On the morning of April 15, Archuleta County commissioners Veronica Medina, Ronnie Maez and Warren Brown; County Manager Derek Woodman; County Transportation Coordinator Kevin Bruce; Mountain Express Transit (MET) Dispatcher Lavonne Rababah; County Public Works Director Mike Torres; Principal Architect Brad Ash of Reynolds Ash + Associates; and bid awardee Buildings by Design (BBD) Managing Member Travis Lefever lined up with shovels in hand to break ground on a project five years in the making, the Archuleta County Transit Facility.
The facility is funded by multiple grant awards which began in 2019 through Colorado Senate bill 267 and federal grant 5339, the Bus and Bus Facilities Grant Program. The county acquired $4.5 million with a local match of $622,000.
The facility will house the county’s main bus terminal, a lobby and administrative offices. It will be accessible per the Americans with Disabilities Act and have ticketing purchase options.
“Archuleta County and Mountain Express Transit have been working towards this day since 2019, so it’s exciting to see us finally break ground,” said Bruce. “The addition of the facility supports multimodal transportation within Pagosa Springs, Archuleta County and Southwest Colorado, giving users more connections and more choices.”
The new facility located at Harman Park will eventually allow riders to connect to routes outside the county.
“We see a bright future where we are able to expand services to areas like Aspen Springs and support a greater connectivity to Durango and Grand Junction with the Bustang Outrider,” Bruce added.
The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) Bustang Outrider is a rural connection bus with the potential to take riders from Pagosa Springs to Grand Junction daily.
“Equally as exciting is that the MET will receive a new bus in June of 2025, an all-electric paratransit vehicle by the first of the year, and three low-emissions propane vehicles which should arrive close to the facility’s completion date of April 2025,” Bruce added.
Present at the groundbreaking were members of BBD General Contractors based in Brush, which was awarded the bid contract in late 2023.
“We expect the project to take between 10 and 12 months,” said BBD Vice President Merle Grauer. “The building is expected to take 10 months, with the other two being mostly landscape related, which will be weather permitting.”
For current MET bus schedule information, please visit archuletacounty.org/MET or call (970) 264-2250.
