Colorado planning

[railiner]

Larimer County's non-interest in joining RTD was because it already had a muni system in Fort Collins and subsequently one was set up in Loveland

I had thought it was because they were satisfied with the intercity service provided by Colorado Motorway, at the time of RTD’s inception. The James family sold their Denver Boulder Bus Company to RTD, and shortly thereafter found a buyer for their CMW with Continental Trailways, which already ran a few trips through many of the same towns on its Denver-Wyoming routes, albeit with an intrastate traffic restriction. When Continental Trailways took it over, they began cutting service, and when it was acquired by Greyhound, even more cuts.

Today, Greyhound is down to just a single trip that way, that just serves Fort Collins on its way across Wyoming to Salt Lake City.
“Bustang” does provide multiple trips with some stops between Denver and Fort Collins…

 

[Willbridge]

I had thought it was because they were satisfied with the intercity service provided by Colorado Motorway, at the time of RTD’s inception. The James family sold their Denver Boulder Bus Company to RTD, and shortly thereafter found a buyer for their CMW with Continental Trailways, which already ran a few trips through many of the same towns on its Denver-Wyoming routes, albeit with an intrastate traffic restriction. When Continental Trailways took it over, they began cutting service, and when it was acquired by Greyhound, even more cuts.

Today, Greyhound is down to just a single trip that way, that just serves Fort Collins on its way across Wyoming to Salt Lake City.
“Bustang” does provide multiple trips with some stops between Denver and Fort Collins…

That may have played a part, but local bus service was the main issue. The creation of RTD did include Weld County, and that's how Greeley ended up with a local bus system. The antis wanted out of the new district, but there were people in Greeley-Evans who wanted local bus service, so a threadbare system was set up. Interurban service was ignored, and Greyhound faded away to the single trip run by Express Arrow four days a week.

The local-only phenomenon comes from a political town mentality. I ran across an article in an Eastern Oregon paper from the dawn of motor buses that had merchants from Nyssa objecting to an application for a bus line between there and Ontario, because it would take folks away from local businesses. When I started at ODOT a colleague told me that he had heard the same view expressed elsewhere.


Here's the last Trailways station in Fort Collins. I was following this because some legislators were floating the idea of making RTD statewide. Colorado did not then have a DOT. Our policy was that we were against the statewide idea, but staff had to be ready in case.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

Whoever drew that sign did a nice job with it!

 

[Willbridge]

Whoever drew that sign did a nice job with it!

Given the service reductions, they had time to work on it.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

Given the service reductions, they had time to work on it.

Ha, yes! But still a nice job.

Funny, I was running arounds yesterday and we saw two Trailways buses nearly simultaneously - one crossing over and another merging and was thinking of the various threads here.