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FoCoGo!: Transit History in Fort Collins#

“You can’t understand a city without using its public transportation system.” – Erol Ozan

Transit: Why it Matters#

Public transportation has been a critical element of modern human life for more than a century and a half across much of the planet. As cities grew beyond easily walkable distances by the early 1800s, people developed new means of transportation. Wagons and carriages quickly gave way to steam locomotives and later electric streetcars. Major cities undergrounded their streetcars into subways. In the motorized age, buses became important components of transit as most streetcars and passenger rail resources in the United States were dismantled except in the nation’s largest cities to make more room for cars. Buses offered more flexible service amid declining ridership from the 1950s onward as Americans popularized the automobile. It took until the 1960s for many American cities to begin meaningfully reviving their transit systems. Federal funding began to support local transit development as local downtown advocates and officials of major cities demanded the support to revive or improve their transit systems.

 Why do we need Transit?

 Transit helps cities like Fort Collins be financially, economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. Space-efficient modes of group transportation like -buses get cars off the road and allow valuable public right-of-way to be used for more productive things than parking and moving vehicles, such as trees, small parks, more spacious sidewalks, and safer bike lanes. Public transit, along with active modes like walking and biking, is often much cheaper to maintain per user than maintaining streets for private motor vehicles. The costs of car-centric street infrastructure are a leading cause of budget shortfalls in municipalities across the United States. Transit is much more energy-efficient and more easily electrified with fewer resources, providing high-value options to improve air quality. Transit helps cities like Fort Collins combat climate change by reducing harmful emissions from cars and reducing pollution in the form of microplastics, toxic chemicals, and heavy metals from tire wear. Lastly, transit is a shared, public resource that is meant to be accessible to all, including people who don’t have another option to get around town. The average cost of maintaining a motor vehicle in the United States is around $12,000 a year. Providing alternatives that let families reduce their vehicle usage, or eliminate a car altogether, can help them shift their costs to other important needs.

Foundations: Regional Transit & Walkability#

Like most cities in the western United States, the way Fort Collins was built in its first few decades (the late-1800s) resulted largely from a close relationship between walking and regional transit, specifically railroads. If you were to look at a typical map of an American city built after the 1860s, you’d likely see a grid anchored by a passenger rail depot, with most of the city, especially merchants, general stores, and hotels, within easy walking distance of that depot. Fort Collins was a bit different, since it emerged next to the former military post that was at the present-day intersections of Willow and Linden Streets. Beginning as a town with only wagon roads as regional connections, Fort Collins was first anchored off the Poudre River and Linden Street, with Jefferson and Linden as the center of town. When the first railroad arrived in 1877, it located near this intersection and spurred commercial, residential, and industrial growth outward from there.

two 1891 Sanborn maps and, at right, a photo of the first Colorado & Southern depot

Left & Center - 1891 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map sections, showing the first Colorado & Southern Passenger and Freight Depot in the red circle, and the street grid that surrounded it. Right - First Colorado & Southern Depot (freight and passengers), near the current site of the Downtown Transit Center, c.1880s.

The first railroad to construct tracks to Fort Collins was the Colorado Central, followed by the Greeley, Salt Lake, and Pacific (GSL&P) in 1882, both subsidiaries of the Union Pacific Railroad. The Colorado Central connected Fort Collins south to Denver, via Longmont and Boulder, and north to Cheyenne and the main Union Pacific line. In town, the line ran north-south along Mason Street, and the town’s Board of Trustees granted additional land to the railroad for yards and a depot. The GSL&P ran generally east-to-west between Greeley and Fort Collins following the Poudre River, and included a spur from Fort Collins west to Laporte and stone quarries along the foothills. The original intent was to connect Fort Collins and Greeley directly to Salt Lake City via the Poudre Canyon, but by 1882, Union Pacific engineers determined the project too expensive, and elected to funnel rail traffic north to the main Union Pacific line through southern Wyoming. The smaller subsidiaries of the Union Pacific eventually consolidated into the Colorado & Southern Railway in 1898.

