CO: Easy-on, easy-off mobility hubs serve as Bustang’s ‘center of gravity’ as CDOT works to open more

Ron Francis settled into his seat on the Bustang coach bus bound for Denver last week and quickly became lost in a gentle wave of ambient music pumping through his headphones.

Francis has listened to lots of music — the other day he took a deep dive into the catalogues of Steely Dan and Led Zeppelin — while rolling the 48 miles down Interstate 25 from Loveland, where he lives, to Denver’s Union Station. Then it’s just about a mile to his office on Broadway.

The 62-year-old IBM manager doesn’t miss the white-knuckle driving through narrow passageways in I-25 construction zones. Or the sudden halts as a cascade of brake lights go red in front of him. Or, when he looks in the rearview mirror, the dread of a big rig bearing down on him.

“I think that’s the beauty of it, is that my mood isn’t dictated by the drive,” Francis said. “Rather, I just sit and relax, have a snack and listen to whatever makes me happy at the time.”

But key to making the public transportation experience worthwhile, Francis says, is ease of use. And that’s where the Colorado Department of Transportation’s mobility hubs, the first of which opened in Loveland less than a year ago — with more to come in the next few years across Colorado — play a critical role.

“When I board the bus, it’s going to be a straight shot,” he said, “with no twisting and turning.”

On a recent weekday morning, Francis stepped on a Denver-bound bus at the Centerra Loveland Mobility Hub, a dedicated Bustang stop wedged between the northbound and southbound lanes of I-25 just north of U.S. 34. The bus rolled up, Francis got on and both were gone.

Time elapsed: about 30 seconds.

Danny Katz, a transit advocate and executive director of CoPIRG, or the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, said there’s no doubt the easy on-and-off that CDOT provides with these new facilities will add to the allure of transit. They may also bring some measure of relief to Colorado’s famously congested highways.

“Before these mobility hubs, the bus would have to get off the highway like everyone else and make multiple turns — some of them left turns,” Katz said. “In the best of times, it adds two to three minutes, and in the worst of times, it adds four or five minutes.”

Speed, reliability and frequency, he said, are the “key ingredients” of successful transit. And mobility hubs directly address the speed and reliability challenge by making the boarding and disembarking process seamless.

“It’s very train-like,” Katz said.

Opened last fall, the Centerra Loveland Mobility Hub was the first in a network of a dozen or so mobility hubs that CDOT will be rolling out in the coming years, mostly along I-25 from Fort Collins to Pueblo. A second hub in Berthoud, 10 miles down the highway, opened a few weeks after Loveland’s hub went online.

CDOT contractors broke ground on two more mobilty hubs in recent weeks — Broomfield/ Thornton and Skyridge/ Lone Tree, down in Douglas County. They are expected to be fully operational in 2026.

Longer-term plans call for mobility hubs in Castle Rock, Colorado Springs and Pueblo. On I-70, CDOT has hubs destined for Idaho Springs and Grand Junction. Another is in the design phase for Fairplay on U.S. 285.

CDOT executive director Shoshana Lew calls mobility hubs the “center of gravity” of Colorado’s regional transit network.

But it’s their connections to local, shorter-range transit options — be it local buses, shuttles, scooters or bike services — that make them hubs.

“The secret is to integrate into growing local systems,” Lew said. “We want to ensure that the buildout of the I-25 corridor is a multimodal one.”

Bustang ridership on the upswing

Bustang first hit the road a decade ago this month, taking passengers to and from Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Glenwood Springs. The system, including a Bustang Outrider offshoot, has grown to 20 routes serving far-flung locations in the state — Craig, Durango, Alamosa, Lamar, Crested Butte and Sterling among them.

CDOT also offers seasonal Snowstang service to several ski resorts in the I-70 corridor, and it runs Bustang buses to Broncos games in the fall.

Bustang’s fortunes, compared to the Regional Transportation District’s, are stark. RTD provides bus and train service across metro Denver. While RTD’s ridership decreased from 106 million in 2019 to around 65 million per year today — the result of pandemic restrictions and a shift away from traditional commuting patterns — Bustang has gone the other way.

