A 51-seat black-and-blue Bustang Outrider bus, snaking for 191 miles through Colorado’s central mountains this week, carried an eclectic mix of travelers — a German Buddhist bound for six months of meditation above Crestone, a Tucson woman visiting her sister in Salida, an Asian tourist, a graphic artist coming home from a celebration of life.
The bus is often full and driver Doug Allen laments the times he’s had to turn would-be riders away, up to 15 recently at a stop in Buena Vista. The demand along his Denver-to-Crested Butte route, with 17,277 passengers last year, up from 10,070 in 2021, has spurred the Colorado Department of Transportation to add a second daily run starting Feb. 1.
It’s an expansion that reflects the robust public transit beyond Colorado’s Front Range cities even as ridership on metro Denver’s Regional Transportation District buses and trains has dropped. Federal Transit Administration records show that more people ride buses in rural Colorado than in rural parts of any other state…