Well greetings from Cold Colorado Springs, I doubt there will be too many website updates for the next few months I have so many other things like my thesis to really make headway on, and have at least one brutal block. The entire journey today has made felt a bit bittersweet since it could be my last transit adventure between my hometown of New York City with its 24-hour frequent transit options to the Font Range where lets just say you need a timetable and the local Colorado Springs Bus System (that due to budget cuts doesn’t operate after 7pm on weekdays or on weekends, supposedly that service will be restored in the coming year) and doesn’t even serve the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport. I did though Manage to get back to Colorado Springs via public transportation using the cheapest route possible.
This trip begins two-days ago on Sunday. My original flight plans were for that evening were flying from LGA to Washington Dulles, and onto the new non-stop to Colorado Springs, a trip entirely on more CRJ-700 regional jets (my thanksgiving trip that I didn’t bother to right about was COS-Chicago O’Hare-Syracues, NY round-trip entirely on those jets. After getting up-booted (due to regular economy being full) to Economy Plus for two of the flights and having a perfectly pleasant flight but then begin stuck in the extremely loud back of the plane in regular economy with misaligned windows for the other two legs made this trip one I was dreading). I woke up in the middle of the night Sunday Morning with an awful but short lasting deadly stomach bug (which my brother was affected by when I left the house this morning). This trip back to Colorado Springs probably would not have been one for the blog, there would have been no public transit involved. My mother was planning to drive me to the airport and a roommate would have picked me up. Instead I was on United’s website noticing that travel waivers (meaning you can change your trip with-out paying any of the exorbitant fees) had been issued for all three airports I was to fly through that evening (the storm in the Northeast-Washington and New York was a joke, Colorado had at least some actual weather). So I called up United and managed to rebook myself on a flight Tuesday at 10AM to Denver with a seat on a joke puddle-jumper to Colorado Springs that I wasn’t sure I’d use depended upon the ride situation. Monday night I called my housemates and realized they were all busy Tuesday afternoon, meaning I’d need to skip the Colorado Springs leg and take public transit down from Denver otherwise face a $35-$40 cab ride that I’m too cheep to take. I looked at the FREX schedule and realized I was arriving at the beginning of its early afternoon 3-hour service break. I then looked at the options to spend some of the time taking local buses via the 169LTD (only runs 7 trips from the airport hourly through the afternoon, with 5 to the airport in the morning, most between 3 and 7 AM, a bus for employees not travelers) to the 66 (a every half-hour local route along Arapahoe Road). This option would save me over $11 dollars costing a fare of $2.25 instead of the ridiculous $13 that the AT SkyRide now costs to get to Arapahoe. That would be one real transit adventure and everything ended working out perfectly:
The day began just after dawn, the morning light still clearly visible as I left my parents apartment at 7:15 walked down with my suitcase to the corner bus stop and took the M98, waiting maybe 5 minutes for it, a Limited bus that makes no stops between my neighborhood and 125 Street where the M60 to LGA is. I took it down to Park Avenue and 125th Street getting there at about 7:40, walked beneath the Metro-North tracks, noticed some artwork I really need to photograph on the side of their structure, and saw a M60 already coming towards me in the distance and got on it. It was quite empty, a far cry from my previous M60 trip to the airport back in August when it was packed like sardines after I waited 20 minutes for it and might have missed my flight had there been any line for security. Before I knew it I was getting off at the Central Terminal Building, made my way upstairs to the EasyCheckIn Machines that somehow still print your boarding pass on old-school gold colored magnetic imaging paper with a barcode on them instead of the flimsy paper stock. I think these are first generation. Made my way through a basically empty security checkpoint and by 8:40 was landside in Concourse C that was nice and empty and didn’t feel cramped like Concourse B (used by all the LCC carriers that now serve LGA) and was waiting for my flight.
