ARCHIVED  November 17, 2000

Bus service well off the ground in area

Regional focus will be growing concern as growth continues

Getting around via public transportation has come a long way along the Front Range.

It used to be that buses were sparse, routes were sparser and convenience was rare.

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But now Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland have established bus systems shuttling residents from one side of town to the other on a fairly frequent basis. And riders can even take the bus from the Choice City to the Sweetheart City.

Fort Collins Transfort and City of Loveland Transit, or COLT, jointly operate the Foxtrot bus line that runs between the two cities every hour. Started in March 1997, Foxtrot has grown extremely popular, said Tom Frazier, general manager of Transfort and Dial-a-Ride in Fort Collins.

“Our ridership in 1999 was just about 49,000 rides,” Frazier said. “This year, January through September, we’re already at 49,000 rides.”

Wayne C. King, Loveland transit manager, said the Foxtrot line is important to both cities as growth along the Front Range continues to boom.

“It’s a definite link that we need,” King said.

There is not a connecting bus route between Greeley and Loveland or Greeley and Fort Collins, but the regional SmartTrips office does offer van pools through those cities on to Denver, said Gary Taylor, Greeley transit-services manager.

“There are about 35 or 36 vans in the region. Many of those go from Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland to the Denver metro area. Some provide transportation between the three cities,” he said.

Taylor thinks a regional focus will become increasingly important as the area population continues to swell. Multiple committees and task forces are looking at the need for transportation and transit improvements in the state, with some focusing on the Denver area, and others keeping attention turned closer to home.

“The real pressing issue in the region is transportation from the north Front Range to the Denver metro area,” Taylor said.

And each bus line and city, he said, has a role to play as links in whatever transportation system evolves – whether it be light rail, more bus routes, more lanes on Interstate 25 or a combination of many such solutions.

With an eye toward making those future links happen, each city’s bus system is staying focused on serving residents within their boundaries.

Greeley’s current bus system – simply and adequately named The Bus – has been around since 1982. The Bus’ seven routes saw 319,000 riders in 1999 and 264,000 passengers through September this year.

Ridership has been up and down over the last 18 years, but Taylor said a new shuttle route at the University of Northern Colorado is already causing a spike in the number of passengers getting on The Bus.

“Basically we will do about 100,000 trips with just that one service,” he said. “That’s just in one semester. You can pretty well double that and that’s what we expect for a full year of that route.”

The Bus is targeted at college students, senior citizens, and workers making daily commutes and also offers services to the disabled community, Taylor said. A lot of those riders view The Bus as a viable way to get from one end of Greeley to the other, he said, but there is still room for improvement.

“What we’re finding is we still need to focus on the core parts of the city and put our service there,” Taylor said. “We cannot afford to provide bus service to every area of the city. Currently we’re serving about 55 percent of the city in land area.”

To focus on city core areas, some routes will be changed and buses will be rerouted to run to and from the city’s core every half hour instead of the current hourly schedule. The change should be in place sometime in January.

“People want bus service to be convenient. A big part of that is having frequent service that goes directly where they want to go,” Taylor said.

Frazier knows that. The community as a whole isn’t finding that in current Transfort service, though.

“Back in 1991, we reconfigured the system. At that time, our objectives were to provide service primarily to the transit-dependent; those individuals who didn’t have other choices – Colorado State University students and youth,” Frazier said. “Our ridership today reflects that type of ridership: 37 percent of ridership today is CSU students, 32 percent is students 17 and under. Other transit-dependent groups round it out.

“It’s doing what it’s supposed to do, but what people are saying today is ‘It doesn’t meet my needs. It doesn’t go out southeast or southwest. It doesn’t travel far often enough.’ No matter what system you survey across, people want three things – to go where they want to go, when they want to go and to go often. If it can’t meet those criteria, the general populous will always choose the car over the bus.”

To meet those unmet needs will require dramatic design changes to Transfort’s six-route system that covered about 740,000 miles and saw more than 1.4 million riders in 1999.

“It’s not designed to use to commute to work,” Frazier said.

The Fort Collins City Council is currently updating Transfort’s strategic plan. Any changes will be up for a vote in January or February, Frazier said. Changes could be made to the existing system as early as next fall, “but unless there’s increased funds to increase the level of service, things aren’t going to change that much,” he said.

To add another bus on an existing route, for example, would cost about $180,000 annually.

Despite it’s shortcomings, Transfort has seen its ridership increase three-fold over the last decade, Frazier said. That’s a long way from its beginnings of two buses in the mid-1970s.

“It started with just a couple of vehicles,” he said. “Today, we’re operating over 330 days a year. During our peak time we have about 18 vehicles out in the system.”

Loveland is hoping that their new bus service will see such growth as its short history grows longer. Loveland has two routes in the city plus a shuttle to Estes Park. It also offers transportation for disabled residents.

The first route, Jitterbus, started in 1999. The second route, Tango, was added at the start of this year. Last year, when Jitterbus was the only bus in town, 61,394 riders took advantage of the service.

King projects an increase of 56,000 riders this year, thanks in part to the addition of the Tango line. Tango has seen more than 37,000 riders so far this year and Jitterbus has already transported more than 80,000.

“Jitterbus has seen tremendous growth. We see that growing even more,” King said. “We’re in a position where things are just exploding in transit here in Loveland.”

Those numbers bode well for future expansions.

“We’re looking at the possible expansion of the Jitterbus route,” King said. That expansion would reduce ride times and increase frequency of pickups.

Other expansions that may be in the future for Loveland’s growing bus service include better scheduling software for its paratransit routes, better radio-acommunication systems and a new transit center.

Regional focus will be growing concern as growth continues

Getting around via public transportation has come a long way along the Front Range.

It used to be that buses were sparse, routes were sparser and convenience was rare.

But now Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland have established bus systems shuttling residents from one side of town to the other on a fairly frequent basis. And riders can even take the bus from the Choice City to the Sweetheart City.

Fort Collins Transfort and City of Loveland Transit, or COLT, jointly operate the Foxtrot bus line that runs between the two cities every hour. Started…

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