I reached out, via phone, to Archuleta County Transportation Coordinator Laura Vanoni yesterday, hoping to chat about the 51-page transit study created by Lakewood-Colorado-based consulting firm Compass Transit Consulting — a feasibility study looking at a taxpayer-subsidized bus route between Pagosa Springs and our nearest ‘big city’, Durango. (Population of Archuleta County: 14,000. Population of La Plata County: 56,000.)
The title of the document, briefly summarized for the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners on June 15, indicates that this is a “FINAL” report…
…although the label at the bottom of each page suggests that this is a “draft FINAL REPORT”. So it’s either a draft, or a final report. Or maybe both.
At previous BOCC meetings, Ms. Vanoni has been praised by the commissioners for her excellent management of the Mountain Express Transit bus system here in Pagosa. I was not able to reach her yesterday… but maybe today? I would love to be able to chat with her about this ambitious ‘Intercity’ proposal.
The author of the new study, Compass Transit Consulting, was established by owner Michael Koch in July 2020 — in the midst of the COVID pandemic — as “a direct result of Michael’s passion for transit and improving mobility.” From Mr. Koch’s LinkedIn page:
This is a new company that comes with almost a decade of intimate knowledge and experience in technical research, analysis, planning, and implementation of transit project work.
You can download the 51-page Intercity Fixed-Route Feasibility Study here (4MB file).
Hired transit services typically fall into two categories. “Fixed-Route” bus services travel a preset route on a preset schedule; in order to ride, you must be willing to appear at a bus stop somewhere on the route according to an exact time schedule. Mountain Express Transit, which is a department of the Archuleta County government, currently offers fixed route service in Archuleta County six days a week.
But MET also offer a “Paratransit/Dial-a-Ride” service, allowing customers to specify the time of the service, as well as customized pick-up and drop-off locations.
Although transit services across the US have generally seen a steep decline in ridership since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, MET Fixed-Route service saw fairly consistent ridership levels during 2020.
Here’s a comparison of 2018, 2019 and 2020 for MET’s Fixed-Route service, from the Feasibility Study:
As we see, the ridership has been anything but consistent, month over month. During the month of June 2018, the fixed-route service provided nearly 800 rides, but during April 2019, only 200 rides were provided.
The Compass feasibility study does not cite ridership totals for the MET services, but judging from the chart above, it looks like the MET fixed-route buses collected about 6,000 fares during 2020. Assuming that the customers paid for a bus ride “there and back”, that would mean about 3,000 round-trips during 2020…? The MET buses have traditionally run only on weekdays, which suggests about 12 round-trips per day, according to my pocket calculator.
The fixed-route buses run 10 round-trips per weekday. So… an average of about one rider, per route, per day?
Are these generally the same 12 people, day after day? Or does the MET serve a wide range of different individuals? I am not able to answer those questions.
The more flexible Paratransit/Dial-a-Ride service appears to be somewhat more popular than the fixed-route bus service. But equally volatile in terms of consistent ridership.
From the chart above, it appears that the Paratransit/Dial-a-Ride service provided about 5,000 rides during 2020. It appears that this flexible service provides nearly as many rides per year as the fixed-route service.
I am not clear, however, if a “ridership” is one-way or round-trip. If this chart is showing “one-way” trips, then fewer than 12 riders were served per weekday.
As I mentioned, I was hoping to chat with Ms. Varoni yesterday, partly to double-check my assumptions. Because a service that serves 12 local citizens on a daily basis… well, one might wonder about the viability of such a bus system. According to the adopted 2021 Archuleta County budget, MET expects to collect about $39,000 in bus fares this year — but expects to spend $405,000 on salaries, benefits, operations and capital purchases.
Of course, we could view MET as a “jobs program” meant mainly to inject taxpayer subsidies back into the local economy, but I doubt the County views the program in those terms.
But back to the main subject: the feasibility of a fixed-route bus route connecting Pagosa to Durango. If the County government’s Mountain Express Transit service loses $350,000 a year providing local bus service to perhaps 12 people per day… how much could MET expect to lose by running a fixed-route service to Durango?
And how many people would be served?
At the June 15 presentation of the feasibility study, County Commissioner Warren Brown asked a question about who might pay for the project.
“So if this comes to pass, and its a ‘working model’, do you expect this to be a self-funding project?”
Ms. Varoni:
“Um, probably not completely.
“Because we’re not going to charge riders to… you know, we’re not going to charge them very much. I think the amount was going to be, like, $10 one way. So that means we would have to get grant money, to fund that, outside. Which, because of the connectivity between two inter-cities, would not be a problem to come up with funding…”
Ms. Varoni may have said, “two inner cities” rather than “two inter-cities”.
She continued.
“It’s just kind of… I mean, what we’re hearing is, just between talking with Durango and other people across the state, this has not been done before. So this kind of partnership, between these two areas… to connect… has not been done before. Not that I know of. Correct me if I’m wrong… but…
“So I think there’s a lot of interest in doing that, especially with ‘rural’ dollars.”
Mr. Koch agreed that Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is especially interested in public transportation projects in rural communities. And in throwing money at those kinds of projects.
By way of comparison, a private taxi ride from Pagosa Springs to the Durango airport — one way — appears to cost about $120 for “up to two people”. That’s a similar distance to the one being proposed by Ms. Varoni and Mr. Koch… for which a rider would pay $10.