While freight traffic was a significant part of the story of railroads in Fort Collins, moving people was equally important. Most people moving to Fort Collins after 1877 arrived by rail, and most people traveling between major communities for work, business, and pleasure traveled by rail. When they arrived, their first look at Fort Collins would have been from Mason Street between Maple Street and Laporte Avenues, stepping onto the platform of a small, Victorian-style brick building shown in the image below. By 1898, the newly consolidated C&S Railway replaced the combined depot with separate freight and passenger depots on the same block face.

1917 sanborn map on left w 1899 image of stone C&S passenger depot on right

Left: Mason Street and Laporte, 1917 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, showing the stone C&S Passenger depot (outlined in red at the bottom center of the map) and the red brick freight depot to the north. The freight depot, a Fort Collins Landmark building, is now the Transfort Downtown Transit Center. Right: The stone Colorado & Southern Passenger Depot, formerly at the intersection of Laporte Avenue and Mason Street in 1899, shortly after construction. Note the number of bicycles leaning against the depot. It was demolished in 1952. (Image courtesy of the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery)

The geographic location of Fort Collins helped spur significant expansion of the city in the late-1800s and early 1900s. Fort Collins was already a successful farming community north of Denver by the 1880s, with produce farming, grain production, and livestock raising all important parts of the local economy. Railroad connections facilitated much of this expansion by providing access to national markets for local farmers and ranchers. By the 1890s, local agricultural leaders sought to harness the ideal soils and climate to grow sugar beets and establish sugar factories to support the creation of a domestic sugar supply. The result was an economic and population boom. Over these decades, builders and developers built out the original 1873 townsite almost entirely. Developers platted new residential subdivisions to the west and south and buyers began building homes on the new lots. Between 1900 and 1910, Fort Collins’ population expanded from 3,000 to 8,000 residents, and quickly became too large to easily traverse on foot.

In response to this growth, in 1906, the Denver & Interurban Railroad Company (D&I), a subsidiary of the C&S, sought a franchise from the City to build a system of feeder lines on local streets. City Council granted the franchise, opening the door to local transit, albeit privately owned and operated. Construction began the following year, with two main lines that remained the core of the system for half a century. One of the primary lines ran north-south along College Avenue, from Pitkin Street into downtown. D&I built another line running east-west along Mountain Avenue– by 1909 D&I added a line to Mountain Avenue’s east end, down Peterson and Whedbee to Elizabeth Street. Service on the system began on January 1, 1908, although construction continued for two more years. Along with the two primary service lines, D&I built and operated a short-lived recreational line to the resort at Lindenmeier Lake, 2.5 miles northeast of downtown Fort Collins. The streetcar provided critical and timely transportation for many of Fort Collins’ residents, including merchants with homes in the suburbs and shops downtown, as well as sugar factory workers with modest homes throughout the city that needed to get to the factory near Vine and Linden.

The D&I system in Fort Collins continually operated at a loss, largely due to timing. Automobiles became increasingly popular over the 1910s and 1920s, and incentives to keep public transit operating varied from city to city. In 1917, the D&I built an extension on its Mountain Avenue line, dropping track down Whedbee Street and connecting with Elizabeth (and later Pitkin Street) to make the College Avenue line a loop and allow for fewer streetcars and operators to reduce costs. When World War I lead to nationalization of the railways, the federal government determined D&I to be non-essential – the company ran out of funds quickly and went bankrupt in June 1918.

However, enough Fort Collins residents had come to expect and rely upon the streetcars for work and social life that they lobbied city council to take over the system and maintain the service. In January 1919, Fort Collins approved a $100,000 bond issue to purchase and repair the D&I streetcar system. The City replaced damaged rails, provided new overhead wiring powered by Western Light & Power, and replaced the D&I streetcars with a fleet of four new Birney cars. By the summer of 1919, streetcar service resumed under City management as the Fort Collins Municipal Railway (FCMR), becoming Fort Collins’ first publicly owned and operated transit service.

