FREX has dodged another bullet.

The FrontRange Express was on the chopping block again, but a City Council majority on Tuesday shot down Mayor Steve Bach’s request to discontinue the commuter bus service between Colorado Springs and Denver.

Instead, the council voted 6-3 to continue the service at least through 2012. Council members Merv Bennett, Angela Dougan and Tim Leigh voted against continuing the service.

Despite the council’s decision to keep FREX in operation, the City Attorney’s Office said Bach, who is the city’s first strong mayor, had the authority to end the service from a contractual standpoint.

But Laura Neumann, Bach’s chief of staff, said after the vote that the likelihood of the mayor going against the council’s wishes was “very minimal” through the end of the year.

“We are going to come forward and have a discussion to see if there is the option for additional funding through 2012 and potentially to 2013,” she said.

Other possible funding sources include about $464,000 from additional fares and advertising dollars from the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority. The RTA board meets Wednesday. The city also plans to ask the state Transportation Commission for permission to use $220,000 left from the sale of several FREX buses two years ago. An increase in fares may also factor into the equation.

However, Neumann said city officials will have to have “another conversation” about the future of FREX if those funding sources fall through or unanticipated expenses come up.

“When you make a decision to end it at the end of a calendar year, people get upset, fares drop,” she said. “There could be expenses we’re not anticipating as a result of only extending” the service for another five months instead of for an entire year.

“If we find there’s cost prohibitive expenses we haven’t anticipated … we’re going to have to come back to council to say, ‘Are you really prepared for us to spend x amount of dollars just to do this?’” she said.

“If it’s within a nominal amount and we think we can just extend it through the end of the year without a huge dollar hit, we will certainly do so. That’s the plan.”

About a dozen people spoke at Tuesday’s council meeting in favor of continuing FREX, including cycling enthusiast Al Brody.

“FREX has two bike racks on the front of each bus. FREX is basically the only way that we can get to an airport (Denver International Airport) using public transportation. There is no way to get to the Colorado Springs Airport” on a bike, he said.

“It’s a tool that makes us have a somewhat rounded arsenal, if you want to call it that, or portfolio of transportation options.”

Springs resident Stephanie Thomas urged the council to save FREX, saying transit is a “lifeline” for people who can’t drive and a “service” for people who don’t want to drive.

“Its benefits for society as a whole include reduced congestion, reduced air pollution, reduced impact on our aging transportation system and greater mobility for everybody,” she said.

Former Councilman Sean Paige, now deputy director of the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity, said he opposed FREX from the beginning and that it was destined to end sooner or later.

“We’ve been living on borrowed time with this by selling off buses, tearing into our reserves, tweaking it and playing with it,” he said.

“But sooner or later, the day of reckoning is coming. We just need to face it.”

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Contact Daniel Chacón: 476-1623

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