NTD ID 80235 · Reduced Reporter

Galavan / Streamline

Galavan / Streamline carried 185,020 boardings in FY2025 at $16.41 per ride and $16.38 in subsidy per ride. Ten years of NTD data, by mode.

Bozeman, MT Bus Demand Response
Also known as HRDCDII
FY2025 boardings
185K
+11.4% vs FY2024
Cost per ride
$16.41
-1.3% $15.99 in 2024 dollars
Subsidy per ride
$16.38
-1.2% operating cost less fares
Fare recovery
0.2%
-25.6% fares average $0.03 per ride
Passenger miles
—
average trip — miles
Operating cost
$3.04M
$94.09 per revenue hour
Rides per resident
3.22
service area 57.5K people
Rides per revenue hour
5.73
32.3K hours operated
Passengers aboard
—
average at any moment, passenger miles over vehicle miles
Average speed
12.63 mph
in revenue service, stops and traffic included
Cost per vehicle mile
$7.45
what running a mile costs, before anyone boards

What those two numbers mean

Passengers aboard is passenger miles divided by vehicle miles: how many people are on board on average, at any moment. It is the missing term in cost per ride. A service carrying twenty people per vehicle mile and one carrying half a person can spend the same on fuel and wages and arrive at wildly different costs per passenger.

Average speed is vehicle miles divided by vehicle hours, including every stop and every red light. It is the hidden term in cost per mile, because cost per mile is cost per hour divided by speed. A bus network slowing from 13 mph to 11 becomes a fifth more expensive per mile with no change in wages and no change in service.

By the numbers

By the numbers

FY2025 unless noted. Each figure is computed from what the agency filed with NTD, and set against something to read it by.

Public money per resident
$53 a year

Operating cost less fares, per person in the service area the agency reports. Agencies draw those areas very differently, so this is set against peers.

Median of similar agencies: $57

Run by contractors
70% of service

Revenue hours bought from a private operator or another agency rather than run in-house. Nationally, much of this is paratransit.

U.S. transit: 27% of service hours

Paratransit and dial-a-ride
21% of operating cost

For 9% of rides: $39.12 a ride, against $14.22 on the rest of its service. Door-to-door trips carry one or two people at a time. It includes paratransit, which federal law requires for riders whose disability keeps them off the fixed routes; where a separate agency runs the region's paratransit, its cost is not here.

Similar agencies: 34% of operating cost. U.S. demand response: $52.35 a ride.

Rides on an average day
507

A journey with a transfer counts as two rides, because NTD counts each boarding.

The year's boardings divided by 365. Weekdays run higher, weekends lower.

Profile

Agency profile

As filed with the National Transit Database.

Contact

Legal name
Human Resource Development Council District IX, Inc.
Doing business as
Galavan / Streamline
Address
32 S TRACY AVE
Bozeman, MT 59715-4659

Organization

Organization type
Private-Non-Profit Corporation
Reporter type
Reduced Reporter
Fiscal year ends
June 30, 2025
Reporting since
FY2015

Service area

Population served
57,494 over 13 sq mi
Density
4,423 people per sq mi
Urbanized area
Bozeman, MT · 59.1K people
Vehicles at maximum service
22 · 12 contracted

Services operated

Each mode has its own page, with its own ridership, cost and safety.

Ridership

Ridership

Galavan / Streamline reports annually. NTD publishes monthly figures for full reporters only.

Monthly boardings

NTD publishes monthly figures for full reporters only. This agency reports annually, so its ridership appears in the yearly chart alongside.

Annual boardings

Ten-year series

Cost

Cost and subsidy

Dollar figures are shown as reported and again in 2024 dollars.

Cost and subsidy per ride

As reported

In 2024 dollars

The same series with inflation removed

Why cost per ride moved

Indexed to FY2015 = 100, in constant dollars

Cost per ride is the cost of an hour of service divided by the riders carried in that hour. It can only rise for two reasons: service got dearer to produce, or fewer people rode it.

