The city of Durango’s public transit system is a convenient way to get around, even more so during the city’s free ride program from June 1 to Aug. 31. But many residents and riders make use of city buses out of necessity, not just convenience. It’s the only mode of transportation available to them.
Sarah Hill, city transportation director, said about 60% of riders take the bus because they don’t have access to a vehicle or bicycle and they need public transit to get around.
The other 40% of riders are what she calls choice riders – people who choose to take the bus over other modes of transportation because it is convenient. Choice riders often take the bus to avoid traffic congestion and because they have personal goals related to reducing carbon emissions and their footprint on the environment.
According to annual city transit surveys, the top reasons people ride the bus in Durango are work commuting, shopping, social trips, medical trips and school commutes, in that order, she said.
Not all Durango Transit riders live in Durango. Katie Bisaut of Farmington works as a kennel technician at one of Durango’s animal boarding facilities. Her girlfriend drives the two of them to Durango, and Bisaut uses her bike and the city buses to get around town.
She said switching between her bike and city buses has been a regular routine for about three years and, compared to Denver’s Regional Transportation District, Durango Transit is “10 million times better than that.”
Other commuters are more relaxed than on the jam-packed buses in Denver, and Durango bus drivers pay more attention to their passengers, she said.
In Denver, Bisaut was paying $50 a week ($3 per bus ride) just to get to work. She pays about half that every week in Durango. She said the free rides currently offered are “awesome” and she’s saving $25 to $30 a week, which she can put toward other things.
She is happy with the city’s transit system because it helps her get around town when her girlfriend is working. But her need for cheap transportation goes beyond convenience.
About 10 years ago, Bisaut was involved in an accident with a semi that sent her car flying into a cement retaining wall. The crash broke her collarbone, totaled her car and landed her in the hospital. Years later, she’s still unable to get behind the wheel of a car on well-traveled roads.
“When I drive, my anxiety comes up and I hyperventilate. Especially around semis and stuff like that,” she said. “It put me in the hospital. So after that I just can’t drive. Physically, I just can’t do it.”
She said she’s only had one bad experience on a city bus, and she suspects she just caught the driver on a bad day. It was winter and the roads were slick.
When she boarded the bus, the driver told her to throw away a drink she was carrying with her. At the next stop, two men boarded and opened up a beer, but the driver stayed silent.
Generally, though, drivers are friendly and accommodating, she said.
Rachel Ybarra, a cook at Jean Pierre Bakery & Wine Bar and Perbacco Cucina Italiana, regularly rides the bus as her only form of transportation. She said she’s also had unpleasant experiences with inebriated people riding the bus.
“I’ll be on the bus with my daughter. Some people drink too much and then they try to talk to your kids or talk to you. You just got off a shift, you’re with your kid. You don’t want them talking to your kid,” she said.
Hill, the transportation director, said Durango Transit held a recent staff meeting about rules enforcement. People bringing open containers of alcohol onto the bus or who have service animals that misbehave are the most frequent delinquencies. The meeting focused on making bus rules more clearly defined.
She said bus drivers carry a lot of responsibility. In addition to enforcing bus rules, they must make sure their passengers are safe while navigating busy traffic and tight road space. People’s lives are in their hands, but they are also providing a public service and aren’t gatekeepers of who can board a bus.
Hill said she has put in a request for a transit security position in which someone will enforce rules at the transit center, on routes and at bus stops.
While the majority of Durango Transit riders need the buses to go about their business, others like Nick Fontaind use the bus because they believe in public transportation.
“I ride the bus to increase ridership on the bus because public transportation is an inherently better way to get people around,” he said.
He owns a car, a bike and several scooters, but he takes the bus to increase its ridership numbers. He said public transportation draws disdain from some Americans: There’s an attitude that one hasn’t really “made it” in life if he or she doesn’t drive a car to go places.
“Everyone driving 2 to 4 tons of metal everywhere they go is just a horrible way to get around as opposed to riding a bike, collectively getting around in public transit,” he said.
He committed to riding with Durango Transit after watching YouTube channels such as Not Just Bikes, reading books such as “Strong Towns” and consuming other media that made him think differently about American public transportation.
“Just reading about it and hearing the points of European and Asian city design and taking that in comparison to the way that specifically the United States and Canada designed their roadways and transportation systems just seems like just kind of a bad design in comparison,” he said.
“When you see the kind of percentage of people who take public transportation in those areas – you know, Helsinki, Amsterdam, Tokyo, even small towns in Europe and Asia ... it just seems like it would be a better way to do things,” he said.
He spends his down time on the bus reading, listening to podcasts and checking work emails on the way to his job at Fort Lewis College, where he works as a network engineer.
“I figure if enough people like me can get out and increase the ridership then it might increase the transit times and the amount of buses, the routes,” he said.
For Fontaind, a bus pass that gets him from home to FLC and back costs about $35 a year. Comparatively, cars cost “an insane amount of money in the grand scheme of things,” he said.
“Remember that you aren’t in traffic, you are traffic,” he said.
Increased Durango Transit ridership means fewer cars on the road, which is a benefit to automobile enthusiasts as much as anyone else, he said.
“You should incentivize the people around you who do not like to drive to come try the bus where you can sit, hang out, enjoy the beautiful views of Durango, read a book, listen to a book, play on your phone and not have to drive,” he said.
Free rides on city buses offered by Durango Transit has caused ridership to skyrocket this June and July. The transportation department gave 37,305 free rides in June, about a 29% increase from the 26,678 regular fare rides provided in June 2022.
Hill said the free rides could encourage people who have never ridden public transit to try it out and adjust their commuting routines. But the free rides expire Aug. 31. If the city – and its ridership – wants to continue providing free transit, a sustainable and dedicated funding source is needed, Hill said.
She said public transit nationwide never pays for itself. Every transit agency is subsidized in one way or another. Funding is a conversation the city has been having for decades.
Parking rates, the transportation department’s largest source of revenue, were increased in 2014, she said. But in 2016-17, Durango Transit lost grant funding, which caused a reduction in services that are still being regained.
She said the most common local revenue in Colorado for municipal transit is sales tax.
Increasing bus fare rates might sound like it can increase revenues, but that has the effect of pricing riders off the bus, which defeats the point of offering public transit, she said. An increase on marijuana taxes was proposed in the past, but the community and City Council shot that idea down.
Hill said future funding options could include collaboration with Durango’s housing division to create some sort of workforce tax to fund transit and affordable housing. Lodgers tax increases or reallocations are also possible ways forward.
“We will need to identify at least $1.5 million annually to avoid going into the red for transit funding,” she said.
Even more funding will be needed to expand services like longer operational hours, including late night service, and expanded routes into La Plata County.
cburney@durangoherald.com
