Spring Break
Local org. pressures city to expand transit
Shari Blackman
Issue date: 9/4/08 Section: News
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Instead, volunteers are going door-to-door, soliciting letters and surveys from residents to determine what people want in mass transit.
"The city's got a great rhetoric. They talk about being green and have this 'Money Magazine' reputation, but when it comes to getting things done, it's not so great," said Fred Kirsch, director of Community for Sustainable Energy. "We are putting the spotlight on them to make sure they get more done."
The letters are going to Mayor Doug Hutchinson and Fort Collins City Council. So far, the group has generated 2,200 completed surveys.
"We are talking almost exclusively to riders of choice," Kirsch said. These are the riders who are not dependent on the bus fortheir transportation needs, as opposed to "riders of necessity."
In the surveys, 90 percent of people said they "rarely or never ride the bus," Kirsch said.
But 75 to 80 percent of those people reported that they would ride the bus if it were more convenient.
This contrasts with a Transfort survey of 400 people in 2002. The majority of those surveyed said they would not use the bus.
Kirsch cited an increase in city traffic, higher gas prices and concerns about air pollution as reasons for this shift.
The current system is set up as a hub-and-spoke system.
All routes go through downtown or CSU, which are transfer points. Riders may wait up to an hour for a bus and then have to transfer to a bus that will take them to their destination.
This system was set up to serve downtown and CSU. Now that Fort Collins has spread out, the current system isn't working for most people, Kirsch said.
He would like to see buses run up main streets no more than half a mile apart. This would bring buses within one-quarter mile of most people.
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