ID: St. Lukes has partnered with Ride TFT. The hospital wants to expand the service

Patients at St. Luke’s regularly use Ride TFT vans to get to and from the hospital, but there was a barrier for some.

Inpatients who are ready to be discharged can’t leave their room until their ride is outside the hospital, but Ride TFT drivers arrive where they are requested, wait a couple of minutes and then leave if no one shows up.

“That’s not enough time for an individual to leave their room, get out of the hospital and outside to get to that transportation,” Mandi Thompson, assistant to the city manager and interim transit coordinator, said. “That was a real problem we were running into.”

St. Luke's has partnered with Ride TFT. The hospital wants to expand the service

Ride TFT vehicles are parked outside of St. Luke's Magic Valley on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. The hospital has partnered with Ride TFT in a pilot program to help provide rides to discharged inpatients at St. Luke's.

To make sure those discharged inpatients have a way home, St. Luke’s reached out to the city to start a pilot program.

Since early June, a Ride TFT van parks outside the hospital’s discharge center at 2 p.m. Monday through Friday to wait for patients who live in Twin Falls and don’t have transportation.

“It’s tremendously important,” said Kyli Gough, community health and engagement director for St. Luke’s Magic Valley and Jerome. “Our partners that are providing transportation services are huge.”

The pilot program ends at the end of September and the hospital is already thinking about ways to expand the partnership with Ride TFT, Gough said. Maybe patients at the emergency department or cancer center could use some help with transportation.

“We aim to support that overwhelmingly,” Gough said. “It’s just a matter of what does it looks like.”

Since 2023, the city of Twin Falls through Ride TFT has provided a public option to get around town. The standard fee is $3 for a ride.

Maxine Durand served as the city’s transit coordinator for the past two years, but confirmed in a phone call Thursday that she resigned from her position in late June. She announced on July 4 that she is running for governor in 2026 as an unaffiliated candidate.

“I stopped working there before the campaign went public,” Durand told the Times-News.

Thompson said she is filling in as the city works to recruit a new coordinator.

At a City Council meeting on Monday, Thompson said the city has plans to swap out the original fleet of seven Ride TFT vans with new Toyota Siennas.

A $3 million grant from the Idaho Transportation Department funded the first two years of Ride TFT, Thompson said, but now the city is pursuing Federal Transit Administration funding that comes with a 35% local match.

Partnerships like the pilot program with St. Luke’s could help the city expand the public transit service, she said.

“We really do want to continue to expand our community relationships and our community partnerships so we can continue to look at different ways to better serve our citizens,” Thompson said in an interview on Thursday.

Ride TFT is inviting local businesses to advertise on the vans with a vehicle wrap. The College of Southern Idaho has sponsored a wrap on the windows of one van.

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