The City-run FCMR system was essentially the old D&I system, but with some modifications. Because the system was single-tracked with no existing sidings for passing in 1919, the FCMR set up a frequency where every twenty minutes, three cars met at College & Mountain Avenues and loaded/transferred passengers before departing in separate directions. With the Lindenmeier line being so underused, the City dismantled it and used the salvaged tracks to construct a loop through City Park at the west end of Mountain Avenue. In 1920, the City removed tracks from Vine Street between the Great Western Sugar factory and Anderson Corner (at Lemay and Vine). Instead, the City ran a new spur from Linden Street to the west entrance of the factory near Vine Drive, before abandoning even that service in 1923. While there is no explicit reason known at this time for the removal of the service, the result was that the city’s industrial labor population, increasingly Mexican Americans by this time, lacked convenient transport between their homes, work sites, and the city core. Looking at the FCMR service map after 1923, most neighborhoods that were transitioning from predominantly Anglo to Hispanic families were rarely close to active trolley lines.

The final major change to the system took place in 1925, when the City paved Pitkin Street and used this to connect the Whedbee and College lines, abandoning the old loop on Remington Street. Once these changes were finalized in 1925, service remained essentially stable through 1950. The City-owned public service remained popular among city residents, who voted several times over the life of the FCMR to continue operating the transit service as funding approval periodically expired. While the option to replace the streetcar system with buses came up frequently, many residents feared that replacing the publicly owned system with a private bus service would risk leaving the city without local transit options if the company failed. The lower fares designed to just cover the cost of the service also helped keep it a popular option to get around town. While the streetcar system was rarely profitable, it generally covered its bills or operated at a minimal loss.

1935 image of a Union Pacific Railroad train arriving downtown

1935, Union Pacific train arriving in downtown just north of Jefferson Street. (Courtesy of the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery)

Although Fort Collins’ streetcar system survived much longer than most in the United States, it eventually succumbed to the same car-centric culture and development patterns that defined the mid-twentieth century. By the 1950s, Fort Collins was expanding quickly south and west, enveloping the Colorado State University campus. New neighborhoods were spread out on large lots, making transit hard to support due to the lack of the same household density as older parts of town. In the late 1940s, the City granted a franchise to the Englewood-based Bussard Bus Company to serve the new neighborhoods and soon use of the bus system began competing directly with the streetcar network. With ridership declining and maintenance costs for the thirty-year-old Birney streetcars increasing, the City ceased to operate the streetcar system on June 30, 1951, and voters formally approved closure of the municipal railway in 1952.

 At the same, the Fort Collins community was losing access to an effective regional rail transit system. Passenger service declined significantly by the 1950s and the Colorado & Southern passenger depot at Laporte and Mason was demolished in 1952. The Union Pacific abandoned and sold its main passenger station in 1959, maintaining some passenger service with pickup at the freight depot into the 1970s.

Reviving Transit: Transfort, Transportation Equity, and the Age of Buses#

Fort Collins expanded rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1950, the city had approximately 15,000 people. In 1960, that number was 25,000, and by 1970, over 43,000. Unfortunately, transit provisions through this same period were few and inconsistent, although the City made efforts in the 1960s. Even before the closure of the Municipal Railway, the City began looping a bus along the same routes to test if buses could be a reasonable alternative to the streetcar in the event of breakdowns or a full service stoppage. Throughout the 1950s, the City experimented with options to maintain a private bus service charter for public transit, but each failed due to the poor or nonexistent profitability of the service. The City’s contract with Bussard’s bus service ran from 1953 until 1956, but suffered declining ridership when it reduced frequency to forty minutes, which was much longer than the former bus wait time or the streetcar. By 1956, William E. Kelly of Minot, North Dakota secured a new contract for bus service from the Public Utilities Commission, starting service by May 1 of that year. Frustration over the limited and somewhat unreliable bus service, including no Sunday or holiday service, compelled city residents to organize a ballot initiative three times between 1955 and 1957 to re-establish a municipally owned transit service. Proponents of the 1957 initiative noted a desire to see service extended to new parts of the city, establish lower fares, maintain reliable schedules including weekend and holiday service, and provide night service. However, none of these ballot initiatives received sufficient votes, leaving the city with privately-owned and inconsistent bus service until 1959, when service ended entirely.

