NM: After 20 years of building connections, Blue Bus system embarks on expansions

Brandon Roybal is a regular rider.

Three days a week, he rides the No. 150 Blue Bus from his home in Chimayó to his job at an Española pizza parlor.

Often, Roybal has to find another ride — the route doesn't run on weekends or late enough to bring him home after a closing shift — but he credits its service for his consistent attendance at work.

"Without this thing, I wouldn't make it. It's a big help," Roybal said on a recent ride from one of the Blue Bus' cushioned seats.

Operated by the North Central Regional Transit District, the fare-free Blue Buses are a lifeline for many in Northern New Mexico. They log more than a million miles annually. Their routes stretch from Edgewood to Chama, Farmington to Las Vegas, with strategic stops at schools, grocery stores, health care facilities, colleges and universities.

But the ride hasn't been without bumps in the road. The regional transit district, which marked its 20th anniversary in 2024, hasn't yet recovered from a dramatic drop in ridership during the coronavirus pandemic, putting the average cost per rider at nearly $48.

Still, transit district officials are looking toward the future, with plans for several major expansions, including an increase in the frequency of service between Taos, Española and Santa Fe; construction and renovation of facilities; and a transition to a hybrid and electric vehicle fleet, Executive Director Anthony Mortillaro said.

"We have a lot of great plans," he said.

Providing a 'social service'

Juan Vargas was a rider long before he started driving a Blue Bus.

Born in Taos, Vargas moved back to Northern New Mexico in 2015 from Portland, Ore.

The move came amid a difficult period in Vargas' life: A decade-old accident necessitated a hip replacement. Then he suffered repeat infections, requiring two more hip replacements — on the same side — in a span of 18 months. He moved around using a wheelchair for about four years.

"I'm lucky to be alive and/or walking," he said.

After leaving behind an extensive public transit network in Portland, Vargas said he was "blown away" when he learned a free, wheelchair-accessible bus traveled from Taos to Santa Fe multiple times per day.

Before getting his own car, Vargas said the Blue Bus was his transit method of choice to visit family in Santa Fe.

"I used it," he recalled. "Then, as soon as I could walk again, I said, 'You know what, it's like [a] social service. I'm going to go work there.' "

Vargas drives the No. 150 bus, with regular stops in Española, Santa Cruz, La Puebla and Chimayó, plus a periodic add-on route to Cordova, Truchas and Las Trampas.

For the most part, Vargas said his passengers ride the bus into larger communities, like Española, to do the things they've got to do.

"People are coming down from these communities, going into town for their goods and services, and then they're riding it back up," Vargas said.

That's the case across the system, said Bryce Gibson, planning and projects manager for the North Central Regional Transit District. The district's most popular commuter routes stretch between Taos, Española and Santa Fe, while its most popular "urban" routes are the 340 Chile Line bus through Taos and the 100 Riverside route, along Riverside Drive in Española.

"People ride for all kinds of reasons," Gibson said, such as transport to work, medical appointments and educational institutions, from middle school to job training.

The Blue Bus isn't the regional transit district's only operation. Its MyBlue ride-share service provides on-demand rides within certain boundaries in Taos, Española, Edgewood and the Pojoaque and Nambé areas, and its paratransit service offers door-to-door rides for passengers with disabilities who cannot use the regular bus system.

The district also funnels millions of dollars annually toward adjoining transit systems, including the city of Santa Fe's Santa Fe Trails bus service, Los Alamos County's Atomic City Transit and the New Mexico Rail Runner Express commuter train, Mortillaro said.

Why charge a fare?

Riders might be greeted with a fare box while boarding other buses, but the Blue Bus has no such system. It's free to ride.

That's not to say the Blue Bus is free to operate: Data shows the regional transit district's operating costs averaged $47.62 per passenger trip during fiscal year 2024.

There are two key reasons to keep it fare-free, said Mortillaro, who has served as executive director since 2011. First, the cost of equipment to collect fares and personnel to account for them would eat up about two-thirds of the revenue.

The second reason Mortillaro cited: The regional transit district operates with federal funding and an eighth of a percent gross receipts tax levied on all purchases in Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Taos and Rio Arriba counties.

"Why charge a fare on top of that when you're already paying taxes, both on the local level and the federal level, that comes back to the district to support public transportation?" he said.

The Blue Bus has been fare free since voters approved the gross receipts tax in 2008.

On-demand MyBlue services cost riders only $1 per trip and are much cheaper for the transit district to operate, averaging $24 per passenger for a trip in fiscal year 2024.

At those prices, "We're cheaper and more reliable than your family," joked Steven Romero, who has been driving for the transit district for the past nine years.

Romero enjoys the social aspect of his work.

"I think that's my favorite part of the job, just talking to people and getting to know my riders," he said.

Expansions in next 20 years

A "major theory" contributes to the calculus of planning routes, Gibson said: More frequent service equals more riders.

But in recent years, regular ridership has posed a challenge for the transit district. In fiscal year 2019, its drivers transported riders on nearly 300,000 trips — an all-time high. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, however, ridership hasn't bounced back to that level.

