I mean, that's been a couple of years in the making, just acquiring the land, the big piles of dirt out by the airport with the Grant Creek relocation. That's that's where we're going to be. So, you know, the city just cut the ribbon on on that project last week. And so now our parcel exists on the other side of the creek. And it'll be, you know, much more tangible once we have the land. But we're hoping to break ground in 2026. And then it's, it's about a two and a half to three year construction project. Wow. It's a major project.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:20] I love this. The first time I met you was in when we were in DC for the build grant ask. And and I just love this kind of full circle because now you're out here where dirt's been moved, and now you're you're responsible for it.

Jordan Hess: [00:08:33] Well, and I was, you know, at the, at the city's ribbon cutting the other day. I mean, Senator Daines staffer was there and we were talking about how just, you know, the same thing we were we were standing on this exact bluff looking out over the build grant area with the Senator.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:47] And I remember that well.

Jordan Hess: [00:08:49] And now it's now it's on the ground.

Juanita Vero: [00:08:51] It's cool to see that it can happen, but people use folks generally think of the Boston, you know, errands or get to work or to school, but we have some exciting new opportunities for serving. Recreationalists.

Jordan Hess: [00:09:02] Yeah. So I guess at its base, Mountain Line and any transit system really connects people to their community. So like you said, traditionally we think about connecting people to economic opportunities, or we get veterans to work or seniors to appointments or social opportunities, or we get students to school. But Mountain Line is very different from a lot of smaller community transit systems because we've focused on making the system really livable. So we've focused on providing service that's a high quality service. There's a transit dependent population, and we're always going to do everything we can to serve our riders who rely on Mountain Line and who count on it. But there's also a segment of our community who would consider riding the bus or would ride the bus if it was convenient enough, if it was frequent enough, if if it was an enjoyable experience. An example of that. We provide service every 15 minutes on our routes one and two on weekdays all day. We provide service 361 days a year evening. Weekend, Saturday, Sunday, most holidays. We're out there providing service to the to the community. And if you think about that frequency, you know, a bus that comes every hour means that you're seven minutes late to your doctor's appointment or 53 minutes early, right.

Jordan Hess: [00:10:14] And and so along those lines of really trying to create a livable community and a community where transit is a lifestyle choice. We launched this pilot service this fall, and it just wrapped up, and it was seven weeks of service to Marshall Mountain. So we had a bike trailer that we that we pulled behind one of our busses, and it was available for people to take their mountain bike up, or to take a picnic or just to get up and hike. And it was Saturdays and Sundays from the from the Downtown Transfer Center. And the real inspiration for this. I was talking to City Parks Director Donna Gauckler some some time ago. The city used to they used to charter school busses from, you know, back in the 90s, and they would do a family programing up in Pattee Canyon. And she said that they would encounter children who lived in Missoula with the with the national forests as their backyard and had never been on the National forest. Wow. And for us, you know, we really wanted to be able to provide an opportunity for people to access recreation and to to access Marshall Mountain that wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:11] So how did it go in a seven week pilot?

Jordan Hess: [00:11:13] It went great. We had we had some incredible ridership.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:16] What were the dates? The seven weeks?

Jordan Hess: [00:11:18] It was like September 13th or so. Somewhere. Somewhere in early September through the end of October.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:23] Perfect.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:23] And imagine for this is all oriented around outdoor recreation. The weather probably played, some played a role.

Jordan Hess: [00:11:29] And what we wanted to do was test this out. We had all the pieces in place. We had the vehicles. The trailer manufacturer loaned us the trailer basically at cost. They rented it to us for a dollar plus nominal charges to deliver it to us from Washington. So the whole thing was pretty scrappy, and it was really a pilot to see what the community demand would be like. And so, you know, there wasn't a lot of promotion. There wasn't a lot of time to to really build a lot of enthusiasm for this. But we had some great ridership. I mean, we had days when we had several dozen passengers. We had days when we had very few, you know, and those were days that corresponded with snow or rain.

Juanita Vero: [00:12:01] Yeah.

