New bus route will link NAU and Flagstaff

Mountain Link

A new city bus route dubbed the Mountain Link is scheduled to come to the Northern Arizona University campus in August.

Designed to connect residential areas with educational and retail opportunities in the community, the Mountain Link will travel from historic downtown Flagstaff to the NAU campus and south to the Woodlands Village Boulevard area. View a map of the route here.

Construction on campus will begin mid-May. Some parking lots will be closed and permanently converted into a transit way for the buses. Some of that parking will be added back upon the completion of a parking garage to be built at the current site of Fronske Health Center.

The Mountain Link route, also known as route 10, will feature landscaped bicycle and pedestrian paths. View renderings of the route here.

“NAU’s Master Plan has a long-range goal of connecting bicycle and pedestrian paths to bus routes,” said David Hook, senior project manager in Planning and Development at Capital Assets. “This new transit way is one step in a number of steps designed to increase interconnectivity on campus.”

Faculty, staff and student employees may obtain an EcoPass from NAU’s Parking Services to ride the bus for free.

The new route is funded by a grant from the Federal Transit Authority given to the Northern Arizona Intergovernmental Public Transportation Authority, or NAIPTA. The city of Flagstaff and NAU are partners in the project.