While waiting I got annoyed t the lack of a usable water fountain in the terminal complained to a United employee who couldn’t believe there wasn’t one, bought a muffin at au-ban-pan partially to get change for my buses, then volunteered to get bumped from my flight for $400 and a trip via Chicago but they didn’t need me, before my plane boarded at 9:55, where I unfortunately had to take my middle seat (luckily two-thirds from the back, not the last row as I feared) between two luckily petite Asians for an uneventful flight back to Denver (the middle seat on a full size Airbus is almost more comfortable then the very back of a loud RJ). Unfortunately the audio channels in my row didn’t work so I couldn’t try listing in United’s unique feature, Channel 9 that allows you to hear ATC. Slept and read my kindle book the first tycoon about Commodore Vanderbilt. My one complaint was that the drink cart was only brought through once (it could have come back through when I was napping) with the food-for-purchase cart at the beginning of the flight.
We got to Denver ten minutes early but waited on the plane for that amount of time for the Jetbridge operator, the pilot coming on to say he had called them 3 times and couldn’t figure out why they were not there. I got off the plane at 12:40 MST walked up to the gate agent, canceled my Colorado Springs flight (noticed the previous one to mine at 11:30 had been canceled, made an ignorant sole happy) he was fine doing it and didn’t yell at me. Had an hour before my bus took the DIA train to Concourse A, decided to walk over the bridge across the active taxiway, looked at the artwork, stopped at the RTD information booth with some well informed employees and picked up a 2011 bus map and the schedules for my two buses for The 169 LTD (effective 19 November, 2008, guess it hasn’t changed in over two years) and the 66 (effective two days ago, January 9, 2011) how strange. Next thing I knew it was time to board my first bus at 1:35 putting my $2.25 in the fare box—which compared to SkyRide felt like a steal—of the 169LTD, a high-floor articulated bus, not what I was expecting for this sort of bus route.
The 169LTD was decently full (would have felt crowded had it been a 30 or 40 foot bus, not a 60 foot one) of only airline employees, I was the only personal with any luggage. My destination was Arapahoe Crossing at the other end of the line. I asked the driver if he thought I’d make the two-minute connection to route 66 at the other terminus and he said he thought so. The bus made a relatively uneventful run through the extremely sprawling eastern portions of the Denver Metro Area, I was looking at my watch and noticed we weren’t exactly on time but gradually falling in the low single minutes behind schedule. The bus wasn’t exactly a limited stop one, as I would consider one in New York but didn’t make any stops along the highway that is the Airport access road, Pena Blvd before turning off and become a regular local bus down Tower Road. This didn’t make the bus slow, most stops were skipped, most riders originated at the airport with very few riding it intermediately. Eventually as I began to get closer to the buses southern terminus I realized I was the only passenger and walked up to the front of the bus. The bus driver said he radioed to the 66 (my transfer bus), which he really thought I would make. He also apologized and said that this was his first time on the run (I had noticed he was looking at a turn sheet carefully). The terminuses for both buses require them to go around the same loop through a shopping plaza (Arapahoe Crossing). Looking at my schedules I realized that I could avoid going through the Shopping Plaza Loop and simply get off at a street corner outside of it. We got to the corner of Arapahoe and Parker where I wanted to make my transfer and it is a total construction zone. The driver, not actually knowing where the actual bus stops were simply let me out as he waited for the light and I dashed across (there were no pedestrian signals) to a tiny bus stop I saw on the other side of the street and started running a block down to the stop. I saw my new bus, the 66 stopped at the light. I made it to the bus stop just before that bus got trough the light behind me panting from the altitude air that I wasn’t acclimated too anymore. The bus pulled in, this one a 30-foot baby bus low floor model (It felt really cramped) I got on sweating through my coat. The run made its way down Arapahoe Road, taking a detour to serve some office parks before arriving at the Arapahoe at Village Center Park and Ride at 3:05. It was relatively crowded in the tiny bus no one was having to stand but most of the limited seating was taken.
Then it was smooth sailing from there FREX showed up a little bit late at about 3:20pm, I put my $11 cash into the fare box and was on my way, writing most of this too long travel log on the bus. Got off at Cascade and Pikes Peak, at 4:30pm walked up Tejon, stopped to chat with some friends walking downtown and arrived home finally at 5:00pm, as the sun started to set after far too long a day of traveling. I would have gotten home probably around 3:20 if I had taken my scheduled flight to a taxi but would be at least 20 if not more dollars poorer.
Total Cost of Ground Transportation: $2.25 in New York, $2.25 in Denver, $11.00 for FREX, so only $15.50 (a lot better than $27 in Denver alone on my trip home)