MISSOULA — Mountain Line managers say they're going to have to scale back from hours of service to keep drivers and passengers safe during the expanding COVID-19 outbreak.
But they still plan on keeping buses on all the regular routes.
Mountain Line has had an aggressive program in place to disinfect all the buses in service multiple times per day. And that will continue. But the transit agency is announcing that effective Thursday, it will scale back some service hours to limit the amount of time drivers have to "spend in the public space".
That means fixed route, and paratransit service will run from 6:45 am to 7:15 pm until further notice. Buses will continue to run on all current routes. However, regular routes that normally have service more often than 60-minutes could see wait times of 45-minutes.
Paratransit schedules will remain the same, but with the shortened day.
Mountain Line has taken one van and set it aside for emergency service. The agency is still asking people to avoid using the bus if they have symptoms of the virus.