Since FY2015, in constant dollars, an hour of service costs 146% more to run and carries 16% more riders. The rise in cost per ride is all the service getting dearer.

Across all U.S. bus service over the same years, an hour costs 14% more to run and carries 26% fewer riders.

Where the money goes

Operating cost by function

Who pays for it

Federal, state and local funding, 2007 to 2024

Operating and capital money together, in the dollars of each year. Fares are not in this file — FTA took them out of the funding series in 2022 — so "directly generated" here means advertising, concessions, park and ride and taxes the agency levies itself. The farebox is charted above.

Capital

Capital spending

What was spent on building, rebuilding and replacing, shown beside the cost of running the service rather than folded into it.

Operating subsidy per ride
$16.38
FY2025, cost less fares
Capital spent per ride
$0.00
that year's spending, not the cost of the assets
Both together
$16.38
public money spent that year, per boarding
Capital per ride, averaged
$4.54
mean of 3 years

Capital spending, 2015 to 2024

In 2024 dollars, so the years can be compared. This is the series the estimate above is built from.

Operating and capital, per ride

Stacked, but counted separately. The two are different kinds of number.

Who pays for what

FY2025. Running the service and building it are funded by different governments.

Spending Total Federal State Local Fares and own revenue
operating $3.04M 60.9% 5.8% 33.1% 0.2%
capital $0 — — — —

Fares offset the cost of running the service. They do not meaningfully offset capital, which is why subsidy per ride on this site is an operating figure and stays one.

What these capital figures are not

Spending is not the same as cost
NTD reports what an agency spent on capital in a year, not what its capital cost it that year. Those differ: a system opened in 1904 spends almost nothing on tunnels while consuming an enormous inherited asset every day, and an agency that bought a fleet last year spent a fortune once and will spend nothing for a decade.
Vehicles can be depreciated. Everything else cannot.
FTA's capital series runs from 1992, which covers a bus fleet's working life more than twice over, so averaging rolling-stock spending across one replacement cycle gives a defensible figure for what the fleet costs each year. Track, tunnels, bridges and stations last forty to a hundred years or more. Thirty-three years of spending on those measures recent investment policy, not consumption, so no figure is published for them.
The vehicle figure is an estimate
Cost per ride including vehicles is arithmetic on published spending rather than a published number, and it assumes the agency has been replacing vehicles at roughly the rate it wears them out. Each agency's page says how far that assumption holds for it. It covers vehicles only: no track, no tunnels, no stations.
Year-by-year capital is lumpy
Capital arrives in bursts. A single year of it says more about where an agency sits in its replacement cycle than about the cost of carrying a passenger, which is why the per-ride averages here run across every year available.
Fares do not pay for it
Fare revenue offsets operating cost. It does not meaningfully offset capital, which is funded almost entirely by government. Subsidy per ride on this site is an operating figure and stays that way.

Capital spending by year and use

Year Guideway Stations Vehicles Maintenance buildings Fare collection Other Total
2025 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0
2024 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $2.26M
2023 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0

Peers

Compared with similar systems

134 agencies serve an urbanized area of similar size, carry a similar number of riders, and run bus as their main service.

Cost per ride
$16.41
better than 51% of peers
Subsidy per ride
$16.38
better than 47% of peers
Fare recovery
0.2%
better than 2% of peers
Rides per resident
3.22
better than 46% of peers