 However, the absence of public transit in Fort Collins continued to be a troubling issue for many city residents and their elected leaders. While the automobile proved popular, the centrality of the auto to American life left behind many people who simply couldn’t drive, in particular, the elderly, children, and people with disabilities. Furthermore, nationwide, local governments strained at the infrastructure cost of building, paving, and widening city streets to provide enough room for all their residents’ and visitors’ vehicles. The Coloradoan included several nationally syndicated articles in the early 1970s about the need for effective public transit to alleviate traffic congestion, reduce the infrastructure burden on local governments, address air quality concerns from car exhaust, and provide transportation for seniors and people with disabilities. During those same years, city leaders in Fort Collins started to consider how to develop a new transit system that would fill these needs locally. While waiting, local organizers in Fort Collins and Loveland purchased their own buses, supported by the national transportation equity organization Care-A-Van to provide bussing service for seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income residents across the county. Late in 1973, the City engaged a consultant to study the feasibility of a transit system. At a special session on November 8, 1973, City Council approved a public bus system. Over the next eight months, the city purchased a small fleet of buses, trained drivers, and finalized the route plans for the system. On July 1, 1974, the new bus system ran for the first time and the community celebrated the return of public transit to Fort Collins.  

Transfort buses picking up passengers at Oak Street Plaza pavilion

In the 1980s, Oak Street Plaza served as the hub for most of the city’s Transfort bus service lines, (Courtesy of Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, H28148).

The transit center for the first three bus lines (one for each bus) was at the intersection of Oak Street and College Avenue next to the old Post Office (recently decommissioned). The fleet of three light ivory, 16-passenger, Mercedes Benz buses, purchased for $24,000 each, were part of a $720,000 mass transit program. Bus fare was twenty-five cents per ride, while seniors and children paid fifteen cents. Route 1 supported Colorado State University’s (CSU) large student body by connecting the West Elizabeth Street off-campus housing corridor with campus and downtown. While the new system launched to much fanfare, including free fares on the first day thanks to sponsorship from the Fort Collins Coloradoan, ridership lagged due to limited promotion by the City. Because the buses were not designed to support wheelchair access, the City invested an additional $10,000 to contract with Care-A-Van to provide paratransit service in 1974.

Transfort bus and driver, 1976

A Transfort bus in 1976, sporting the late-1974 redesign. (Courtesy of the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery)

Later that year, the City took steps to address low ridership in the bus system. First, the original route map was replaced with one developed by a CSU graduate student, using loops rather than out-and-back routes to cover more areas. The City also hired a CSU graphic design student to redesign the bus exteriors and make them more recognizable; the new branding included bright yellow and orange colors with “TRANSFORT” on the side. The “Transfort” name stuck and remains the official name of the City’s public transit service. Ridership improved, but the number of residents using the bus system remained well below expectations, with fares covering less than half of Transfort’s operating expenses. Attracting ridership remained a consistent challenge for Transfort throughout its history amid a low-density, car-centric system where driving a personal vehicle was highly convenient, despite the long-term costs to drivers and the community.

As Fort Collins continued to expand in geographic size and population during the 1970s and 1980s, demand for increased transit options grew with it, as did the struggle to balance the reality of limited funding and population density. From the 1980s through the early 2000s, ebbs and flows in funding and service demand, especially as the city expanded south, required periodic modifications to routes, fares, and times of service.

Transfort Since 1984#

Transfort bus maintenance depot on Portner Road

The new Transportation Services building at 6570 Portner Road shortly after construction in 1984, (Courtesy of the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, H28154).

  • 1984 – Transfort constructed a new bus maintenance facility at 6570 Portner Drive, off Trilby Road, for housing and servicing the bus fleet; this facility remains the equipment and maintenance hub for the agency. At the time, this included nine buses serving eight routes, with limited weekend service, which had provided just over 370,000 rides that year.

