The Parachute Area Transit System, now in its fourth full year of operation, expects significant changes in 2025, according to Parachute Town Manager Travis Elliott, who presented an annual update on Monday at the Garfield County Board of County Commissioners meeting.

“I think this is a great program for our community and transportation,” Commissioner Mike Samson said. “We have a lot of needs in transportation, but there’s only so much we can do. But this is a prime example of, I think, a program that’s been very successful and works, and the more that we have partnership, the better.”

PATS, which offers low-fare bus rides in Parachute, Battlement Mesa and Rifle, secured a grant for two new buses from the Colorado Department of Transportation after implementing several policy changes.

“They have different requirements to make sure that we’re going to be good stewards of the funds,” Elliott said on Tuesday. “We had to adopt a fleet management policy, which basically says this is our maintenance procedures, to make sure that the buses are well cared for and maintained.”

To be eligible for the grants, PATS also had to create an ADA policy and complaint procedure available to all passengers.

“If anyone ever felt like they were discriminated against, there’s a policy and procedure in place for them to resolve that,” Elliott said.

The CDOT grant will cover 80% of the $305,000 required for two new small shuttle buses.

Both buses currently in service have exceeded the Federal Transit Administration’s recommended fleet replacement schedule minimum useful life —five years or 150,000 miles.

“(The buses) are still in good shape, they’re still safe, they’re still reliable,” Elliott said. “It’s not something that we want to put off so long that they start to become a maintenance issue and concern that would then be costly to the town.” PATS anticipates that the new buses will enter service in about a year.

An advisory board is also in the works for 2025. “It’s really important to us that we are meeting the needs of our riders and the demographic of our region,” Elliott said. “The town council is an elected board, and they represent the town of Parachute, but as we invite other stakeholders and entities to the table and ask them to participate in the funding of PATS, we and the town council only think it makes sense to also give them a seat at the table in terms of decisions and policy making.”

The board will evaluate community requests for different schedules, stops and expanded routes.

Although ridership is currently down 3.7% from 2023, it’s still 9% higher than it was in 2022 and 78% higher than 2021, Elliott said.

“I would like to see (PATS) more utilized, and I think it will be as we move forward,” he added. “It’s still so new that I think a lot of people don’t even realize it exists. That’s our challenge, is just showing how easy it can be, some alternative transportation option. I think if people try it, give it a shot, they’ll see.”

County commissioners on Monday assured Elliott that the 2025 funding for PATS will likely be the same, despite possible decreases in other grants.

“I think this is a great example of regional collaboration with our partners at Garfield County and in the city of Rifle (which donated a senior services bus to PATS when it first started),” Elliott said. “I think that’s why it’s been successful. We all see the need, and we’re in it together.”