Other Montana cities have robust public transit systems. Why not Helena?

Just after Theresa Gardner’s clock told her Monday night had turned into Tuesday morning, she opened the phone app she uses to book rides with Capital Transit, Helena’s public bus system.

She requested a pick-up time shortly before 9 a.m. the next day to get to her part-time office job near downtown.

Gardner, 51, has cerebral palsy and uses a powered wheelchair. She doesn’t want to have to book her next-day ride in the early morning hours. But the city’s system limits when riders can reserve rides more than 24 hours in advance, and Gardner says staffing shortages sometimes cause rides to run out if she tries to book any later.

“I want to go to bed sooner than midnight,” Gardner said in a December interview.  

Waiting for the bus to arrive outside her north-side apartment on a frosty Wednesday morning in December, Gardner acknowledged that Capital Transit provides an essential service. And for people with disabilities, it’s often the only ride in town. But she and other users of Helena’s bus system say that service has significant limitations, including constricted hours and staffing crunches that impact whether rides are available at all. 

Unlike every other major city in Montana, Helena does not have a two-pronged, publicly funded transit system that features both door-to-door transportation for people with disabilities and fixed-route buses that run on regular rain-or-shine schedules. Helena has only Capital Transit, a fare-based bus and van service designed to pick up commuters — sometimes several at a time — directly from their doorsteps and ferry them to requested destinations. 

City leaders have said Helena’s budget is supporting a transit system that prioritizes people with disabilities while being accessible to everyone. But, three years after Capital Transit’s introduction of door-to-door service, users say the system is strained by existing demand, and needs an infusion of funding to expand service and increase reliability.

In a December interview, Helena’s recently elected Mayor Emily Dean, a longtime City Commission member, acknowledged Capital Transit’s shortcomings. Among other issues, the buses run only on weekdays, and generally cease service by 6 p.m.

“I think all of us want to get the system to a point where you really can get transportation at more convenient hours, consistently,” Dean said. 

Dean said the most obvious path to expanding Capital Transit’s hours or instituting a fixed-route bus system would be “transit district” funding. That strategy, deployed in Missoula and Bozeman, as well as other Montana cities, uses property taxes from homeowners and businesses in a specified area to support public transit services. 

In Helena, Capital Transit’s roughly $2 million annual budget is mostly funded by federal grants and the city’s General Fund. Dean said there is no active effort to create a transit district — a proposal that could be pushed by city officials but is typically implemented at the county level. That lack of momentum, Dean said, partly stems from uncertainty about voters’ willingness to support such a system. 

“If it is a priority of the community’s, hopefully it would be a success if it was placed on a ballot,” Dean said. “But, you know, there are obviously always competing demands about what folks are willing to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on.”

THE ROUTE TO CURB-TO-CURB

Helena’s curb-to-curb system launched in 2022, replacing the city’s previous fixed-route bus system, which transit officials had said was serving an unsustainably low number of riders. In the following years, the annual number of rides provided by Capital Transit climbed, peaking at 54,571 from 2022 to 2023. But ridership dipped to about 44,000 in the most recent fiscal year. City officials attribute the dip to driver shortages. 

“The majority of that year we were down staffing by, like, not just one or two. By almost, like, half,” said David Knoepke, director of Helena’s transportation department. “We were running there for a while with only four or five people.”

During that driver shortage, Knoepke said the department heard concerns about riders not being able to schedule a bus when they needed it. Since then, the department has moved money around to raise driver wages — from about $19 per hour to roughly $25 — and staff up its driving team without increasing the department’s roughly $1.7 million annual operating budget. 

Knoepke said the transit system receives part of its operations budget from federal grants. The remainder of the system is funded by the city’s General Fund and ticket fares paid by riders. 

As of December 2025, Knoepke said, the department was fully staffed with ten full-time drivers. 

Even with more robust staffing, the Capital Transit app has limits on when and how users can book a ride. Knoepke said the department’s call center tries to troubleshoot access issues to help people get to where they need to go, but he acknowledged that limitations on hours and routes inevitably affect users. And scheduling hurdles, he said, can create a perception that the system isn’t equipped to meet demand. 