Ridership on the state’s family of Bustang routes — including high-volume, dozen-buses-a-day service along I-70 between Denver and Grand Junction and I-25 between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs — exceeded 350,000 in the fiscal year that just ended June 30, according to CDOT. That was up from 175,000 in 2021.

“The North Line is up to prepandemic levels,” said Heather Paddock, CDOT’s region transportation director for northeast Colorado.

The North Line is the Bustang route that connects Fort Collins with Union Station in Denver. It’s the route Cecil Gutierrez, a former Loveland mayor who’s now a state transportation commissioner, takes when he wants to catch a show or attend a meeting in Denver.

“It’s been a big success,” he said of the line.

Not long after the Loveland mobility hub opened last fall, Gutierrez said, CDOT doubled the service frequency on the North Line, which has 12 buses a day now going in each direction on I-25. North Line ridership has exploded in the last five years, from just over 13,000 passengers in 2021 to more than 92,000 in the 2025 fiscal year that just ended, CDOT says.

“If we want to make Bustang reliable and accessible, the frequency of the ride is always going to be a piece of that,” he said.

Lew, CDOT’s executive director, said officials realize the agency is always “competing for people’s business.” So everything counts when it comes to making travel as easy as possible — both inside and outside the bus.

Inside, there is free Wi-Fi service, along with bathrooms, power outlets and luggage bays. Outside, the service has to be constant and reliable, in the spirit of what RTD is hoping to provide with bus rapid transit on East Colfax, where buses will ride in a dedicated lane to keep from getting tangled up with other traffic.

Similarly, Bustang buses get to ride in the express lane for much of the distance between Fort Collins and Denver. (Express lanes are under construction between Berthoud and Longmont.)

That’s crucial to keeping the service running reliably, Paddock said.

Mobility hubs, she said, can range in cost from $3 million for a basic design to $25 million for something more ambitious. Centerra Loveland cost $15 million to build, Paddock said.

Calm amongst chaos

Using the Centerra Loveland Mobility Hub feels a bit surreal on a first go.

The station is located in the middle of I-25, a protected oasis inside a roaring interstate. You park your car or scooter and walk up a path to a lighted tunnel that takes you under the interstate. Branching off that tunnel are two more — one to a southbound platform, the other to a northbound platform.

The station has a sheltered bench and an electronic display that shows pickup times throughout the day. The Bustang bus peels off the left side of the highway and into the center median in a dedicated lane, stopping to pick up and drop off passengers. It then merges back onto I-25.

The whole process takes a minute at most. Paddock, of CDOT, said the new arrangement actually shaves 10 minutes off what it took to reach the Park-N-Ride that preceded the Centerra Loveland Mobility Hub.

Not all of CDOT’s mobility hubs will hew to the same design. The Skyridge/ Lone Tree hub won’t be center loading, instead sending buses down traditional off-ramps for passenger pickup and drop-off before merging back on the highway. The hub will be tied together with a 260-foot pedestrian bridge over I-25.

Lone Tree Mayor Marissa Harmon said the hub will open next year in the midst of a fast-growing employment center and residential node in metro Denver. It will serve Bustang’s South Line, RTD’s southeast E-Line light rail and the Link on Demand shuttle service that connects to Lone Tree and Highlands Ranch.

The suburban city’s population of 15,000 is expected to double in the coming years.

“Our priority has always been investing in key infrastructure projects before they are needed,” she said. “Those rooftops are popping up quickly over on the east side (of I-25).”

Katz, with CoPIRG, said Lone Tree has done a “great job of creating businesses and residences” right at the nearby Lone Tree City Center rail station, helping to foster transit-oriented development.

Looking south, CDOT has plans for a mobility hub in Castle Rock, which has missed out on the transit game by not being part of the RTD system. CDOT says a location for the Douglas County town’s hub should be identified next year.

There are no completion dates set for the hubs in Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

Francis, the Bustang commuter from Loveland, said the $9 one-way Bustang ticket to Denver has been well worth it. While he could get to his job faster by car, saving time isn’t everything. By using Bustang, he saves wear and tear on his vehicle, keeps his gasoline bill low and doesn’t have to worry about finding and paying for parking downtown.

And there’s the peace of mind of not having to fight the thousands of other motorists on the road every day.

“I don’t know about the traffic and I don’t care,” he said. “This trip is not under my control, and I accept that.”

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