Free downtown shuttle buses made their last runs up and down Tejon Street on Friday.

The Downtown Area Shuttle, or DASH, service was truncated in April and eliminated Monday by the Colorado Springs City Council in the wake of budget shortfalls and declining sales tax revenue that supports city services.

Ironically, the end came even as the service was being embraced by ever more riders, said David Menter, planning supervisor for the city’s Mountain Metropolitan Transit, which operated the shuttle.

The service began in 2005 and was funded until mid-2008 by a federal air quality and traffic mitigation grant. Since then, the city’s Downtown Parking Enterprise had picked up the $500,000 annual cost of providing 10,000 hours of bus service to downtown shoppers and workers.

In April, the DASH service, which ran north to Colorado College, was shortened on its southern end from the Park-n-Ride at Interstate 25 and Tejon Street to Moreno Avenue.

Service hours during the week were trimmed, and Saturday and nighttime service Friday and Saturday were eliminated. Those moves would have cut the estimated annual cost of the operation to $250,000 in 2010, but council members decided even that amount was too much in a year that has seen extensive cuts to regular transit and to other city services. The city also decided not to raise parking fees to continue the service.

Menter said the seven DASH buses provided more than 220,000 one-way trips in 2008, with ridership up 50 percent each month over the same months a year earlier.

“We hate to see it go,” Menter said. “It was a good service.”

Last year, seven new buses were bought for the service. Five were purchased by the Downtown Business Improvement District, and two were funded by the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority. The two PPRTA buses will be used to serve Fort Carson and Fountain, the last two remaining low-ridership routes maintained by Mountain Metropolitan Transit, Menter said.

The Downtown Business Improvement District is interested in leasing or selling its five buses, said Ron Butlin, executive director of the Downtown Partnership, who also heads the day-to-day activities of the downtown improvement district.

He said there has been a “little bit of talk” about trying to find private funding to continue the service, but he said the chances of resurrecting the shuttle anytime soon are probably low.

Col. Randy George, left, and CSM William Johnson case the brigade’s colors during the ceremony for the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, on Fort Carson’s Manhart Field Friday, May 1, 2009. Photo by KEVIN KRECK, THE GAZETTE

Kevin Kreck