Just as we promised in 2016.  We use these funds to provide evening and weekend service as well as service to new growth areas.  We also use these funds to purchase vehicles to keep service moving.

Here's the breakdown:

$456,500 funding to replace loss of county contribution

$500,000 per year for new vehicles

$1.2 million to maintain evening and weekend service and to provide service to newly developing areas

For the owner of a home with an assessed value of $160,000, the levy would cost $35.20 a year – $2.93 a month. Keep in mind, the levy cost depends on the assessed value of your property, so the answer varies.  

Want to calculate your rate?

Here are the presented rates for the Transit Levy, these rates are per one hundred dollars of assessed valuation of property.

Class I           1.10 cents

Class II          2.20 cents

Class III         4.40 cents

Class IV        4.40 cents

Example for Class II:

Class II is all property owned used and occupied by the owner, exclusively for residential purposes.  In this example the property assessed value is $160,000.

$160,000 X.00022 = $35.20/year or $2.93/month

To get your assessed property value or for help with calculating your taxes you can contact the Monongalia County Assessors Offic or visit them online at https://www.assessor.org/

Raising the fare from $.75 up 33% to $1.00 would raise about $60,000 in funding. The cost to run the Blue Line for example is about $242,000 so a reasonable increase in fares isn't going to cover the costs needed to provide service.  

When fares are increased it also has a negative effect on ridership.  A study by the American Public Transit Association states that for every 10% increase in bus fares it results in a 4% decrease in ridership.  

Mountain Line will be forced to cut nearly 41,500 hours of service.  The system will revert to pre 2016 levels, typically the routes will run Monday through Friday 8am - 5pm with limited weekend service.  Service to the new growth areas will also be cut such as West Ridge, Mylan Park, Fort Pierpont, Wadestown, and Suncrest Town Center.

In addition, our vehicle replacements will need to be smaller, lighter duty vehicles that will at times be over capacity, leaving people standing at the curb.

Simply put – the buses aren’t always empty. Like any business, transit service has busier and slower times. If you go to a popular restaurant at 3 pm in the afternoon, it probably isn't full. But at 6 pm on a Friday night, you’ll need a reservation. We deal with the same issues - we frequently leave passengers standing at the curb because the bus is full. Some routes are standing room only on a regular basis. We aim to remain highly efficient by using different size buses on different routes, based on capacity. 

Our partnership with WVU certainly makes up a large chunk of our ridership. The University funds the entire cost of three routes, the Blue and Gold, the Valley View, and the Campus PM late night buses. In addition to footing the bill for those routes, any other WVU rides (on any other route) are paid for by WVU at the exact same cost ($0.75 cents) as everyone else. WVU is already paying its fair share.

Mountain Line already runs one of the most efficient systems in the state. We have the best cost recovery, and the lowest cost per passenger trip in the entire state. During our first 19 years we managed to grow our number of passenger rides by 350% and our service hours by 40% – and all with little to no increase in local funding.  Since the first transit levy passed in 2016 we've provided a 57% increase in service while maintaining the same levels of efficiency. 

Local residents use Mountain Line to make over 600,000 trips a year to jobs, stores, healthcare, appointments, and schools throughout Monongalia County. Major employers like WVU, healthcare providers, restaurants, retailers and many other businesses rely on us to transport workers and customers. National studies have shown that every $1 invested in transit returns $5 to our local economy. 

As for privatization - public transit exists because private transit operators went out of business across the country in the late 60's and early 70's. Transit service is subsidized across the United States without exception through a combination of local, state, and federal funding. 

Mountain Line will be the first excess levy on the ballot. 

Click here to view sample ballots on the County Clerks Website. (Coming soon)

Mountain Line Transit is funded by Federal Grants and local subsidies such as the City of Morgantown, West Virginia University, West Run Apartments, Morgantown Community Resources, Operation Welcome Home riders of Mountain Line through fare collection and since 2016 the county property tax levy.

The Federal Grants require local match in funding in order to draw them.  Typically operating grants are 50% federal funds and a 50% local match and capital (vehicles and infrastructure) are 80% federal and 20% local match.  The local subsidies including the levy allow us to use a larger portion of the available federal funding.