RTA retreat looks at future of air and bus in valley

More bus service in Gunni and to the airport? Nominal fare?

by Mark Reaman 

The Gunnison Valley Regional Transportation Authority is looking to update its mission statement and solidify and investigate expansion of bus and air services in the valley. That was the overall takeaway of an RTA retreat held in April and reported on at its last meeting.

In a recap of the retreat, Truex was charged with gathering a lot of information about RTA basics. But he was also charged with identifying the minimum needs of both bus and air service.

For air it was determined that trying to get and maintain at least three flights a day between Gunnison and Denver was the minimum goal. Currently there are three flights a day most of the year but that drops to two daily flights during off-seasons. RTA consultant Bill Tomcich said the off-season periods when there are two flights a day continues to shrink. “That’s important,” he told the board. “The additions of other flights to places like Houston, Dallas and Chicago add redundancy and confidence to the passengers using Gunnison. United is maxing out the Denver airport and so part of their plan is to expand other hubs like Chicago and Houston. It is good for use to have direct flight options at least seasonally to those airports.”

“While good to understand the minimum service we want, we should be striving to be consistently better than that. We want air service to be vibrant and healthy and not just minimum levels,” said RTA board member Laura Puckett Daniels.

“We want to understand our baselines for the airport but agree that our focus should be on better service levels for locals and visitors,” said RTA chair Matt Schwartz.

In the recap, the board relayed that given more use of the airport by locals, the RTA “can begin to develop future air programs for locals, which will also work for tourists, as opposed to our previous method of solely developing programs for tourists which also worked for locals.”

Truex said he and Tomcich were gathering information to see the trends of how much more use the airport was seeing from locals. He expected more specific numbers at the next meeting, but early indications are that the amount of local traffic using GUC has gone up significantly.

Bus service expansion?

As for bus service, Truex will identify core bus service needs to determine what is the minimum required commuter bus service necessary to be effective and viable. From there, the board would like him to come up with cost estimates for services such as a Gunnison circulator bus; RTA airport service; ADA/Paratransit service; expansion of current service to West Gunnison and the airport; and Montrose bus service.

He was also asked to “provide a cost-per-passenger analysis of what could happen if we decided to charge a nominal fare.”

Truex is also looking at the potential of bringing the entire RTA program in-house instead of contracting it out as is currently done. He will also provide information on why the RTA owns some housing units and will create a policy statement on energy efficiency in the transit system.

All of those tasks are expected to be done over the next several months with regular reports being given to the board.