What do Core Transit riders really want? Survey seeks to shape 10-year transit plan
Survey reveals riders want to feel safe, comfortable, access more destinations with more frequency
Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily
Core Transit, Eagle County’s public transportation agency, reviewed the wants and needs of its riders as it prepares to launch its 10-year transit plan next summer.
Most riders asked for more frequent service, but the survey and analysis presented to Core Transit’s board also emphasized the need to address some glaring safety and comfort concerns.
The nine-phase creation process for the 10-year plan is halfway through its designated year. The Core Transit board at its Dec. 11 board meeting heard about phases two, three and four — public outreach, an existing conditions analysis and a travel market analysis.
Riders prioritize safety, comfort and bus frequency
Core Transit staff and representatives from the consultant Fehr and Peers conducted outreach to the community in several ways, including 12 stakeholder meetings in August and September, a “Spanish-first” focus group with 16 participants at the Eagle Library in October and pop-up intercept events.
Residents were encouraged to fill out Core Transit’s survey, providing feedback on service across multiple categories. The survey received over 650 responses from people living throughout Core Transit’s service area. Almost 20% of survey respondents reported that the primary language spoken at home is Spanish, which aligns pretty closely with the county’s census data.
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“I don’t think any of the things we heard surprised us, but it was the amplitude of certain things that did,” said Dave Levy, Core Transit’s planning manager. “One of these things were the amenities — maybe as a catch-all term — that include shelter, lighting, safe crosswalks.”
A quarter of respondents said they felt unsafe walking to and/or from the nearest bus stop.
“The crosswalks is also a big one, especially among the Spanish-speaking focus group we had,” Picard said. “The scariness of trying to cross the highway, because as you know, at one end of your destination, you’re going to have to cross the street.”
While the town of Avon is working to bring overhead lighting and crosswalks to U.S. Highway 6 — and to slow the speed of traffic — much of Highway 6 from EagleVail to Edwards is dark and lacks crosswalks. With bus stops on alternating sides of the highway, pedestrians are forced to dart across the road to return to their homes. Last winter alone, two people — a visiting pedestrian and a local cyclist — were killed along Highway 6 between EagleVail and Edwards.
Thirty-three percent of Spanish-speaking respondents mentioned comfort as a priority for change, including bus shelters at every stop to protect riders from weather, cars and animals.
An analysis of Core Transit’s bus stops’ amenities revealed that over half of the stops lack amenities such as benches, sidewalks, crosswalks and shelters. Only 37% of Core Transit bus stops are currently ADA-compatible.
“A lot of folks are taking the bus really early in the morning — 5 a.m., 6 a.m. It’s really cold at that hour,” Picard said. “They’re often out there for 20 minutes or so waiting for the bus … and if it’s snowing or raining … that’s the kind of comments we’re hearing for the infrastructure.”
Too many riders on the most popular lines
Core Transit’s ridership has gone up 20% from 2019 to 2023. (There was a nationwide drop in ridership related to the pandemic from 2020 to 2022, which is why data from 2019 is often a better comparator.)
This increase “bucks the trend of what we’re seeing from transit agencies around the country, which are still predominantly below pre-pandemic levels,” Picard said.
Ridership is up even higher from 2019 to 2024, with a 36% increase from winter 2019 to now. In August alone, ridership increased by 56% from 2019 to 2024. Core Transit went fare-free for all riders except those going to and from Leadville and Gypsum in May, which likely accounts for the increase.
The service has yet to log its ridership numbers from January through April while operating fare-free, meaning the potential increase during its peak service months, December and January, is still unknown.
Core Transit’s service levels — the number of buses in rotation at any given time — have increased as well, but not to the same extent.
“So your productivity, which is a measure that we use — the passengers per service hour, the amount of service that’s out there — is also up pretty significantly, it’s about 16% through 2023,” Picard said.
The most popular route from 2019 through 2023 was the Highway 6 route that runs between Edwards and Vail along Highway 6. (In 2024, the route was defeated in the ratio of riders per service hour by the Vail-Beaver Creek Express, which runs between Beaver Creek, Avon and Vail.)
Capacity modeling revealed that the Highway 6 and Valley routes were operating at nearly twice their maximum ridership target last winter.
The target is set at 30 riders per bus, which is approximately 80% of the seating capacity on regular Core Transit buses.
“If your runs are regularly going over that, then you’re likely getting some runs that are really full,” Picard said.
Last winter, the Minturn route was at about half of its target, and the Leadville and Vail-Beaver Creek Express routes approached their maximum targets. In the summer, ridership on all routes shrank by almost half.
Surveyed riders also asked for more service when asked to select the top three improvements they would like to see to Core Transit.
First and foremost, riders asked for more frequent service (44%). Next, riders wanted stops closer to their destinations (30%). The third most popular option, for 29% of respondents, was “consistently on-time service.”
The vast majority of respondents (54%) said they wanted to see more frequency on the Valley route on the Eagle/Gypsum to Vail segment. The current schedule has buses running on this route once an hour, with more frequency at peak times in the morning and afternoon.
In the open-ended answer section of the survey, 22% of respondents, and 27% of Spanish-speaking respondents, mentioned the frequency of the buses as a concern. Particularly, respondents wrote about the bus schedule not aligning with the schedules and movement of high schoolers and employees working jobs with less traditional hours.
Where are people traveling on Core Transit?
The analysis of Core Transit’s existing rider patterns revealed that the town of Avon is the agency’s biggest “ridership generator,” where the greatest number of people board the bus, Picard said (fittingly, the town’s slogan is “the heart of the valley”). An average of over 1,700 people per day have boarded Core Transit buses at Avon Station this winter, while an average of 1,600 board at the Vail Transportation Center. The Eagle River Village in Edwards is the third most popular stop, with 971 boarding per day.
According to census data, over half of Eagle County’s population lives in Edwards, Gypsum and Eagle, while over half the jobs are in Avon and Vail, where less than a quarter of the full-time population lives.
The second most popular stop for downvalley boardings on the Highway 6 route is the Fawcett Road and Yoder Avenue stop, better known as the “Walmart stop” in Avon.
An analysis of the Valley route reveals that the primary ridership flow is between Eagle and Avon, not Vail.
The biggest “origin-destination pair,” according to replica data, which includes cell phone data and GPS navigation data, is Edwards and Avon, followed by Gypsum and Eagle and then Avon and Vail. The data was collected from March to May 2024.
Expanding the fare-free service
The top priority for Gypsum and Leadville residents was expanding the system’s fare-free service to Gypsum and Leadville, the only two locations that currently require arriving and departing riders to pay a fare.
The Eagle Valley Transportation Authority, which combined with ECO Transit, Eagle County’s former bus provider, to form Core Transit this summer, was created via a ballot measure put to Eagle County residents in November 2022. At that time, voters in Gypsum rejected the ballot measure, while the rest of Eagle County municipalities opted in.
Leadville, which, unlike all other Core Transit stops, is in Lake County, was not offered the transportation authority ballot measure.
The future service improvements and expansions built based on this research will likely be presented to the board in May.
