Core Transit named Agency of the Year聽at Colorado conference
Jonathan Resnick/Courtesy photo
Core Transit was honored with the Large Community Transit Agency of the Year award at the fall Colorado Association of Transit Agencies conference in September. The award recognizes outstanding best practices or projects undertaken by transit agencies serving communities of over 15,000 people.
“Core Transit was the clear choice (for) this award,” said Ann Rajewski, the executive director of the Colorado Association of Transit Agencies. “Their ability to stand up a brand-new regional transportation authority while increasing service, going fare-free, and transferring the current operations from Eagle County to Core Transit in just about 20 months is a monumental accomplishment.”
Core Transit experienced tremendous growth over the past few years, with annual ridership approaching 1.3 million. Ridership in the third quarter of 2024 alone increased by up to 60% over the same period last year. For comparison, ridership growth sits at less than 8% through mid-2024 nationally. Alongside this growth, Core Transit has maintained a trip completion rate of over 99%.
After voters approved the formation of a new Regional Transportation Authority in November 2022, Core Transit needed to expand service rapidly, bringing on new operators and buses while establishing essential organizational foundations like employee handbooks, HR and finance software, policies, and procedures.
The first significant service increase was implemented in November 2023, and at that same time, Core Transit went from one employee to two. A strong partnership with Eagle County and the current ECO Transit staff made the service increase possible. Rolling into 2024, the next goal was hiring core administrative staff and providing fare-free service with the launch of the summer 2024 schedule.听
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“I cannot stress enough how impressive it was that our staff found a way to accomplish two major schedule increases over seven months. When we made routes fare-free, we estimated a 50% increase in ridership. We have exceeded that estimate all while completing 99.5% of our scheduled routes,” said Tanya Allen, Core Transit’s executive director. “Next time you hop on a bus or see one of our operations staff, give them a big thank you.”
After launching the new, more frequent, mostly fare-free summer schedule in May 2024, Core Transit kept the momentum going with an ambitious goal. By Aug. 4, all ECO operations staff would officially become Core Transit employees.
“Aug. 4 was an ‘ahead of schedule’ deadline to transition ECO staff to Core Transit,” said Amy Phillips, Core Transit’s board chair. “I want to thank our staff and Eagle County government for their hard work in making this a reality. We went from 11 employees to 94 overnight.”
During the transition from ECO to Core Transit, staff collaborated with the Core Transit board to establish a compensation philosophy aimed at being an employer of choice. As a result, Core Transit recently posted nine operator positions for the upcoming winter service increase and received well over 40 applications.听
Visit to learn more about upcoming winter schedule enhancements, sign up for alerts, and browse the careers page.
