How Eagle County’s first free bus route is going
Vail-Beaver Creek Express perseveres through challenges as ECO Transit increases service on other routes
Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily archive
ECO Transit switched from its summer to its winter schedule on Sunday, Nov. 26. The first week of ECO Transit’s winter schedule included the introduction of some of the first tangible changes made by the Eagle Valley Transportation Authority, which has collected a 0.5% sales tax county-wide since Jan. 1, 2023, following a ballot initiative that passed in November 2022 to improve transit countywide.
Nov. 26 marked the initiation of fare-free rides on the Vail-Beaver Creek Express bus line, and a 25% reduction in bus fares on all regular routes. A one-way ride now costs $3 rather than $4, a 24-hour unlimited pass costs $6, and a 30-day unlimited pass costs $63.
The Vail-Beaver Creek Express makes stops at Beaver Creek Village, Avon Station, Lionshead, and the Vail Transportation Center, and is now completely fare-free. The line is a trial effort of the planned fare-free zone on ECO Transit running from Edwards to Vail, as planned in the ballot initiative.
The Vail-Beaver Creek Express route is currently contracted with the provider SP Plus to avoid straining ECO Transit’s limited bus and driver numbers. The contract will cost the Eagle Valley Transportation Authority just shy of $1 million for service this winter and the beginning of next winter. Though it is contracted out, the route remains under the umbrella of ECO Transit.
ECO Transit director Larry Tenenholz provided the Eagle Valley Transit Authority board of directors with updates on the first two weeks of ECO Transit service, including the Vail-Beaver Creek Express, at the transit authority’s monthly meeting on Dec. 13.
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The struggles: Providing service
“The first week was tough,” Tenenholz said. SP Plus failed to deliver one of the planned four buses meant to serve Eagle County, leaving three buses to serve a full schedule of routes planned for four buses.
ECO Transit covered nearly a quarter of the scheduled SP Plus trips using an extra loop bus that was prepared to fill holes in service, Tenenholz said, which was a good sign for ECO Transit’s capacity but not a shining moment for SP Plus.
While ECO Transit was able to cover most missing SP Plus trips, a handful of scheduled trips went incomplete. Missed trips totaled 11 out of 462 scheduled trips, or around 2%.
The second week was “much better,” Tenenholz said. Less than 2% of trips were canceled in the second week of SP Plus, with the fourth SP Plus bus in operation.
ECO Transit is in negotiations with SP Plus to receive financial compensation for the lost service.
The successes: Ridership numbers, the contract itself
Significantly more people rode the Vail-Beaver Creek Express during the first week of service this year, from Nov. 26 through Dec. 2, than in previous years. The route averaged 341 riders per day during the first week in 2023, up from averages in the 90s in 2021 and 2022.
“(The Vail-Beaver Creek Express) has displaced a number of riders from Highway 6 onto this service, so the service is doing well,” Tenenholz said. “In baseball terminology, I would consider that a home run.”
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Another success was the speed at which the ECO Transit-SP Plus partnership was completed. The bidding process for a contract like the one between ECO Transit and SP Plus typically takes about eight months to complete, Tenenholz explained. “We did it in two-and-a-half months,” he said.
Reflecting on the start of ECO Transit’s first foray into a fare-free, contracted bus service, Tenenholz feels confident about the route’s future.
“Are there issues? Of course, there are issues. Are we addressing them? Yes, we are. And do we have the personnel to address them? Yes, we do,” Tenenholz said.
Increased ECO Transit service
The first couple of weeks of winter service on all other ECO Transit lines saw success above and beyond recent seasons.
Fewer routes were canceled in 2023 than ever before. In 2021, 46 routes were canceled in the first two weeks of winter service operation. In 2022, that number jumped to 62. During the first two weeks of winter service in 2023, nine trips — a one-way trip, from one end to the other — were canceled.
“That’s a major achievement in this environment,” Tenenholz said.
Those present in the valley from Nov. 26 to Dec. 10 will recall that the start of winter service on ECO Transit coincided with a couple of large storms moving through the area, dumping 22 inches of snow on Vail Mountain from Dec. 1-4 and 21 inches from Dec. 8-11, according to Vail’s mid-mountain snow stake.
The number of buses available for pullouts has also been higher in the first two weeks of service this year than in recent memory, thanks to the hardworking team of Eagle County mechanics, Tenenholz said.
“Today, we had 26 vehicles available, and that’s unheard of,” Tenenholz said on Dec. 13.
As a result of the increased bus availability, and a full staff of bus operators for the winter 2023-24 season, ECO Transit’s winter service will increase for some routes on Dec. 30.
The increased service totals 10 additional trips per day, divided between the Highway 6 and Valley routes. New buses routes will fit in between the existing scheduled bus routes during peak times for ECO Transit. Peak times for ECO Transit are between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. and between 3 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
ECO Transit will also be introducing shadow buses, which will follow (or shadow) planned buses at peak times on routes that are known to experience overcrowding, and will take on any additional passengers when possible. Loop buses, or buses that stay within a specific area throughout the day to fill in for any gaps in service due to mechanical or other issues, have been in play since the beginning of the winter schedule, and will continue to support existing service.
