It ‘wasn’t a business-as-usual winter’ for ECO Transit

With the end of winter 2024 comes the end of the second winter of the Eagle Valley Transportation Authority’s existence, and the first during which the authority operated with its employees. During the May 8 Transportation Authority board meeting, board members and staff took a look in the rearview mirror to prepare for summer schedule changes.

“This really wasn’t a business-as-usual winter,” said Tanya Allen, the executive director of the Eagle Valley Transportation Authority. “We tried some new things, we asked a lot of people … to step outside of their comfort zones, figuring out how to manage operations in a different way.”

ECO Transit operations are slowly transitioning under the umbrella of the transportation authority, with an end date set for Aug. 4. Allen, the former executive director of ECO Transit, started work for the transportation authority last summer.

Over the past several months, the transportation authority has been working to build its staff, filling nearly all of its highest leadership positions. ECO Transit employees will have the opportunity to work for the transportation authority at their current pay level or higher

This winter, ECO Transit began to take on some of the demands of the transportation authority, including increased service and a fare-free route on the Vail-Beaver Creek Express.

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Winter 2024 successes

ECO Transit will begin running fare-free service on its Valley, Minturn, and Highway 6 (except at Gypsum stops) routes on May 19.

To run enough buses to fill the summer service needs, ECO Transit must have at least 54 drivers. During the April and early May shoulder season, ECO Transit has 45 drivers, and another 16 drivers are in training and will be in the field by May 19, meaning ECO Transit will be overstaffed by the start of the service change.

Overall, ECO Transit experienced a 61% increase in staff availability in early 2024 versus the same time last year, as well as more reliable schedules and cleaner buses.

“When people say you can’t hire here, well, maybe that’s not true. Maybe you can hire people, with the right benefits, the right package,” said Larry Tenenholz, the interim director of ECO Transit.

This past winter, ECO Transit buses came more frequently, with a 43% increase in service hours; ECO buses also arrived more reliably, with under 1% of routes canceled. And they were cleaner, with buses being deep cleaned weekly. 

Winter 2024 challenges

In the first quarter of 2024, ECO Transit experienced 15 preventable accidents. 

“There is no way around this: It was one of the worst preventable accident, total accident times we’ve had in a while,” Tenenholz said.

Tenenholz attributed much of the increase to newly hired drivers who had never driven in snow before. “Five out of seven of those accidents in February were operators with under one year of service,” he said.

Some of the operators did not encounter snow in their training, Tenenholz explained.

“We have to do a better job of somehow figuring out a way of teaching people to drive a bus on snow with no snow,” Tenenholz said.

The board spent a few minutes brainstorming possibilities, including simulating icy roads with coated plastic sheeting, finding a location in the upper valley where an ice sheet might be created, and bringing ECO buses to an existing snow track in Basalt, though no conclusions were reached during the meeting.

ECO Transit also continues to struggle with maintenance, with 48% of buses out of service in the first quarter of 2024.

“We have two (maintenance) contracts that are so close to being signed and done,” Tenenholz said. One is for a full maintenance program, while the other is with contracted service provider SP Plus.

“Things are taking longer than we had hoped,” Tenenholz said.

 Vail-Beaver Creek Express

Ridership of the Vail-Beaver Creek Express skyrocketed in the winter of 2024, totaling 160,583 after ridership on the route during the previous winter was 11,271.

Placing the 2024 numbers directly against the 2023 numbers for the route is “a bit of an unfair comparison,” Allen said, because last year the route was fare-based and less frequent.

But, “these numbers are amazing,” she said. “We really did expand the audience for transit by adding this route.”

Overall ridership numbers for ECO Transit increased by 10.5% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, a change that Allen attributed, in part, to the Vail-Beaver Creek Express drawing people who were not previously riding on ECO Transit.

The results of a voluntary survey completed by riders of the route backed Allen’s statements.

The survey collected 238 comments in English and Spanish. Most comments, both positive and negative, were “very repetitive,” said Dayana Herr, the marketing, communications & customer relations manager for the transportation authority.

Many comments, Herr said, came from Spanish speakers who wrote about taking the bus to get to work at Beaver Creek, as well as from vacationers who used the route to reach the slopes.

The large increase in ridership on the Vail-Beaver Creek Express is an indicator of potential growth in ridership that can be expected as ECO Transit begins to operate fare-free service on other lines.

“Expect that when we go full fare-free, we’re going to need more buses,” Tenenholz said.

While ECO Transit should have the staff to support more buses, just where those buses will come from remains to be seen.