Mountain Road service improving in time for winter

“One of the things that makes the Vail bus system so great is that it’s always on time,” said Walt Levering, a Stowe resident. On Stowe’s Mountain Road, “you can only go as fast as the slowest car.”

Vail Resorts is collaborating with Green Mountain Transit to improve bus service up Mountain Road — a step toward getting more skiers and riders up the hill faster.

The transit authority briefed the Stowe Select Board Monday on plans to improve its shuttle service, which runs from Stowe village to Stowe Mountain Resort, making stops along the way.

The first thing it wants to do is to stick with fixed stopping locations, and eliminate off-route deviations and flag stops that allow riders to ask to be dropped off anywhere along the route. That can make bus timing unpredictable, said Jon Moore, director of operations and planning.

The Mountain Road shuttle carries an average of 480 people on weekdays and about 550 people Sundays; the number jumps to 796 on Saturdays, weekend warriors who depend on Green Mountain Transit buses to get them to the mountain.

Green Mountain Transit has proposed using an additional large bus on peak days. It wants to boost round trips from 35 per day last year to 44 round trips on peak days this year, and 30 on non-peak days, for a total of 1,350 additional service hours.

Bus service will start at 6:30 a.m., and the last trip will leave from Mansfield Base at 9:30 p.m.

Those extra hours won’t come out of municipal pockets, Moore assured the select board. He says 80 percent of the funding will come from the Vermont Agency of Transportation, and Stowe Mountain Resort is putting up the other 20 percent.

Although off-route deviations and flag stops will be halted, there will be 15 new stops along Mountain Road, Moore said, including Golden Eagle Resort, a downhill stop at Harvest Market, and stops at the Gale Farm Center and Piecasso and Darkside Snowboards and Stowe Motel & Snowdrift.

Mobile app RouteShout 2.0, a real-time bus tracking app, could be available in Stowe as early as Nov. 24, allowing passengers to see where the bus is and plan accordingly.

The passenger schedule will be ready by Nov. 20, Moore said.

Board member Morgan Nichols wanted to be sure the new shuttle service takes into account where Stowe Mountain Lodge and Stowe Mountain Resort employees live, since they make up a large percentage of the riders.

Bobby Murphy, general manager and vice president of Stowe Mountain Resort, said the resort also has its own shuttle service to get employees from their designated parking lot at the Cross Country Center, which is being expanded to 425 spots for staff, to where they need to go.

Scott Noble of Stowe said the proposed changes to the Mountain Road shuttle service are “great. It seems to cater to people staying along Mountain Road,” and Noble expressed his concern that people driving in for the day or staying elsewhere in the region might decide to drive their cars up the mountain anyway.

“The day will come where traffic is so bad, we will need peripheral parking lots,” Noble said.

Murphy said while some Vail Resorts-owned ski operations have benefited from peripheral parking lots, “it takes more than Vail Resorts coming to town” to make that happen, he said. “We need to collaborate on that.”

“The biggest hurdle I see to being on time is Harlow Hill,” notoriously slippery on snow days, said board member Willie Noyes.

Stowe Police Chief Donald Hull said he’s been meeting with the Vermont Agency of Transportation on options for keeping Harlow Hill passable throughout the winter.

Other business

The select board also:

• Approved construction of a connector trail in Adams Camp by the Stowe Trails Partnership.

• Authorized a $1.5 million line of credit for the Stowe Electric Department from Union Bank.

• Authorized the use of $70,000 from the unallocated capital reserve to repair erosion on two segments of the Stowe Recreation Path, West Hill Road adjacent to the bridge over the North Branch and at the West Branch River near Bouchard Farm. Dale E. Percy, Inc. will do the excavation and rock armoring work. It will be completed this fall, although paving may not begin until spring.