Seasonal tourist influxes, an airport located outside Durango’s city limits and hard-to-reach rural residential areas can make it difficult to ensure public or private transportation is available in the region when visitors and residents need it.
On Thursday, those hurdles brought together more than 50 regional transportation stakeholders, including government agencies, public and private transportation companies, professional associations, hotels and other tourist- and community-driven operations.
Also at the meeting was a representative from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to help attendees better understand what can be done.
Solving local problems is not as simple as determining demand and meeting it, attendees said, especially given the complicated state rules regulating transportation.
“I just don’t understand why our region can’t have local control,” Durango Mayor Christina Rinderle said.
Rinderle said she would like the region to be exempt from the state regulations because individual communities know best how to meet local demand and “competition is a good thing.”
La Plata County Airport Director Ron Dent agreed, saying the state regulations are based too heavily on population figures, an approach that may not be appropriate for an area like La Plata County, where tens of thousands of visitors arrive each month during peak seasons.
Besides, air service improved after the industry was deregulated, Dent said.
Other parts of the state have made similar arguments, said Ron Jack, section chief for the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Deregulation has even been tried once or twice in a few places.
After the Denver market opted to deregulate cab service, new competition saturated the taxi market, and soon cab drivers were literally fist-fighting for business in heavy traffic places such as the airport, Jack said.
“There are unintended consequences to deregulation in some cases,” he said. “You have to go into it with eyes wide open.”
It’s a contentious issue among state lawmakers, Jack said.
The current system provides regulated monopolies for taxi, limo and other similar operations. It helps to ensure viability for the businesses, which, in many areas, depend on having their market’s total business during the peak travel seasons to stay afloat during the slow seasons, Jack said. It also ensures entire geographical areas are serviced rather than just the most lucrative areas. The rules demand monopoly providers serve every request in their monopoly territory, and they even dictate maximum customer wait times for service.
Those promises would be lost in a deregulated environment, he said.
But forming a regional transportation district under local government control is an option, Jack said.
“If a government body is formed to provide the services, we’re hands-off,” Jack said.
State Reps. Ellen Roberts and J. Paul Brown organized and attended the meeting. Jack said some of the problems mentioned at the meeting could be solved only with legislative changes, something Brown and Roberts said they would consider if sensible solutions emerge.
