Denver bus route to start from Crested Butte in March

Effort to increase general ridership underway

[  by Mark Reaman  ]

The Gunnison County Bustang Outrider bus servicing Denver will soon start from Crested Butte instead of Gunnison. The plan is to begin the expanded route on Monday, March 7.

Vice president of operations for Alpine Express (the service that operates the Outrider Bustang route) Jon Galle said that the bus would leave the Four-way Stop in Crested Butte at 5:15 a.m. From there it will stop in Almont at 5:40 a.m. before heading to the Econo Lodge in Gunnison.

“We are dealing with some operational issues at the moment,” he said. “We need to find someone who will show up that early.”

The bus would arrive in Denver as it does now at 11 a.m. The return trip to Crested Butte would start from Union Station at 2 p.m. Eventually the service hopes to have two daily buses servicing the route.

Tickets from Crested Butte would be slightly more expensive than the $40 fare from Gunnison since fares are based on mileage. 

Seeing increasing ridership in the county and bus issues

RTA executive director Scott Truex said ridership on the buses is starting to climb after it fell as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that 2021 ridership tallied about 175,500 passengers compared to 140,000 in 2020. The record year was 2019 when close to 225,000 passengers rode the RTA buses.

RTA special projects manager Leia Morrison said a campaign to encourage more ridership on RTA buses is starting this month with ads in local papers and on social media.

CNG bus rush

Truex told the board that because the federal budget has not yet been approved, along with a manufacturer’s decision to discontinue making Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) busses, grants used to help pay for such RTA buses are not likely to be useable this year.

He said that he was informed last week that the manufacturer will no longer be rolling out CNG buses, instead they will focus on electric and diesel, so if the RTA wants such a bus they have to be ordered by May. That timing prohibits federal grant money from being obtained and will mean that the RTA will have to pay for them out of its budget and without federal government grant help.

“We have two grant applications, but the timing won’t work to get the money before we need to order the buses,” he explained. “The question for the board is should we buy them with money out of our budget. We have about $6 million in our fund balance and these buses will likely cost between $800,000 and $900,000 each. It’s not ideal but I think we should do it.”

Truex reminded the board that the RTA had received close to $7 million in past grants and the organizations five-year plan actually calls for two buses to be paid for out of the RTA budget.

“This will give us eight CNG buses and two diesel buses,” Truex said. “We really need the 10 vehicles for the schedule we are running. We would get the new buses probably in December.”

The board made no decision on the issue but will consider action at the next meeting in March.