Users of Glenwood Springs’ Ride Glenwood On-Demand van service will soon have to fork over a couple more bills to grab a ride anywhere in town besides Glenwood’s two main valleywide bus hubs.
Glenwood Springs City Council, during its regular Thursday, Oct. 15, meeting, voted 6-1 to increase the fare from $1 to $3 per ride, per person.
Anyone using the on-demand app to catch a ride to or between the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority (RFTA) South Glenwood (27th Street) or West Glenwood (Wulfsohn Road) park-and-rides will still pay the current $1 fare per ride so as to encourage broader use of transit, council agreed.
The new fare will not take effect until after the public is adequately informed about the change, explained Lee Barger, transportation engineer for the city.
The move comes in an effort to recoup more of the $500,000 subsidy the city puts toward the door-to-door transit service, and to gather more data about the program’s worth to users.
At $1 per ride, the city receives about $85,000 in revenue, while the new fare is expected to generate something in the neighborhood of $140,000, despite an expected drop in ridership with the fare increase, Barger said.
But the fare hike should better inform what trips are more necessary, while reducing non-essential trips, he said.
Long term, once RFTA’s grant support for the on-demand service runs out after 2027, city council remains skeptical about the program’s value, versus planning ahead to extend the fixed-route Ride Glenwood bus service to underserved parts of Glenwood Springs.
“We can do better with that money,” Councilor Mitchell Weimer said. “I have no support for this program, and we should shut it down as soon as we can.
“There are a lot of sensible possibilities out there, but this is not one of them,” he added.
Councilor Steve Smith referred to the on-demand service as a “government-subsidized taxi service,” but for the time being admitted it’s the only option for residents of South Glenwood and along the middle section of Midland Avenue where the regular Ride Glenwood buses do not run.
It remains free to ride the fixed-
route buses along Grand Avenue and out to West Glenwood.
Land-banking grant for housing OK’d
City council — after another lengthy discussion about the legal ins and outs of a unique approach to securing future workforce housing units — approved a $265,000 grant for a nonprofit housing partnership to place property at 130 Midland Ave. under contract.
The property is to be land-banked for purposes of eventually building 36 deed-restricted units that would be sold to qualified buyers based on income.
The proposal comes from Tanner Crawley, principal and founder of Trellis Housing Partners LLC, and Denver-based affordable housing charity, Sharing Connexion.
Council first discussed the proposal at its Oct. 1 meeting, but wanted to wait to decide until after a housing goals workshop discussion prior to its meeting last week. Some council members had also expressed concerns about the potential speculative nature of the deal, and tying up the city’s workforce housing funds for a project that would need to go through the normal land-use approval process first.
The deal includes an anti-speculation clause that would prevent the property from being “flipped” for another use, City Attorney Karl Hanlon said.
Council ultimately voted 6-1 to approve the grant, on the condition that the money be paid back, plus 5% interest, if the development is denied or the deal falls apart.
“There are good guardrails in place to ensure the end product is what we are looking for,” Mayor Pro Tem Erin Zalinski said.
Councilor David Townsley was still skeptical, and cast the lone dissenting vote.
“I see this as putting the cart before the horse,” he said, offering that the approval process itself is likely to bring up the usual growth concerns around traffic and other impacts.
Bear-proof trash containers coming
Council also voted at the Oct. 15
meeting to hike trash-hauling rates through the city’s contract provider, Mountain Waste and Recycling, by what will amount to nearly $10 per month.
In addition to a 6% rate increase, council unanimously agreed to tack on the extra cost of eventually providing wildlife-resistant containers to every residential and commercial customer who doesn’t already have them.
The move comes in response to increased bear activity in Glenwood Springs this fall, and the usual problem of bears getting into unsecured trash.
The new trash containers are expected to be received and distributed throughout Glenwood by next spring, when bears will be waking from their winter hibernation and out looking for food again.
In other business …
Council deferred until their Nov. 5 meeting a request to fund 100% of the city’s Tourism Management Board’s budget request for 2027.
Earlier this year, council had asked the tourism board to reduce its budget by 10-20%.
Tourism board member Mike Mercatoris, listening in and commenting via Zoom, made a case for preserving the board’s full budget request.
“Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas,” he said of the current tourism promotion efforts through Visit Glenwood, a third-party vendor that handles tourism promotion for the Glenwood Springs Chamber Resort Association.
Council will take up the request at the same time it is scheduled to approve the 2027 city budget next month.