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This year could make or break the START airport shuttle, which starts for the season Saturday, Dec. 13 and runs through April 6, 2026.
The one-way ride, which costs $10 for adults, has spent three seasons in “pilot” mode.
In his first year leading the region’s transit system, START Director Michael Toronto wants to see ridership increase.
Success, Toronto said in an email, will mean reversing a trend.
In the first two years, that looked like 175 riders a day by the end of winter seasons, or an average of 120 a day for the season.
It’s nearly double last year’s average ridership of 62.6 and still a big jump from the first year’s average count of 73.7, according to a START report.
In whole, this year is intended to “determine the feasibility of providing this service in the future,” according to the START website.
Other goals are to reduce days the airport parking lot reaches capacity and seeing customer satisfaction of 80% “satisfied” or “very satisfied.”
Early morning and late night rides are still on the table, but to a lesser degree than years past. Toronto told county commissioners at a Dec. 8 meeting that the coach will run more frequently mid-day to adapt to flight schedules and avoid a situation where ridership could reach as low as one rider an hour.
“We felt like those resources, time and money and buses were better spent trying to increase service during the high-bank hours during the midday.”
The full schedule is available on the town’s website. Stops haven’t changed from last year.
The push for higher shuttle numbers comes as overall ridership in Teton County bucks a trend elsewhere in the country, where most transit numbers have yet to recover from a pandemic-era plunge.
Meanwhile the Jackson Hole area has recovered and overall ridership is on-track to exceed last year’s about 1.04 million, Toronto said.
That’s a change from a September report that showed overall ridership was trending down 5% over a calendar year, according to an October START report.
This October was especially busy, Toronto told commissioners.
“Staff was shocked [at] the ridership numbers,” he said. “[It’s] kind of interesting for a shoulder season to see that big of an increase, but it was impressive.”
