Buzzing down the road
A late night on board Durango’s Buzz Bus

A buzzed passenger pays for the ride on a recent night on board Durango’s Buzz Bus. The late night transit system was created in an effort to reduce drunk driving in a town that can post as amany as 1,200 DUIs each year./Photo by David Halterman

by Jeff Mannix

There is perhaps nowhere in the greater Durango metroplex that you can have as much fun for $3 than on board the Buzz Bus. Every Friday and Saturday night, from 10:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m., Durango Transit runs the oldest member of its bus fleet up and down Main Avenue and around the outskirts of town, picking up pickled revelers at home or at bars, then taking them to bars or home. On the Buzz Bus, the trip is a trip.

Begun in 2003 as the brainchild of Tim Maher, then on the Durango Finance Board, the Buzz Bus sprung from a fine comb of city finances, redundancies, overspending and sink holes consuming taxpayer money.

“At the time, a few line items jumped out at me and converged into a trend that really had nothing to do with what I was looking for,” Maher explained. “First was the number of police officers Durango had on the streets –150 to 200 percent more than other towns this size.”

That, in turn, led to La Plata County’s infamously high number of DUI arrests. In the year prior to Maher’s discovery, there were 1,200 local drunken driving citations. “That represented 3 percent of the county population at the time, an extraordinary number,” Maher exclaimed with raised eyebrows.

Maher went on to note that Durango Transit at the time was struggling to establish ridership and didn’t have the personnel, equipment or funding to provide late-night transportation to reduce drunken driving. Durango Transportation had a monopoly on for-hire transportation and no interest in running a low-cost “tipsy taxi.”

“There was this large number of people unlawfully driving home from a night on the town,” Maher noted. “Many, if not most, needing a ride home to bed were college kids on tight budgets who just couldn’t afford a $20 taxi ride or the typical hour or more wait.” What to do?

Maher went around to eight of the most popular bars in town and asked them each to buy 240 Buzz Bus tickets a month for $3 apiece. The bars would then resell the tickets at the same price to their customers deemed unfit to drive upon leaving. “It was received well,” Maher said. “I sold 1,920 tickets worth $5,760 when I went to the City Council with the Buzz Bus proposal.”

The City Council immediately recognized the need for the service, and since it wasn’t any financial burden, they ordered Durango Transit to institute the Buzz Bus. “It was fully self-funding,” Maher reported, “and the bar owners had incentive to recognize tipsy customers, steer them to the Buzz Bus with a ticket to ride, and Durango was one of the first small towns in the country to provide this kind of proactive, potentially life-saving service.”

Maher said he believes that the deal was sealed when he painted the picture for the council of 1,200 naked people wandering around downtown. “Isn’t that something you want to take care of?” he asked facetiously.

The driver of the Buzz Bus, as one can surmise, cannot be fainthearted. At first, the job was assigned to one of the rotating Transit drivers, and most pulled the shift from time to time. Ridership was brisk, and the Buzz Bus took on a personality – a rotating vaudeville of drunks in a climate-controlled jitney with door-to-door service.

The Buzz Bus wasn’t nearly as much fun for the drivers, however, and eventually one took the shift regularly, then permanently. He seemed the right man for the job, but not quite, and lasted less than a year. So the Buzz Bus, now back to rotating drivers, sputtered and crapped out. A few months later, a new transit director took over, believed in the service, and the route was reinstated with full City funding, again with rotating drivers and resistance.

As luck would have it, two years ago, Kelly Toliver took over the wheel of the Buzz Bus, and perhaps no greater match was ever made. She is worthy of a special commendation at the annual awards banquet of the Chamber of Commerce, just ask anyone downtown after midnight.

“There is never any trouble on the Buzz Bus,” Toliver yelled over the rattling suspension parts one recent Saturday night. “We all have an understanding of what we’re doing out here, everybody is grateful for this bus and everyone gets along.”

And get along everyone does, on the Buzz Bus. “Hey, Kelly, great, thanks,” riders called on a recent Saturday. “How you doin’ ... Here, I’m putting in my three bucks … Thanks, Kelly; you’re the greatest ... Do you know what happened to me tonight? I bought a ticket and won! Yeah. I won; my ticket won. You know what? I won a tattoo; that’s soooo cool.”

“Hey, you guys. Don’t forget to tip Kelly!” an appreciative coed yelled to the back of the bus. Her fellow passengers roared with approval; a raucous cheer went up: “Kel-lee, Kel-lee, Kel-lee.”

“I don’t mind this shift at all,” Toliver said in between potholes on Florida Road. “We’re doing something important with the Buzz Bus. I feel good about that, and nobody makes trouble. It is always interesting, and I like the job.”

Toliver likes her job because Toliver is good at what she does. She greets everyone with a simple nod or short exclamations punctuated with “hon.” She listens to the praise and to melodramatic stories, always with recognition punctuated with “hon,” averting her eyes back to the blacktop, swiftly trundling her ship of fools down the road to safe haven.

The Buzz Bus carried 2,000 passengers in 2007, not counting the charity cases that Kelly won’t refuse. It circulates within city limits, out of town as far as the Iron Horse Inn. Grandview will soon be added to the loop. Kelly drives with a cell phone in hand, getting calls from parties at private homes, bars and people on the streets who realize as they’re about to get behind the wheel that they shouldn’t be. At one point, she had a half dozen addresses memorized from callers, and another dozen destinations firmly in mind from her passengers. Funding comes directly from the Durango City Council, not out of the Transit budget, and if Kelly were to give up this route, it probably wouldn’t be continued.

“We can’t make our drivers drive the Buzz Bus,” said Transit Director Kent Harris, “and it’s a money loser to operate.”

Sgt. Tony Archuleta of the Durango Police Department said that he believes the Buzz Bus is a great help. “We have always liked the Buzz Bus, and we want it to continue and expand,” he said. “It shows good judgment and planning, both from the city and the passengers, and there’s no question that it saves lives and reduces DUI arrests. We’d hate to see it go away.”

Durango police aren’t the only ones who would hate to see it go away. Archuleta reported that the average cost of a DUI is now up to $10,000.

“You know,’’ said one female passenger, “Kelly’s bus is a great thing. It’s a gift. I know that. We, all of us, know that. We’re having fun at the bars, and we’re being responsible – and we’re saving the planet.” •