Jordan Hess: [00:12:03] So I think we learned a lot. And one of our tasks over the winter will be to figure out how to sustain some community support for this and how to bring it back next year.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:10] I really like what you're saying about transit and quality of life and livability, because transit should help people get where they want to go, and sometimes they need to go to work, sometimes they need to go to school, and sometimes they want to go play. And Marshall Mountain is a county park, and it's kind of a gem of a park. And people do want to go there. Yeah. So here I want to throw you out another question that's a little bit separate from this, but kind of rhymes with it in a bit. Let's say a person is not part of the transit dependent population, and they're not getting on the bus to do any of the things we mentioned. And they might say something like, well, bus isn't really for me. It's not my deal. How would you respond to such person to show them, actually you are benefiting from having such an active and comprehensive bus system?

Jordan Hess: [00:12:55] Yeah, and it's a great point. And, you know, I like to joke that there's an onion headline that that says 95% of Americans support public transportation for other people.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:05] It's fantastic.

Jordan Hess: [00:13:06] And it's, you know, it's it's kind of it's humorous, but there's a kernel of truth to it. And, and I think part of that is that transit really does benefit us all. So if you drive in park downtown and you're able to find a parking space, that is in large part because some people are riding transit, or if you if you breathe air in our valley, the air quality is improved by the fact that some people are riding transit and and transit also is a it's just a great equalizer. You know, you might have a university faculty member riding right adjacent to someone who's going to a social service office out on Palmer. Transit's just a great equalizer within our society where you get you get people from all walks of life in the same space. And I think that's fundamentally important.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:47] It's important for our community.

Jordan Hess: [00:13:48] It is. Yeah. Regardless of whether or not someone rides the bus, there are tangible benefits to the community of of the service existing. You know, it's just like our community benefits from there being a robust fire service, even though we all hope our house will never catch fire. It's the same sort of thing where it's it's the greater good that we're all investing in. And that investment just yields.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:09] Could we say society works better when people can get to where they need to go?

Jordan Hess: [00:14:13] Yeah, absolutely. When people can access opportunity. And here's actually a really tangible way about how this impacts our businesses and our and our, you know, just our communities more broadly, the American Public Transportation Association has a statistic that is well supported with research that that every dollar invested in public transportation yields $5 in economic gain.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:32] Wow.

Jordan Hess: [00:14:33] It's one of the best returns on investment from an economic development standpoint that's available.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:37] Amazing.

Jordan Hess: [00:14:37] Well, in one piece maybe, I guess about the economic benefit is that transit vehicles that are operated or that are purchased with federal funds have to be built in America. So there's actually a depression era law called the Buy America Act that is in full force.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:48] I didn't know it was that old. I thought it was much younger. Yeah, it's depression era.

Jordan Hess: [00:14:52] Yeah, it's an old law, and it's, um, and different federal agencies interpret it differently. But the Federal Transit Administration has pretty strict Buy America requirements. So vehicles have to be made in America. Now, obviously there aren't busses being manufactured in Missoula, Montana, but there are bus parts that are made in Montana. There's a manufacturer that makes scaffolding for accessing, you know, for doing maintenance on the roof of busses that's based in Lewistown. And there's there are components that come from the area. And there's obviously, you know, the staff to support and maintain busses. Mountain Line employs 125 people from western Montana in good jobs that pay well, you know, that can support a family. And and so there's economic benefit through the employment and through the manufacturer of the vehicles. But the the real benefit comes from helping riders access their economic potential.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:39] That's fantastic. So, Jordan, I had heard that when busses charge for a ride, they don't necessarily make, and I'm saying this in quotes make money in that there's a cost to collecting money, and that zero fare could actually move you farther ahead than charging money. And Mountain Line is zero fare. You want to talk about the process of how you made that decision and how the system runs with without without this. Absolutely without fair.

