# Colorado offers Bustang commuter bus service



## CHamilton (Jan 25, 2015)

> East to West, North to South, Bustang carries commuters to and from Denver, Colorado Springs, Glenwood Springs and more. This comfortably, cutting-edge transportation alternative connects the major corridors in Colorado during peak commuter hours, Monday through Friday. There will be three major service routes.


https://www.codot.gov/travel/bustang

From the Colorado Rail Passenger Association - ColoRail page on Facebook:



> The service should begin no later than April. Check out ColoRail's next Passenger newsletter for details due out in early February.


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## chakk (Jan 25, 2015)

The I-70 route won't serve many commuters with a 10:30 AM arrival in Denver by the once-daily bus from Glenwood Springs.


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## railiner (Jan 25, 2015)

I see that Horizon Coach got the contract to operate the service for CDOT. I wonder if Greyhound bidded for it?

I see that they have restrictions on competing with RTD, and the local Larimer County transit services. Even so, they could make a stop at RTD's Longmont station to drop off southbound passengers, or receive northbound passengers, to save those going to Boulder, Lafayette, or other northern cities from having to go past them and in or out of Denver to reach them.....


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## Swadian Hardcore (Jan 26, 2015)

After seeing this thread, I checked them out. They're using brand-new MCI D4500CL equipment with the new interior. Seating appears to be 50 Amaya Torino Standard with 3-point seat belts, which is surprising because those seats do not meet FMVSS containment standards.

I agree that the commuter run to Glenwood Springs is quite useless for commuters.

Greyhound must have been competing for the bid because they had lent a pair of 102DL3s for on-shoulder testing with the DOT. Greyhound's newest timetable of February 1st, 2015 shows that they've added Schedules 6071/6072, Denver-Grand Junction which don't operate in the middle of the week. It departs Denver in the morning and the return gets back in the evening with a 60-minute turnaround in Grand Junction.

The Bustang seats are these with seat belts: http://www.amaya-astron.com.mx/uploads/1377617572184_EN_ARCHIVO_1.pdf.


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## rickycourtney (Jan 26, 2015)

This looks like a neat service, but it's a bummer that the last bus on each schedule departs just before 6 arrives each evening.

I have a friend who lives in Colorado Springs and when I took the CZ to visit he had to make the hour long drive up to Denver to pick me up.

Amtrak offers a thruway bus connection from Denver to Colorado Springs but it's useless. It's a 2 hour trip on regularly scheduled Greyhound bus, but it departs at midnight... 5 and a half hours after the CZ arrives in Denver.

There's also no Amtrak connection to Fort Collins, a fairly sizable college town.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Jan 27, 2015)

Hmm? Greyhound shows a 7:30 PM at Denver Union Station, a Denver-Dallas schedule (7309) which stops in Colorado Springs.

No such luck with Fort Collins, which is on Greyhound's Denver-Portland route.


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## chakk (Jan 27, 2015)

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Greyhound must have been competing for the bid because they had lent a pair of 102DL3s for on-shoulder testing with the DOT. Greyhound's newest timetable of February 1st, 2015 shows that they've added Schedules 6071/6072, Denver-Grand Junction which don't operate in the middle of the week. It departs Denver in the morning and the return gets back in the evening with a 60-minute turnaround in Grand Junction.


Nice to see that Greyhound will be offering a morning bus out of Denver again (after several years without), as this would provide connections to the westbound CZ at Glenwood Springs for passengers originating at Frisco or Vail, Colorado. However, I see that Greyhound has discontinued the eastbound evening bus from Glenwood, which provided protection against a more-than-two-hours-late eastbound CZ. Now, a person missing that connection would have to sit around in Glenwood until 3:30 AM to get the next eastbound Greyhound on I-70.


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## railiner (Jan 27, 2015)

Besides Greyhound running between Cheyenne and Denver (as part of their SLC/Portland route) with a stop at Fort Collins, there is the one remaining Black Hills Stages trip from Cheyenne to Denver (as part of their Billings route), but it goes via Greeley. And the BHS trip runs around the same hour as one of the GL trips.....