Cost per ride against peers

This agency in blue, peer median dashed

Rides per resident against peers

How much the place uses what it has

Peer detail

Agency Urbanized area Population Boardings Rides / resident Cost / ride Subsidy / ride Fare recovery
Galavan / Streamline this agency Bozeman, MT 59.1K 185K 3.22 $16.41 $16.38 0.2%
Albany, OR 62.1K 200.3K 1.56 $18.12 — —
Rome, GA 60.4K 162.3K 4.3 $18.51 $16.73 9.6%
Jefferson City, MO 50.8K 184.7K 4.27 $16.68 $15.61 6.4%
Staunton--Waynesboro, VA 59.1K 215.8K 4.22 $9.91 $9.40 5.2%
Steubenville--Weirton, OH--WV--PA 65K 173.8K 6.43 $12.19 $11.88 2.6%
Lewiston, ME 60.7K 213.9K 0.93 $15.63 $13.95 10.7%
Bristol, TN--VA 70.6K 183K 0.98 $16.90 — —
Paducah, KY--IL 50.8K 192.7K 3.85 $21.12 $12.14 42.5%
Hot Springs, AR 59.1K 150.7K 3.97 $11.46 $10.68 6.8%
Goldsboro, NC 54.5K 212.4K 5.85 $15.76 $14.99 4.9%
Peer median (134 agencies) 3.37 $16.71 $15.81 6%

By mode

By mode

Each service this agency runs, for FY2025. Directly operated and purchased service are summed.

Boardings by mode

Annual, stacked

Cost per ride by mode

FY2025

Mode detail, FY2025

Mode Service Boardings Passenger miles Revenue hours Operating cost Cost / ride Subsidy / ride Fare recovery Link
Bus Directly operated — — — — — — — Detail →
Bus Purchased transportation 168,776 — 22,691 $2,400,633 $14.22 — — Detail →
Demand Response Directly operated 16,244 — 9,578 $635,522 $39.12 $38.75 1% Detail →

Safety

Safety

Collisions, fires, derailments and security events reported to NTD. Only complete years are shown.

Safety

Safety and security events are published in the monthly file, which covers full reporters only. This agency does not appear in it.

Fleet

Fleet, workforce and reliability

How old the vehicles are, how many people run them, and how far they get between breakdowns.

Revenue vehicles
23
FY2025
Average age
5.35 yrs
weighted across the fleet
Past useful life
8.7%
2 vehicles at or beyond FTA's benchmark
Miles between failures
—
all mechanical failures, revenue miles

How the fleet has aged, 2014 to 2024

Average vehicle age, weighted across every mode the agency runs

A rising line is not automatically bad and a falling one is not automatically good: a fleet gets younger the year an agency takes delivery, and older every year it does not. What the shape shows is whether replacement is steady or comes in bursts. The table below says how many vehicles are actually past the life FTA expects of them.

Vehicles, and how many are accessible

Active revenue vehicles against those meeting the ADA standard

Fleet age

FTA's default useful life benchmark for each class, from the Transit Asset Management rule

Vehicle type Count Average age FTA benchmark Past FTA benchmark Past own benchmark
Cutaway 11 5.91 yrs 10 yrs
9.1%
Bus 9 5.11 yrs 14 yrs
0%
Van 2 2 yrs 8 yrs
0%
Minivan 1 8 yrs 8 yrs
100%

All years

Full annual series

Every year this agency reported, as published.

Year Boardings Passenger miles Revenue miles Revenue hours Operating cost Fares Cost / ride Subsidy / ride Fare recovery
2025 185,020 — 407,480 32,269 $3,036,155 $6,047 $16.41 $16.38 0.2%
2024 166,093 — 381,700 29,932 $2,761,060 $7,393 $16.62 $16.58 0.3%
2023 153,401 — 394,893 30,190 $2,536,229 $6,715 $16.53 $16.49 0.3%
2022 139,741 — 422,896 31,697 $2,341,514 $5,634 $16.76 $16.72 0.2%
2021 116,887 — 424,951 30,083 $2,493,205 $3,798 $21.33 $21.30 0.2%
2020 248,580 — 437,224 30,276 $2,089,020 $4,884 $8.40 $8.38 0.2%
2019 313,034 — 492,088 32,637 $1,975,469 $14,127 $6.31 $6.27 0.7%
2018 306,876 — 656,500 56,645 $1,878,483 $14,307 $6.12 $6.07 0.8%
2017 354,598 — 644,177 64,855 $1,849,715 $16,148 $5.22 $5.17 0.9%
2016 370,321 — 577,918 62,184 $1,744,830 $12,417 $4.71 $4.68 0.7%
2015 320,515 — 570,850 64,660 $1,824,234 $12,968 $5.69 $5.65 0.7%