What rural place voted for buses over highways?

The Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado's Western Slope is getting "the first bus rapid transit system in the country to serve a rural area," financed by an additional 0.4-cent sales tax residents voted to impose in 2008, Angie Schmitt reports for StreetsBlog, published by a nonprofit that supports mass transit and transportation systems friendly to bicyclists and pedestrians.

"About 32,000 people are interspersed throughout the valley in small towns like Basalt, Carbondale, and Glenwood Springs, but the local economy revolves around the nearby resort town of Aspen," Schmitt writes. "Aspen’s hotels and restaurants attract workers from around the region, but people who toil in local service industry jobs have mostly been priced out of the housing near Aspen."

MapQuest image shows principal route of Roaring Fork Transit Authority

“People who wash pots and pans at the hotels in Aspen were driving 75 miles one way for the privilege of doing that,” Roger Millar of Smart Growth America said at the "New Partners for Smart Growth Conference" last week in Kansas City. Scmitt notes that Highway 82, the main route into Aspen, was widened to four lanes 20 years ago but is Colorado's most congested highway.

Now those folks will be able to take the bus. "The $40 million project will run buses every 10 minutes at rush hour, stopping nine times along the lengthy journey — a commuter express route," she writes. "It will also feature heated waiting stations with bathrooms." Schmitt's story mentions other examples of rural mass transit.