In the first few months of the pandemic, ridership dropped by about 80%, data shows. In May 2020, the district provided fewer than 3,000 rides, down from more than 25,000 in May of the previous year. The district reduced or temporarily suspended some routes based on ridership data.

The pandemic-era effect lingers in the district's ridership data. In fiscal year 2024, riders embarked on 120,650 rides, less than half the number in fiscal year 2019.

The pandemic also posed new challenges in hiring bus drivers.

"Like many transit agencies across the country, we've had difficulty in recruiting and retaining bus operators," Gibson said. "There just seems to be a shortage nationwide."

The hiring squeeze pushed the transit district to increase driver pay — hourly wages now start at $21.67 for operators with commercial driver's licenses and $20.02 for those without commercial licenses — as well as offer sign-on bonuses.

Even now, a few of the district's routes — including buses serving El Rito and Los Alamos — remain suspended.

Nonetheless, the district is about to embark on an ambitious expansion in hopes of drawing more riders to the system.

Its Long Range Strategic Plan, a document published in 2023 that outlines its goals in the next 20 years, proposes a "spine" of rapid bus transit between Santa Fe, Española and Taos, with buses between those hubs leaving as frequently as every 15 minutes during peak hours.

The change would be equivalent to adding 21 buses throughout the system, Gibson said.

The strategic plan also recommends expanding weekday service and adding weekend service where appropriate, as well as establishing "mobility hubs" — or central spaces offering a variety of transportation options — at key transfer points.

The hubs are meant to help people complete the first or last mile of their travel, to essentially bridge the gap between home and public transit. They might offer car and bike share options, supportive infrastructure for bikes and pedestrians, and connections to other bus or rail transit systems, in addition to shelters, benches and wayfinding signs, the strategic plan states.

The plan will be implemented in phases over the next two decades.

"We can't just do this right away; we don't have the resources or the vehicles — or facilities, necessarily, even — to bring on all this additional service," Gibson said.

But the district has gotten started on a path toward achieving its long-term goals.

The first phase is already underway, which involves purchasing seven hybrid electric buses and constructing seven mobility hubs along the district's central corridor, Gibson said.

The district has already secured $9.5 million from the federal government to fund the first phase, Mortillaro added, which he said is expected to take three to five years to complete.

Where the district will build the hubs is still under discussion, Gibson said, though the strategic plan notes potential spots could be a Rail Runner station in Santa Fe County or the junction of N.M. 68 and N.M. 75, near Embudo and Dixon.

Bigger — and smaller — footprint

The North Central Regional Transit District's expansion plans aren't limited to bus routes; it's also looking at extensive facility upgrades.

In 2022, the district completed an $11.3 million maintenance facility adjacent to the Jim West Regional Transit Center in Española.

A similar maintenance and operations facility in Taos — which cost a total of $17 million — will be ready to occupy in March, Mortillaro added, and the district is looking at building a similar operations facilities in Santa Fe and Chama, although the latter will be smaller in scale.

The additions to the district's footprint in Española will include an expanded administrative space and a bus hub, an $11.7 million project that's partially designed and funded in large part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The 3 acres behind the Española headquarters will someday serve as workforce housing, with townhomes available for transit district employees to rent. That project, estimated to cost $4.1 million, is not yet fully funded, though the district received $46,000 in capital outlay from the Legislature in 2024 to fund its design work and is seeking additional funds in the upcoming session.

Mortillaro anticipated the district will move forward with workforce housing in Taos, too, after the maintenance facility there is complete.

"It'll help us retain employees or recruit employees — because housing is such an issue in the whole surrounding area," Mortillaro said.

The district also has taken steps toward its sustainability goals, aiming to make the entire fleet zero-emission by 2045. It received nearly $10 million in grant funding to purchase six battery electric buses and charging infrastructure, plus 10 more electric vans, which are already in service as MyBlue rides.

Mortillaro said the district has ordered two hybrid diesel and electric buses, with seven more coming as part of the first phase of the strategic plan.

It's unclear whether the coming change in presidential administrations will affect the North Central Regional Transit District's federal funding, Mortillaro said, though he noted it is "a concern."

During a speech in November 2024 at the Symposium on the Future of Transportation in New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham warned attendees securing future federal funding for transportation initiatives — abundant for the past four years — will be "challenging" after President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration later this month.

"These past four years, there's been a lot money made available for public transit. We have taken advantage of it. ... Hopefully, that'll be the case into the future," Mortillaro said.

He wants to see the bus continue to offer opportunities to people in Northern New Mexico for several more decades — residents like Neto Abeyta of Española, who doesn't have a car right now.

Abeyta's vehicle broke down three or four months ago, he said. He's been out of work for a few months, too.

One recent Thursday afternoon, he took the Blue Bus to Walgreens in Española before getting lunch at Chili's. After finishing those errands, he hopped on the No. 110 Blue Bus, which travels across Española from east to west every hour or so.

The bus, which restarted service in August, was a boon to Abeyta, who lives on the city's east side. It removed a half-hour walk to a bus stop near Santa Cruz on either end of his commute.

Abeyta, who turned 31 a few days before Christmas, said he's hopeful the new year will bring changes in his luck.

"I gotta start all over again," he said, "just get a job, you know, and go from there."

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