“We’ve always contemplated extended hours during the week, and then what does weekend service look like?” Knoepke said. “I think there is a need there. We just need to try to identify a funding source for that.”

Gardner, a frequent user of Capital Transit, said the limited schedule complicates her process for attending social events and prevents her from running errands or meeting friends on the weekends. In the summer, she likes to go to Alive at Five, a free downtown music and food event that starts at 5:00 pm. If she can’t schedule a bus to transport her and her wheelchair home, that outing can be out of reach. The same goes for weekend events. If the distance, or lack of usable sidewalks, impedes her ability to travel in her powered wheelchair, Gardner said, it would be nice to be able to access public transit.

“I mean, come on,” Garnder said. “I’m not the only one in Helena, Montana, who wants to go somewhere on the weekend.”

“EITHER-OR” FUNDING PROBLEM

On a Friday morning in November, a purple Capital Transit bus bounced along Helena’s busy early morning streets, carrying 37-year-old Jacob Krissovich and his guide dog, a black Labrador retriever named Fife. 

Krissovich, who is blind, uses Capital Transit to get around town most weeks. Like Gardner, Krissovich said commuting on his own schedule would be significantly easier if Capital Transit rides could be scheduled on the same day a ride is needed. Another option, Krissovich said, would be for the city to re-establish a fixed-route bus system that runs on a reliable schedule — a backup option for when he wasn’t able to book a pick-up from Capital Transit in advance. 

As it currently stands, Krissovich said, his best transit option is also his only option.

“There’s no alternative,” Krissovich said. 

City officials say the current budget can support just one version of a transit system — not additions or expansions. 

The either-or funding dilemma applies to other infrastructure challenges that affect disabled residents, Krissovich reflected. The city also has limited funds for fixing crumbling sidewalks, modifying curbs to accommodate wheelchairs, and installing sidewalks where none currently exist — critical pathways for disabled residents to commute around Helena.

On that front, Krissovich said he and other disability rights advocates support some kind of local tax policy that can raise money to install and replace sidewalks in specific neighborhoods — a “sidewalk district” strategy that would operate similarly to a transit district funding an expanded bus system. 

On both issues, Krissovich and others said, improvements won’t happen without a new funding source. Dean, the city’s new mayor, agreed that the city’s budget currently can’t cover wide-ranging existing needs.

“There are lots of competing interests. And our General Fund is limited,” Dean said. “Do we want to invest more money into, for example, funding our sidewalk loan program to improve connectivity there? Or do we want to invest more General Fund dollars into expanding our transit services?”

Scott Birkenbuel, the CEO of Ability Montana, a nonprofit that advocates for independence for people with disabilities, said that other Montana municipalities, including Bozeman, have created new revenue streams by establishing transit districts and other tools that draw funds from a regional tax base.

“In our service area here in Bozeman, we just finally grew to the point where they have an urban transit district, which unlocks a lot more funding,” Birkenbuel said. 

That model could help the public transit system grow to connect rural residents around Bozeman to services in the city, including health care appointments. Many people, including those with disabilities or with routine medical needs, are “transportation dependent,” Birkenbuel said. “They have no other way to get into [the city]. And their life depends on it.”

Dean said there are positive indications that Helena might be poised to embrace creative ways to fund public transit systems and improve citywide accessibility for residents with disabilities. She said she’s pleased that Capital Transit ridership is rising, and that the City Commission voted in 2025 to put more money toward a loan program that helps homeowners replace sidewalks in front of their houses — an effort to tackle a backlog of properties waiting for new infrastructure.

“It just highlights that there is a demand,” Dean said. “But if we want systems that are maybe similar to Missoula’s or Bozeman’s, we’d have to put it to the voters to make those considerations. I don’t know where the community is on that yet.” 

Knoepke, the transportation director, had a more blunt way of describing the political cost of pushing for an expanded bus system. New transit districts could be an option, Knoepke said. “But that’s all additional money on everybody’s tax bill.”

This article was updated Feb. 20, 2026, to correct descriptions of Capital Transit’s funding sources and ride-scheduling policy.