ߣÏÈÉú

Core Transit plans to bring 30-minute service to its riders within 10 years.

The strategy involves increasing service by 45% over three phases, as outlined in Core Transit’s 10-year transit, development, and capital plan.

The Highway 6 and Valley bus routes will see faster and more frequent service, while the Leadville and Minturn routes will see more frequency and consistency. 

---

---

The changes were devised with riders in mind, said Dave Levy, Core Transit’s planning manager, when he laid out the 10-year plan for the Core Transit board during its June 11 meeting.

“Most of the (planned) system is running on a 30-minute frequency, which means when all these different pieces are programmed together, much of the valley, for most use cases, will have 15-minute frequencies, but otherwise constantly running service,” Levy said. “We can’t make any of those claims today. We will be able to through this plan.” 

---

---

What are the route changes?

To determine what changes people most wanted to see in their bus routes, Core Transit staff conducted two rounds of public outreach, engaging with more than 1,000 people through surveys, focus groups, public events and interviews.

In the initial round of public outreach, Core Transit staff learned “that the primary use case for transit is commuting, and many commuters are transit-dependent,” Levy said. “We also heard that vast and frequent service is the most important thing to users.”

Core Transit staff used the feedback from the initial round of outreach to build several alternatives to the current service plans before collecting more public input.

Valley route riders wanted more frequent service and additional stops in places like Capitol Street in Eagle. Highway 6 riders favored a multi-segment approach that varied the endpoint of each route. Minturn riders asked for more frequent and reliable service.

“The resulting system is the preferred alternative that we have in our 10-year plan,” Levy said.

The Highway 6 route was broken down into three distinct smaller routes, currently referred to as the Lake Creek Local, Lake Creek Express and Avon Express lines.

“The most significant changes we are making in this plan are to Highway 6. We are taking this slow, monolithic route and breaking it into three pieces because that will give us the most frequent and fast options between the most commonly used origins and destinations,” Levy said.

The Lake Creek Express is designed to move transit-dependent workers up the valley quickly.

“This addresses arguably the single biggest deficiency in our current system: Our workforce, our most vital people, have to run the slowest bus that we have,” Levy said. “This alternative, that Lake Creek Express, fixes that and gets our workforce up-valley really fast.”

Avon Express has a bus between Avon and Vail running every 12 minutes. “At that point, if your use case is Avon to Vail or anything in between, you really don’t even need a schedule anymore, just show up and you won’t be waiting long,” Levy said.

There will be two Valley route options, a standard and an express. Buses will extend deeper into Eagle and the local route will add stops at the Riverwalk and Bear Lot. Eventually, the plan is to add increased frequency to Gypsum, as well.

The 10-year vision for the Minturn and Leadville routes includes all-day hourly service through Minturn. By better aligning the Minturn and Leadville schedules, more service in Red Cliff will be added, along with more peak frequency through Minturn.

“Just from some crafty use of resources and scheduling, we can do more for Minturn, more for Leadville and more for Red Cliff,” Levy said.

According to Core Transit staff calculations, riders on every route will see shorter travel times on buses, from four minutes shaved off between Freedom Park and Walmart to a 33-minute (50%) improvement from the Eagle River bus stop to the Vail Transportation Center.

“We’ve really managed to cut down travel time and at the same time increase the frequency,” Levy said.

“If your daily commute is shortened by 12, 14 minutes each way, that’s really significant,” Levy said. “It’s more time for you, more time for family, more time to get stuff done. This is really going to affect the lives of people who use it every day, certainly our transit-dependent users who don’t have a choice and are just often stuck on a slow, crowded bus.”

New transit plan will roll out over three phases

The 10-year plan will be implemented in three phases — or four if Core Transit’s progress from November 2022 through the present is included.

In Phase 0, the time from when the ballot measure approving the transportation authority was passed in November 2022 through today, ridership has increased by 224% in the winter and 222% in the summer. The frequency of bus service has also increased significantly, by 73% in the summer and 47% in the winter.

“In business anywhere, that would be an incredible ROI, and it’s even more remarkable that you all did it with a threadbare everything,” Levy said, referring to Core Transit’s process of simultaneously building and running the organization.

The service changes detailed in the 10-year plan begin in Phase 1, which runs from 2026 through 2028. Core Transit will split its Highway 6 route into three routes and increase service by 8% in winter, 5% in summer, and align the Minturn and Leadville schedules. Behind the scenes, staff will finish building the plan for the Valley route changes.

Phase 2, which runs from 2029 to 2031, will implement the Valley route expansion, with service to Sylvan Lake and Capitol Street. It will also add frequency to the Highway 6 routes and implement all-day hourly service to Minturn. Combined, Phases 1 and 2 would bring an 18% increase in winter service and a 16% increase in summer service over this year.

“A lot of the heavy lifting is going to be done in Phase 1 and 2. Phase 3 is contingent on some things,” Levy said.

Phase 3, which runs from 2031 to 2035, is the least certain phase. Likely, there will be increased service to Gypsum, more evening service on Highway 6 and additional Leadville runs. Core Transit may also begin micro transit service partnerships with local municipalities that want to offer first and last mile transit options to their residents or implement a circulator in areas like Edwards or Eagle and Gypsum.

If completed as currently planned, the three phases would increase winter service by 45% and summer service by 46%.

How will service increases be funded?

Phase 3 is nebulous for two main reasons. First, a lot can change between now and 2031. Second, to implement all these changes — particularly, more service to Gypsum — is costly. It would likely require Gypsum joining the transportation authority after residents voted down the ballot measure in November 2022, along with finding additional funding sources.

It currently costs Core Transit $12.6 million per year to operate its service. With full implementation of the service expansion by 2031, it will cost an estimated $18.5 million to operate the 45% increase in routes, not accounting for inflation (a 47% increase in cost).

“Providing service all the way out to Gypsum is extremely expensive,” said Tanya Allen, the executive director of Core Transit. “When we move that to a half-hour service, that becomes far more expensive … it doesn’t look like a huge change but the cost implications of that are pretty big, and being able to do that without bringing in additional resources could be pretty challenging.”

Staff are approaching the task with open minds and exploring all possible avenues for funding.

“There’s a bunch of different levers, as we look through this, that we can pull,” Allen said.

There are still several unknowns in Core Transit’s budget, with only a limited amount of recorded financials for the 11-month-old organization.

“When we project our 10 years, we’ve got some work to do, but I think we’re feeling good about what we can allocate where, and how we can start to move this project along as we continue to better understand our operations,” Allen said.

A public-facing summary of the 10-year plan is set to come out in September.