Jordan Hess: [00:16:05] Yeah. So we have been zero fare since 2015. And we you know, we don't say it's free because it's not free. There's a cost of providing the service. And so there's there's zero fair. The fare is subsidized through other sources. But in 2015 we made a decision to do a three year, zero fare pilot. And that pilot program was based on getting other contributors in the community to continue or increase their financial contributions. So there were a lot of employers. Missoula County. City of Missoula. University of Montana. There were a couple dozen employers that paid for a major employer pass program. The Downtown Association participated in any MDA member could could ride for free. So there were several of these different employers and and they covered the vast majority of the cost of the fare. Most of our riders were covered by a major employer pass program. So we approached all of those partners in the community and said, hey, would you commit to paying your major employer pass program for the next three years? And we'll raise some extra money to to buy out the rest of the fare box. And so we actually raised enough money to just to just replace fares and through contributions. And we did that. We ran that program as a partnership program for several years. And in 2020, we went to the voters and said, is this something that you value? And is this something that you want to continue? And the voters, overwhelmingly, it was almost 60, 40, you know, with that mill levy ask in 2020, voted to sustain the zero fare program.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:24] When you were doing the pilot, what did you see in ridership numbers?

Jordan Hess: [00:17:27] Ridership immediately spiked by about 45% 45%.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:31] That's staggering.

Jordan Hess: [00:17:32] And it was it was almost overnight. You know, and that was accompanied with a couple of other service changes. So that was part of the picture.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:37] And it's not as if fare was expensive. There's something about not having to pay or think about having change in your pocket.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:43] Psychological.

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:44] Psychological. Yeah. Is are we on to that? What does the research say about zero fare?

Jordan Hess: [00:17:49] Yeah. I mean, do either of you have $0.85 in exact change in your pocket?

Josh Slotnick: [00:17:52] No, I have, and now I barely ever have any cash on me at all.

Jordan Hess: [00:17:56] Yeah. You know, there's been a lot of advancements in fare technology over the last decade. So there's been a lot of ways that paying fares on other systems has become more convenient. But it is still a convenience factor. And then there are also, you know, there's a lot of people for whom, you know, for whom a cash fare is a true economic barrier. So it's an opportunity for people to access the bus who who might not otherwise access it. And it's also an opportunity for for folks who can afford the fare to not have to worry about the convenience factor.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:24] Is it true to say it costs money to collect a fair.

Jordan Hess: [00:18:26] Yeah. So, you know, every fair box is basically a safe, you know, with a bunch of electronics in it. So if you were to go out and buy a bus fare box, that's not a very common purchase, I guess. But if you if you were to go out and buy a bus fare box, you'd be looking at about 30 to $50,000 per bus. So there's the cost per bus.

Juanita Vero: [00:18:43] And then the staffing of managing that fare.

Jordan Hess: [00:18:45] Box. Yeah, managing the fare box. And then there's a giant safe. You know, each of those fare boxes comes with a tool to pull the cash out and dump it into a giant safe at the facility. And then there's, you know, the staffing overhead of having a couple of people. You have to have a couple people when anytime there's cash handling for accountability. So there's there's the overhead of counting and managing that, that money. So there's a true cost to collecting fares and to counting fares. And then there's also a, there's a there's an opportunity cost of waiting at a bus stop for someone to pay a fare. So if you're waiting for, you know, all these people boarding the bus to pay a fare. We actually found that we were able to speed up our routes pretty significantly because we just people get on and we and we and we get going.

Josh Slotnick: [00:19:23] That bottleneck is eliminated.

Jordan Hess: [00:19:25] Yeah. So we serve, we cover a greater distance. We cover a greater distance in the same period of time. We serve more people. And the cost per ride, because the fare doesn't cover the full cost. So the cost per ride actually goes down with zero fare. So we're getting more efficient. And on top of that, public transportation everywhere is remarkably safe. But the one problematic trend in in public transportation and particularly bus transportation in the country, that there's been an increase in assaults on bus drivers and nearly all of those are fare disputes. So by removing the fare dispute, you remove you remove the conflict. Exactly. You remove the potential conflict anywhere you go. Public transportation is remarkably safe. But but this, you know, this little underbelly is not it's a complete non-issue here in Missoula.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:09] Wow. That's great. Thank you. Okay, well, then I have one. But when folks complain to me about the fact that they don't see busses that are full and there's only like three people on these busses, what's the best answer? I don't have a clean answer for them.