  • 1986 – Transfort acquired three wheelchair lift-equipped coaches. With transit being a critical need among seniors and people with disabilities, many transit agencies began to acknowledge their role as a transportation lifeline for people who couldn’t walk or drive themselves. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was the first federal legislation to consider the civil rights of people with disabilities and was later reinforced and expanded with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. In Fort Collins, through the early-1990s, a service contract with the non-profit Care-A-Van remained the only accessible service for people with special access needs. A resident committee selected the routes the three new buses would service in the city. By this year, Care-A-Van provided nearly 100,000 trips to area residents.

    At this time, Transfort was also using the Square, the shopping development at the northeast corner of Horsetooth Road and College Avenue, as a south transit center serving several of the City’s main bus routes and allowing for transfers between them.

Buses at the Square Mall

Buses waiting at the Square Mall (near present-day Foothills Mall), November, 1984 (Courtesy of the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, H28178).

  • 1989 – City Council adopted the community’s first strategic plan for transit services. For the next several years, Transfort began a more significant transformation into a larger community transit agency.
  • 1990 – City Council adopted the Transit Development Program, a five-year plan to transform the structure and philosophy of the city’s transit system. The plan included altering and expanding routes and coverage across the city, and increases in frequency and reliability.
  • 1991 – Transfort and Colorado State University dedicated a new transit center at the center of campus, along with route changes to better serve neighborhoods with higher numbers of CSU students, resulting in significant ridership increases by CSU students. Transfort expanded the existing facilities at Oak Street Plaza and the Square in south Fort Collins into larger transit centers.
  • 1992 – In January, Transfort established the North Transit Center at Laporte Avenue and Mason Street. With new federal regulations in effect, Transfort began its first comprehensive planning to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act on its buses, at its stops, and at its facilities.
  • 1993 – An evening campus shuttle began at CSU; CSU ridership approached 50% of all of Transfort’s annual rides. Transfort’s fleet upgraded to include seven new thirty-five foot Gillig buses, purchased with a grant from the Federal Transit Administration.
  • 1994 – Dial-A-Ride service established to provide city-wide service for individuals who cannot drive or use fixed-route transit due to disability; this replaced the contracted services with various local entities like Care-A-Van. In June, Transfort begins a program to provide fare-free rides for anyone under eighteen years of age.
  • 1995 – Transfort established the Southside Shuttle route to provide service for Hewlett-Packard, Symbios Logic, and Platte River Power Authority employees in south Fort Collins along Harmony Road.
  • 1996 – Transfort installed bike racks on buses for the first time so riders can ride their bikes to and from bus stops. This was an early recognition of the strong connection between active travel modes like walking and biking and effective transit options.
  • 1997 – Transfort established the Foxtrot route between Fort Collins and Loveland. This marks the first revival of regular transit between Loveland and Fort Collins since the Colorado & Southern Railroad ended passenger service. Transfort later expanded this service into the regional FLEX service that connects Fort Collins residents to Berthoud, Longmont, and Boulder. Initial planning for a Mason Transportation Corridor along Mason Street begins, with $7 million in funding from a voter-approved ballot issue.
  • 2001 – Transfort opened the Downtown Transit Center in the former Colorado & Southern Railroad Freight Depot. Transfort purchased six low-floor buses to improve accessibility for people using wheelchairs and other mobility aides. As part of implementing the City’s new Transfort master plan, Transfort eliminated several routes, including the Southside Shuttle, due to low ridership. However, ridership overall was up, with over 1.6 million rides provided in 2001.
  • 2002 – CSU and Transfort opened the new CSU Transit Center at the Lory Student Center. The City revived major planning on a new “transportation corridor” along Mason Street, a project that would later be renamed MAX.
  • 2003 – A local tax ballot issue for transportation funding failed, requiring the downsizing of the Mason Street Transportation Corridor from a comprehensive active modes project to minor bicycle and pedestrian improvements.
  • 2004 – Due to budget shortfalls, Transfort instituted a 25-cent fare for riders under eighteen years of age; the Bohemian Foundation stepped in to cover fares for children and maintains that funding through 2007.
  • 2005 – Reductions in CSU contributions to Transfort required an end to most night service for campus routes.
  • 2006 - Transfort began transitioning its bus fleet from diesel fuel to CNG (compressed natural gas); the transition continued through 2022 when Transfort decommissioned its last diesel bus. Transfort and CSU completed significant upgrades to the CSU transit center funded by a grant from the Federal Transit Authority.
  • 2007 – Larimer County launched Larimer Lift, a tax-funded service for seniors and people with disabilities similar to Dial-A-Ride.
  • 2010 – The City refined the scope for the Mason Transportation Corridor, announcing plans for a “bus rapid transit” line to serve the north-south spine of the city. Construction on the new line, anchored by Mason Street along the Burlington-Northern/Sante Fe Railroad, started the following year.
  • 2014 – The City built MAX (Mason Express), its first bus rapid transit (BRT) system. Service opened on May 10 with ten-minute service between buses, and with trips between the new South Transit Center and the Downtown Transit Center taking about twenty minutes. Completion of the system took fourteen years from first concept planning in 1997 to bringing MAX online.
  • 2015 – The Colorado Department of Transportation began Bustang service, a regional express bus service across the Front Range that included service between Fort Collins and Denver (with transfers to other Bustang routes at Denver Union Station). Together with other regional transit options like FLEX (with service between Fort Collins and Boulder), and Greeley Evans Transit (with service into Fort Collins), these partnerships helped re-establish a semblance of inter-city passenger service that had not existed in the region since the Union Pacific and Colorado & Southern passenger rail phased out in the 1940s.
  • 2020 – During the COVID-19 pandemic, the City stopped collecting fares on its transit services to help reduce contact with drivers. After further research, Transfort discovered it only collected 3% of its revenue from fares, and that it cost more money to collect the fares than was recovered in fare payment. This trend toward non-fare revenue was decades long: in 1987, fares covered only 25% of Transfort’s operating budget, with the remainder made up of federal and regional transit funding, and direct support from Colorado State University. In 2024, Transfort became free to all users.
  • 2022 – Transfort decommissioned its last diesel-powered bus and purchased its first two battery electric buses.
  • 2023 – Voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase aimed at bolstering the City’s parks and recreation facilities, transit services, and climate initiatives. This new sales tax allocated $1.15 million to improve Transfort operations.
  • 2024 – City Council and the City Manager grant final approval for Transfort to remain fare-free.

