The Columbia City Council convened on October 22, 2025, to review a comprehensive transit study presented by the Columbia Metropolitan Transportation Authority (COMO). The meeting focused on assessing current transit capacity, stakeholder preferences for future service expansion, staffing challenges, and a four-tier implementation plan ranging from baseline operations to a near-24/7 system. Key discussions centered on the necessity of secure funding, the recruitment of drivers amidst a national shortage, and strategic partnerships with the University of Missouri.
Got it before. So then we dig into your capital infrastructure. Um, you guys have an amazing transfer station. The buses are actually in really great condition, but we looked at your shelters, um, your polls. What can we do out at the shelters to make them more attractive to bring amenities so that we protect our people when they're out waiting for the bus to come? So you have an inventory in your report of your existing um capital pieces. Then, of course, we look at ridership. This is the number one thing that all transit managers look at. Um you can see the trends on the top left. We went back to 2015 to the old study. Um, there is a dip in ridership for uh the COVID era, which every transit agency in the United States had had that craziness happening. Also, what's a little bit unique is you guys um typically have your highest ridership in late summer and fall. Um, there's a dip in the winter months, which is also not a shocker with bad weather, people just don't go out as much. Um, but for 10 years, five years, that trend has been the same. You know what I mean? So planning on that in the future, you know your biggest ridership is going to be in that fall, and making sure that we plan appropriately when that happens. Before I go into goals, any questions you guys just about this first data that were in the report. All right, we're gonna keep tracking here then. So every plan starts out with goals and objectives. Um the biggest uh message that we heard from the PTEC from the Commonweagement is we need to make sure we get out to our community, we need to listen to our members, we need to listen to our people that use our service. So we um old council, we were here interviewing you. It was a long time ago, but um, you guys are a big piece of this, you represent your neighborhoods and your groups, and so we're very grateful for the time. Um, we had many, many stakeholders. We were also out at the transfer station. We had open houses, and you know, truly it's it's wonderful to see that the community is very involved in Columbia. We work in some areas where they're not, and so it's really great that they come out. Sometimes they have a lot to say, sometimes they just want to hear what's going on, and you definitely get a mix, but the main thing is they care about their service, and that's what we care about. Uh planning priorities. So when we talk to our community to our stakeholders, some of the main questions that we wanted to share just as a summary is number one says, How what do you think is more important? A or B. A is run buses more frequently on existing routes, and B add or extend routes to new destinations. And remember, when this study was going on, we had moved from 45 minute headways to 90 headways. So it's not a surprise that there was a strong preference for people just to have more frequent bus service. We anticipated that, but it certainly is what we heard from the folk. Number two, um, we gave another comparison, serve as much of Columbia as we can, or um concentrate in high ridership areas. Um this one kind of scored in the middle. So some people do want more, but some people were okay just looking at the core of Columbia. Uh, the third call out we just wanted to talk about mentioned was add more service during the peak period. So we're busiest in the morning and the afternoon, or add more service during the off-peak time and the nights and the weekends. Now, this one a little bit different is there was a very strong preference for people to have service in the evening and on the weekends. Um that's a very common response with many transit studies, but when you guys have had a major change from 45 minutes to 90s, we didn't know where that was going to shake out when we went out to the community. Yes, ma'am. How many? How many people did you have participating in this? Ooh, I don't know. I might have to get back with you. I mean, I can easily say from council to stakeholders to people that were at the open house. I could at least say we had a hundred from different that there were many over several different times. Um, but I say a hundred at each event with feedback, but I do know we went out for surveys too, and it was well, you know, well above a hundred, but just off the top. I can get you an exact answer on another day, but sorry, I don't know what off the top of my head.