Jordan Hess: [00:20:25] Yeah. You know, I got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, and my street was empty. You know, I looked out the window. There was nobody on the street. But we don't question whether or not the street should be there, you know, or there was nobody on the sidewalk. And we don't question whether or not that infrastructure should be there. There are times of day when the bus has standing room only, and there are other times of day when people need access to the community and there needs to be a bus in service. You know, we do our best to balance that demand and to provide service when it's needed. But the reality is that there are times of day when ridership is lower. But that doesn't mean that people shouldn't be able to access the community.

Juanita Vero: [00:21:01] Thank you for that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:01] Fantastic. So, Jordan, you spoke really well about the pilot out at Marshall Mountain. If I understand right how Mountain Line also played a supportive role in the shuttle bus system that was bringing people out to Sharon? Yeah, which was a project I've been involved in. And I'm really excited to help get more cars off the road in that area. You mind talking about how this how this went?

Jordan Hess: [00:21:25] Absolutely. So UDASH has been running the river shuttle for several years now. I'm not sure. Maybe.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:30] And then they had to pause. But I think in part I'm not sure what role you guys played, but we were able to bring it back.

Jordan Hess: [00:21:35] Mountain Line stepped in and funded the shuttle this year.

Josh Slotnick: [00:21:38] Way to go. Thank you, Mountain Line and UDASH.

Jordan Hess: [00:21:41] You know, UDASHis a great partner. They do they do such great work in the university area and they've been a bit cash constrained in their operation. And and they've really had to step back and reflect what is a community benefit and what is a student benefit. And their student government leadership just decided that the river shuttle really wasn't part of their core function, but it's a great benefit to UDASH to be able to run that in the summer. It helps, you know, helps keep their busses in service. It helps keep their drivers employed. It certainly serves a lot of students. It also serves a lot of community members. And so we saw the benefit of helping, you know, it's been such a good partnership with the county and Clark Fork Coalition and, you know, all the different partners that have helped make it happen. And we just saw tremendous value in helping sustain it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:26] Oh, fantastic. Well, thanks a lot for playing that role. Absolutely crucial and really hope it continues.

Jordan Hess: [00:22:31] And thanks. And I think it's like the Marshall shuttle where providing car free access to recreation, you know, it's in line with our growth goals. Like you know we're doing all of this work and especially within the city limits, we're doing all this work to increase the diversity of housing types and to make it easier to get around. But a big part of why we live in western Montana is so that we can get out and recreate.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:50] And this type of recreation is in itself a kind of form of transit, where people go up there with an inner tube and then they take they ride the tube back to town.

Jordan Hess: [00:22:58] And it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:58] Turns out it works out really well.

Jordan Hess: [00:23:00] It turns what could what is necessarily a two car ordeal to no shuttle. Yeah. To a 0 or 1 car. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:07] It's kind of like you're the the ski lift but for inner tube.

Jordan Hess: [00:23:09] Yeah. Exactly.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:10] It brings you to where you start. Thanks a ton for being involved in that. There is a great community benefit there.

Jordan Hess: [00:23:15] Thanks. Yeah. No it's been it's been our pleasure.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:17] So what's on the horizon?

Jordan Hess: [00:23:19] Oh, we've got so much going. So you know. So the first thing that's friend of mine for us is just continuing to advance this facility. I mean, we've got we've got to get this built so that we can so that we can expand in the future. But we just completed our transit service plan this last spring. And there are several short term recommendations within that. We've made a few of those changes already. Some of them are pretty minor. The most exciting changes that we're rolling out what's going to be called the route ten, um, next, next summer. So that's a one seat ride from from downtown to the Franklin to the Fort.

Josh Slotnick: [00:23:48] And when I say one seat, what does that mean? No transfer.

Jordan Hess: [00:23:50] No transfer. Yeah. And so right now you can ride from, from Franklin to the fort to downtown, but you have to go either by the mall and the university or you have to go around through North Reserve.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:01] To direct flight.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:02] Yeah, it's.

Jordan Hess: [00:24:03] A direct flight from that, from the Franklin to the Fort neighborhood downtown, and it'll serve Wyoming and Craig Lane and and it'll really open up a lot of, you know, more of a little bit more of an east west connection as well. So that'll really complement our existing service. It'll add a higher frequency of service to an area that doesn't have it right now. That's really exciting.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:25] That's the app called again.

Jordan Hess: [00:24:27] It's called the transit app.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:28] Transit app folks.

