Transportation Options
Boulder Transportation Connections collaborates with local governments, transit agencies, and businesses on new approaches to support transportation efficiency in Boulder. In addition, BTC works with businesses, schools, and neighborhoods to find new ways to encourage commuters to ride transit, vanpool, carpool, walk, bike, work from home, and use other commute options besides driving alone.
Bike
Bicycling Benefits the Environment
Automobiles are the single largest source of U.S. air pollution. An average four-mile round-trip bike commute prevents nearly 15 pounds of auto air pollution from contaminating your air. Since the bicycle season matches the ground-level ozone season, by biking instead of driving, you contribute to pollution prevention when it is most needed.
Transit
Riding the bus is easy and convenient in Boulder with an extensive bus system. Boulder Transportation Connections (BTC) continues to work with the Regional Transportation District (RTD) and local municipalities to ensure that residents can enjoy a network of local and regional transit services.
Carpool/Vanpool
Carpool participants lower their commuting stress by sharing the driving, which reduces traffic congestion by eliminating over 40 million driving miles from our region's roadways annually. Save up up to $130 a month of parking expenses when you carpool. Learn more about this federal tax-free commuter benefit from your accountant.
•You can set up your own carpool with co-workers or people living nearby with similar destinations
•Try
My Way to Go, a free online carpool database from Way to Go Partnership at Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG). My Way to Go provides a list of other interested commuters who live and work close to you. By registering you can receive matches with like-minded people to contact at your convenience
The many benefits of vanpooling include lower transportation costs, less wear and tear on your personal vehicles and less stress. In addition, vanpooling helps reduce traffic and riders get to sit back and relax in a comfortable van. Vanpool participants improve the region's air quality by removing over 1.5 million pounds of air pollution annually.
Vanpools are a great choice for groups of commuters who live and work near each other and travel more than 15 miles to work one-way. Passengers share the ride and pay a low monthly fare.
•Start your own Vanpool with five or more people, contact MyWayToGo for more info
•If you live in the Northern Front Range, find a
VanGo Route
Telework
Employers that offer telework programs benefit from:
•Increased employee productivity
•Reduce spread of illness
•Reduces carbon footprint and energy usage
•Improved employee recruitment and retention
•Improved employee moral
•Reduced overhead costs
•Decreased demands for office and parking space
Employees who telework benefit from:
•Less parking and commuting expenses
•Reduces carbon footprint and fuel usage
•Better balance of work and personal lives
•Frees up the equivalent of 15 to 25 workdays a year—time they would have otherwise spent commuting
•Less commuting stress
Communities benefit from telework with:
•Fuller employment opportunities
•Reduces traffic congestion and accidents
•Relieves the strain on transportation infrastructures
•Reduces greenhouse gases
•Saves fuel
•Reduces energy use
•Improves disaster preparedness
More options to reduce driving
•CarShare. CarSharing is a pay-as-you-go car usage system. It lets you choose to pay the costs of driving only when you want to drive. The Boulder-Denver metro area has a local non-profit carsharing organization called
eGo CarShare
•Compressed Work Weeks. Compressed work weeks allow employees to work more hours in fewer days than the usual 8-hour per day schedule
•Flextime. Employees may be allowed some flexibility in their daily work schedules. For example, rather than all employees working 8:00 to 4:30, some might work 7:30 to 4:00, and others 9:00 to 5:30
•Job Share is a flexible work option in which two or possibly more employees share a single job.
•Reducing Work Schedules with Day-at-a-time vacation, Floating Holidays, Leaves of Absence, Paid Time Off, Part-time, Personal Days, Vacation buying/borrowing/sharing.
•SchoolPool. The Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) RideArrangers program provides schoolpool matching. Schoolpool is a free carpool matching service for parents who drive their children to and from school. More than 13,000 elementary and secondary school families in the Denver/Boulder metropolitan area are enrolled in the program.
•Staggered Shifts. This means that shifts are staggered to reduce the number of employees arriving and leaving work at one time. For example, some shifts may be 8:00 to 4:30, others 8:30 to 5:00, and others 9:00 to 5:30. This has a similar effect on traffic as flextime, but does not give individual employees as much control over their schedules.
•Walking. Boulder has miles of pedestrian-friendly routes. GO Boulder/City of Boulder Bicycle & Pedestrian Map.