Ali Longwell/Vail Daily Archive
With the end of the winter of 2024 comes the end of the Eagle Valley Transportation Authority’s second winter of 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 the daylight saving time changes.
“This really hasn’t been a normal winter,” said Tanya Allen, executive director of the Eagle Valley Transportation Authority. “We tried some new things, asked a lot of people… to step out 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 August 4. Allen, the former executive director of ECO Transit, began working for the transportation authority last summer.
In recent months, the transport authority has been working to train its staff, filling almost all of its highest leadership positions. ECO Transit employees will have the opportunity to work for the transportation authority at their current salary level or higher
This winter, ECO Transit began meeting some of the transportation authority’s demands, including increased service and a free route on the Vail-Beaver Creek Express.
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Winter 2024 Hits
ECO Transit will begin operating free service on its Valley, Minturn and Highway 6 routes (except Gypsum stops) on May 19.
To operate enough buses to meet summer service needs, ECO Transit must have at least 54 drivers. During the April and early May season, ECO Transit has 45 drivers, and another 16 drivers are in training and will be in the field until May 19, meaning ECO Transit will be overstaffed at the start of the service change .
Overall, ECO Transit has seen a 61% increase in staff availability in early 2024 compared to the same period 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, interim director of ECO Transit.
Last winter, ECO Transit buses arrived more frequently, with a 43% increase in service hours; ECO buses also arrived more reliably, with less than 1% of routes cancelled. And they were cleaner, with the buses being cleaned weekly.
Winter 2024 Challenges
In the first quarter of 2024, ECO Transit suffered 15 preventable accidents.
“There’s no way around it: it was one of the worst preventable accidents, in terms of total accidents, that we’ve had in recent times,” Tenenholz said.
Tenenholz attributed much of the increase to newly hired drivers who had never driven in snow before. “Five out of every seven accidents in February were to operators with less than a year of service,” he said.
Some of the operators did not encounter snow during training, Tenenholz explained.
“We have to do a better job of somehow figuring out a way to teach people how to drive a bus in snow without snow,” Tenenholz said.
The council spent a few minutes brainstorming possibilities, including simulating icy roads with plastic-coated sheets, finding a location in the upper valley where an ice sheet could be created, and bringing ECO buses to an existing snow lane in Basalt, although none conclusion has been reached. during the meeting.
ECO Transit also continues to face difficulties with maintenance, with 48% of buses out of service in the first quarter of 2024.
“We have two (maintenance) contracts that are very close to being signed and completed,” 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 expected,” Tenenholz said.
Vail-Beaver Creek Express
Vail-Beaver Creek Express ridership soared in the winter of 2024, totaling 160,583, after ridership on the route during the previous winter was 11,271.
Putting the 2024 numbers directly against the route’s 2023 numbers is “a little bit of an unfair comparison,” Allen said, because last year the route was fare-based and less frequent.
But “these numbers are staggering,” she said. “We really expanded the transit audience by adding this route.”
Overall ECO Transit ridership increased 10.5% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, a change Allen attributed, in part, to the Vail-Beaver Creek Express attracting people who previously did not use ECO Transit.
The results of a voluntary survey conducted by cyclists on the route supported Allen’s statements.
The survey collected 238 comments in English and Spanish. Most of the comments, both positive and negative, were “very repetitive,” said Dayana Herr, marketing, communications and customer relations manager for the transportation authority.
Many comments, Herr said, came from Spanish speakers who wrote about taking the bus to work in Beaver Creek, as well as from tourists who used the route to get to the slopes.
The large increase in ridership on the Vail-Beaver Creek Express is an indicator of the potential growth in ridership that can be expected as ECO Transit begins operating free service on other lines.
“Expect that when the fare is completely free, we will need more buses,” Tenenholz said.
While ECO Transit must have the staff to support more buses, it is not yet known where those buses will come from.