Jordan Hess: [00:24:29] Yeah. And it's actually a nationwide or worldwide app. You can you can utilize it just about anywhere. And um, but we partner with them to, to make it available to, to people in Missoula. That information will be on the app. All of the the upcoming service changes are there like service our neutral. So we're not it's not going to cost any more. You know we're basically shifting resources around from other areas. We went in with a scalpel, you know, with real with real precision and trimmed a few trips here and there to to be able to come up with enough service hours to, to launch this new route.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:59] Oh, fantastic. So there's big changes on the horizon as you described. If people want to learn more about the progress on the new facility out west of town or new routes coming online, how to where do they go? How do they learn more about what's up with Mountain Line?

Jordan Hess: [00:25:13] We've got a couple of social media channels. We've got a we've got a great informational resource on our website, Mountain Line.com, and we're Msla bus on Instagram and on on most of our social media handles. So, you know, that's a great place to learn what's going on. We've got a new video series coming out that will showcase some of the destinations that that folks can get to in Missoula, so we're excited about that. But yeah, connect with us on social media or drop by and talk to our customer service at the transfer Center. We've got friendly people waiting to help you get on the bus.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:44] Great.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:45] Oh, I just I just downloaded the transit app.

Jordan Hess: [00:25:48] Oh, great.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:48] I'm about to.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:49] Open.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:49] It because now you can go anywhere with.

Jordan Hess: [00:25:51] You can? Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:25:51] When visiting whatever city or place you're in.

Jordan Hess: [00:25:54] Absolutely.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:54] Well, so okay, we're closing up here. Um, share with us a good book or nugget of wisdom. So film, podcast piece of poetry or music.

Jordan Hess: [00:26:04] Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to steer away from I've been reading a couple of good political books lately. I'm going to steer away from those and say that actually there is this great book that is called the Transit Street Design Guide. And it is.

Speaker4: [00:26:16] It is.

Jordan Hess: [00:26:17] Produced by the.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:18] National.

Speaker4: [00:26:19] For your job. Oh my gosh.

Jordan Hess: [00:26:21] It's produced by the National Association of City Transportation Officials and Nacto. But it is actually it is not dry.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:28] I heard last time they went to Vegas for their convention. They had to close down the city.

Speaker4: [00:26:32] Too much.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:33] Was coming. Just forget.

Speaker4: [00:26:34] About it.

Jordan Hess: [00:26:35] But it is actually, it is a design guide for designing streets that are accessible to pedestrians and transit users. You know, it sounds really dry, and so I'm not doing a great job of selling it.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:47] But is there a city that's like, incorporate some of this or like, I don't even know how to like visualize what you're.

Jordan Hess: [00:26:52] So it's like, you know, if you have a bus stop, these are the ways that you can place it so that people feel safe and they feel secure and they feel like they're part of the community. And, you know, if you use this kind of bench, it'll it'll invite more participants, you know, more.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:06] There's a common theme between all sort of physical public developments. That design is so important.

Jordan Hess: [00:27:12] Yeah, it's all about placemaking and about about how people interact with the space. And one exciting project that we have on the horizon is our bus stop improvement program, our bus stop improvement plan, and that is that if you look at if you look at some of the bus stops on route four and, you know, in Bonner and West Riverside and, you know, people have put.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:30] And the three legged stool that's.

Jordan Hess: [00:27:31] Put out there. I mean, people people...Have put lawn chairs out because there's no there's no seating. Like there's like people have adopted the bus stops and have made their own improvements to them. And and as an agency, we're following up with, you know, with seating and lighting and trash cans and amenities, shelters where they make sense. And, and so we're planning for that in order to make transit more accessible. So this design guide, actually, you don't have to be a transit nerd to, to enjoy it. It's it's pretty interesting.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:56] Oh, we'll have to check that out. That that tip and the transit app.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:01] Oh I'm excited.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:01] About big.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:02] Takeaway.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:02] Tips. Thanks a ton for coming today Jordan. It's great to see you.

Jordan Hess: [00:28:05] Thanks for all the support and thanks for having me.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:07] Thanks everyone.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:09] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:17] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:28:23] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:28:35] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:42] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:28:50] Thanks for listening.