Bus services staying busy this winter

CB South, late night service, big numbers

Bus service in the valley has seen a significant expansion this winter. The Mountain Express is running new service between Crested Butte South and Mt. Crested Butte, while the RTA (Gunnison Valley Rural Transportation Authority) is providing a late-night bus between Crested Butte and Gunnison.

Mountain Express reports a 7 percent increase in ridership over last winter season so far, measuring from mid-November to mid-January. Mountain Express transit manager Chris Larsen says, “We’ve carried 178,800 passengers this year, compared to 167,600 last year.”
Larsen said that doesn’t set records, but the crowds have been noticeable. “We carried 9,707 passengers on December 31. The last time we carried more than 9,000 people in a single day was December 30, 2004,” Larsen said. “The all-time record was 13,700 passengers who took the bus on January 17, 1998. That must have been the X-Games.”
The RTA has seen a huge jump in ridership so far this winter. RTA executive director Scott Truex said the organization had thought increased service would enable some increased ridership. But the passenger demand was more than expected.
“We increased service from eight or nine round trips per day to 13. We projected that by adding 55 percent more service, we would increase riders by about 45 percent and that the number of passengers per bus would go down,” he explained. “What happened instead is that the number of riders in December grew 71 percent, from 11,067 to 18,909.
“Unfortunately, as a result of the increase in demand, we had nine incidents in December where we couldn’t pick up everyone in the morning,” Truex continued. “So overall, 115 people were left behind and had to wait 45 minutes for the next bus. We also had 12 incidents in the afternoon going south where there were more people than there was room. Overall, about 1.5 percent of our passengers were delayed and we regret that this happened.”
Truex said there could be several reasons for the increase in demand. “We think part of the reason for more demand is that more Crested Butte employees are living in Gunnison due to many factors. The loss of the Marcellina apartments that housed a lot of seasonal employees and the lower rents probably are a factor,” Truex said.
“But the increase in demand is also in part due to the better bus schedule. With 13 round-trips, the schedule works for more people than it did with only eight trips. Each time we add a bus trip, the number of possible schedules that people can access increases exponentially.”
In the morning, all nine incidents of delayed passengers were on either the 7 a.m. or the 7:45 a.m. bus. “This leads me to believe that most of the demand during the morning has been by workers,” said Truex. “In the afternoon, the 12 incidents were spread out over the 3:15, 4:15, 5, 5:15, and 6:15 buses. For these folks, the wait time for the next bus was between 15 minutes and one hour.”
To address the issue, the RTA has submitted three grant applications for federal and state funding to try to get new larger vehicles in the future and to try to get more operating funds. The current buses have 45 seats and the RTA is looking to purchase new buses that have 57 seats. “We need to increase operating funds in order to keep increasing service and we are working to do so,” said Truex.

CB South service
As for the new service to and from Crested Butte South, Larsen said the six round trips a day have been okay. “Not knowing what to expect, we are pleased so far,” he said. “The busiest day had 134 passengers, while our slowest day carried 25. The average trip numbers are deceiving because the three runs to Crested Butte South in the morning are mostly empty and the three runs back up from Crested Butte South in the afternoon aren’t much better. The average day in December was tallied at 58 passengers, while so far in January we are averaging about 50 passengers, or eight people a bus trip. So we are averaging about four passengers per one-way trip.”
Larsen said there are no plans to change the routes at this stage of the game with Crested Butte South. “There was a request to change and add to the schedule a mid-day run,” he said. “The board decided to stay with this schedule we set up for the season, get feedback from passengers and if the service is provided next year, to try to implement any changes then.”

Late-night numbers
The new late-night bus being run by the RTA has seen significant ridership. “In December, we carried 287 passengers from Gunnison to Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte on the 10 o’clock bus,” said Truex. “This run averaged 9.25 passengers per bus. On the southbound bus at 11:15 p.m., we carried 742 passengers or an average of almost 24 passengers per bus. Of those numbers, 34 total people got off the late-night bus in Crested Butte South—an average of 1.1 passengers per night. This experiment has exceeded my expectations. I appreciate the work that Chris Ladoulis did to make it happen and I want to thank the municipalities and the WSCU Student Government Association for helping to fund this service this winter. I also want to thank our riders for their support and say we are very glad to have such high demand for our service. We will continue to work to improve the service by continuing to grow it as our funding allows.”

Judd Falls route in the future?
Looking ahead to next summer, Mountain Express is considering expanding on the trips it provides to Gothic. The idea is to look at having a bus go all the way out the Judd Falls road to potentially help ease some of the traffic. “We are looking into trying to provide service to the Judd Falls parking lot to help alleviate traffic and congestion in that area,” Larsen explained, “but a lot of things need to happen first. There need to be road improvements to both the county and U.S. Forest Service roads, and we need a turnaround for the bus so that it doesn’t get blocked by RVs, horse trailers, lots of cars, etcetera.”
Larsen cautioned that the idea was in the very early stages. “I’m not sure when it would start or how often it would run,” he said. “It would tie into the service we provide to Gothic already. Our hope in adding any new service is that it will catch on right away, but it typically takes longer than we would like it to. Nevertheless, it is worth looking into these types of services as we get more and more people coming here.”