Healthy Mountain Communities

 Local & Regional Travel Patterns Study 

Overview:

Garfield County, the City of Rifle, Pitkin County, Snowmass Village and the City of Aspen have joined forces to update the Local and Regional Travel Patterns Study completed in 1998.   The purpose of the study is to give local officials in the Roaring Fork and Colorado River Valleys a more detail on the how, why, and when residents and tourists are moving within the region, gauge progress toward local and regional  transportation goals, and inform future investments in transportation infrastructure. 

"The 1998 study has been incredibly useful to the region," said Randy Russell, Garfield County’s Long Range Planner and the manger of the update effort. 

"The Travel Patterns Study helped us understand how connected we really are as a region.  For instance, in 1998, only 39% of workers in the Parachute to Aspen Region lived and worked in the same town.  We used the study as evidence before the PUC to argue for local calling in Garfield County, which we got approved last year.  We also learned that 14% of all trips in the Highway 82 corridor are on transit.  That’s higher than any other region in the state!  Given the demographic shifts and the completion of several transportation improvements in our region, the update effort is very timely."

The study was conducted by the same team that worked on the 1998 study, RRC Associates, Charlier Associates and Healthy Mountain Communities.

An electronic version of the 1998 Local and Regional Travel Patterns Study is available below.

Project Contacts

Randy Russell, Garfield County Long Range Planner, 876-2093

Colin Laird, Healthy Mountain Communities,
963-5502

Released April 12, 2005

Call 963-5502 for a free hard copy
(a limited number of free copies are available)

Full Report (PDF -112 pages, 942kb)

PowerPoint Summary (PDF, 1.3 mb)

Appendices (coming soon)

• Survey forms
• Spreadsheets

Local and Regional Travel Pattern Study (1997-1998)

Summary of Transportation Planning Data in Existing Reports: Technical Memorandum.  This report is made up of the following elements:

• A discussion of the types of data necessary to describe and predict travel in the valley.
• A general summary of available data, its sources, and the extent to which it meets planning requirements.
• Highlights of the data included in available reports, and a discussion of the data’s strengths and weaknesses.
• An index of the data types as included in the available reports.