Even though the population of northern Colorado has exploded over the last forty years or so, they have lost a lot of public transportation, outside of the RTD district...

At one time GL ran six or seven trips to Greeley and Cheyenne via US-85, Continental Trailways ran three trips via I-25 or US-87 or combination with US-287 and Colorado-1, and Colorado Motorway ran seven ;local trips to Fort Collins via US-287, two of which continued up to Laramie. And Gray Line of Colorado ran a daily trip up to Lyons and Estes Park via Boulder on US 36.

At that time the SFZ also made its daily run to Greeley and Cheyenne.

There was also NorColo running a connection between Greeley, Loveland and Fort Collins via either C-14, or US-34......


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## Swadian Hardcore (Jan 28, 2015)

I have to point out that the 3:30 AM eastbound out of Glenwood Springs is Schedule 1682, the Los Angeles-New York City Transcontinental schedule. This explains its weird hours. 1682/1683 are Greyhound's Transcon schedules.

Most of the Greyhound routes of out Denver are long-distance routes which means, unfortunately, the short-distance timings are going to suffer. Bustang might be a better option for some of the routes. Greyhound seems to have cut too much service and the remaining service is imbalanced. Even Denver-Chicago has been cut, leaving a massive gap along I-80 between Cheyenne and Chicago filled by minor operators.


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## rickycourtney (Jan 28, 2015)

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Hmm? Greyhound shows a 7:30 PM at Denver Union Station, a Denver-Dallas schedule (7309) which stops in Colorado Springs.
> 
> No such luck with Fort Collins, which is on Greyhound's Denver-Portland route.


So that's the official "Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach" run for train #5 (westbound CHI-EMY) and the layover is EVEN MORE ridiculous! #5 arrives in Denver at 7:15am... so passengers need to wait 12 hours, 15 minutes to catch the Greyhound to Colorado Springs/Pueblo.

About the only good "Amtrak" service to/from Colorado Springs and Pueblo is on the Southwest Chief. You have to make the connection in the sleepy town of Raton, NM but in both cases the wait is less than an hour.

Amtrak seems to be offering these Thruway connections as a face saving move. They can say they offer service to Colorado Springs and Pueblo... but the service they offer is in many cases, useless.


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## railiner (Jan 29, 2015)

It was only a matter of time before the CDOT would provide what Greyhound does not. If Greyhound does not 'wake up', soon Bustang, RTD, or other entities will all but eliminate them as a provider of local bus service along the Front Range.

Old Ralph Berndt, the long time general manager of Continental Trailways Denver Region is probably spinning in his grave over what became of the one time stronghold that his company vigorously monopolized there....


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## Swadian Hardcore (Jan 29, 2015)

Greyhound seems to be acting too complacent right now. I'm surprised that they don't care enough about Colorado to start some Greyhound Express out of Denver other than the Denver-El Paso. To make things worse, their service gap east and north of Denver is HUGE.

Technically, Greyhound is already eliminated as a provider of local bus service out of Denver because every route out of Denver is LD except for the new Denver-Grand Junction. The same can be said for SLC where local service is provided by Salt Lake Express.

Regarding Bustang, I was surprised that they use the now-unpopular D4500CL and the "obsolete" seating. I was hoping they would use the equally-priced X3-45 which is more efficient, consistent, and less prone to fire.


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## rrdude (Jan 29, 2015)

With 50 seats, it's "still a bus". Go down to about 25 seats, and you have a winner, except financially, it would never make it.


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## Swadian Hardcore (Jan 30, 2015)

That's not the problem right now. The number of seats is not the sole problem, the quality of the seats and the quality of the vehicle/engine are equally important if not more. Not to mention the quality of maintenance and driver skill. I must insist that Greyhound's new 50-seat buses are less comfortable than their old 55-seat buses or rebuilt old buses that now have 50 or 51 seats.

Poor scheduling and misplaced routes cause further issues. We haven't even begun to talk about customer service and security.


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