The Future is Past?#

Transfort and its regional partners are planning for the future of transit to help resolve critical Front Range issues like air quality, climate action, transportation and housing equity, and financial sustainability. Many of the solutions are newer, upgraded versions of the transportation solutions that northern Colorado relied on from the 1870s through the 1950s. New passenger rail on expanded regional lines is part of the Front Range Passenger Rail vision for service between Fort Collins and Pueblo, recapturing the convenient inter-city passenger rail that once serviced most of Colorado’s downtowns. Transfort’s Bus Rapid Transit lines like MAX, and planned new lines for West Elizabeth and North College, recapture the high-frequency service of the Fort Collins Municipal Railway’s electric trolleys.

 Want to Learn More?

Check out these other resources about the history of transit in Fort Collins, Colorado, and the United States.

 -       Colorado Department of Transportation, Historic Streetcar Systems of Colorado, by Nick VanderKwaak, Jennifer Wahlers, Dianna Litvak, and Ethan Raath, Denver: 2020., https://www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org/resource-sharing/state-pubs-blog/historic-streetcar-systems-of-colorado/.

-       Colorado Railroad Museum, https://coloradorailroadmuseum.org/museum-history/

-       Cudahy, Brain J. Cash, Tokens, and Transfers: A History of Urban Mass Transit in North America. New York: Fordham University Press, 1990.

-       Jones, David W. Mass Motorization + Mass Transit: An American History and Policy Analysis, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

-       National Register of Historic Places, Multiple Property Submission, Railroads in Colorado, 1858-1948, Colorado, 1998, https://www.historycolorado.org/sites/default/files/media/document/2017/625.pdf

-       Norton, Peter D., Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008.

 Also, visit the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery that has a lot of information about local rail, trolley, and bus transit, including historic photographs, documents, and other artifacts. Many of those are available via the Fort Collins History Connection.