Voters in the Telluride area approved a ballot measure last week that will raise taxes to help secure the future of a hugely popular free-to-ride gondola that serves the historic town and nearby Mountain Village.
The gondola opened in the 1990s and transports over 3 million people a year — more than many of the Regional Transportation District’s light rail and commuter rail lines in the Denver metro. It’s the only free public transit system like it in the United States, local officials say, and is used by locals and tourists alike.
“It's accessible, free, high-quality, frequent transportation for everybody that walks up to the door,” said David Averill, executive director of San Miguel Authority for Regional Transportation. “You don't have to be special to ride it. That's a great equalizer.”
The gondola carries passengers over 10,500-foot Coonskin Ridge between Telluride and Mountain Village in 13 minutes, faster than drivers can make the eight-mile trek by road. Averill credits it with reducing traffic congestion and parking issues in both communities.
“It's probably the biggest bang for the buck in greenhouse gas emission [reductions] in this region, I'd be willing to bet,” he said.
But the gondola’s age, popularity and looming financial hurdles meant it needed investment.
It runs for about 5,000 hours a year, Averill said, far more than a seasonal ski lift, and lines to ride can last for over an hour during busy holidays.
The gondola’s construction and operations have largely been funded by fees collected by the Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association. But with the association's 30-year agreement set to expire at the end of 2027, local officials and business interests decided to ask voters across the region to take on the collective burden of shoring up the gondola’s future.
They obliged, by a somewhat narrow margin. Measure 3A, which will increase property, sales and lodging taxes enough to raise $8.2 million a year, passed 53 percent to 47 percent.
Most of that new money will enable the regional transportation authority to take over responsibility for the gondola in 2028 and also allow it to start saving money for a replacement that could cost between $60 million and $100 million, Averill estimated. It’s not clear when that will happen, he said, but planners want a new gondola system to be capable of moving more people to meet the ever-growing demand.
Campaign finance records show that the measure’s backers received $60,000 from a high-end Florida-based developer that is planning a nearly $1 billion Four Seasons hotel and condo resort near a gondola station in Mountain Village, and another $10,000 from Wyoming-based Shaw Construction.
About $1 million a year of the new tax revenue will fund improvements to bus service to down-valley communities where many workers live. The regional transportation authority’s annual revenue of about $2 million will quintuple to about $10 million once the new taxes kick in, Averill said.
“It's going to be a big jump for us,” he said. “I think it's just sort of a natural evolution of things, but this is quite an inflection point for the organization. There's no doubt about it.”
Not everyone is excited about paying more taxes.
It appears there was no organized opposition to the measure. But more than 1,700 voters cast their ballots against Measure 3A, including Erin Ries, who works in marketing and advertising and has lived in Telluride for 35 years. Ries said she sees the value of the gondola, but believes that Mountain Village should pay the bulk of its expenses.
“I'm just saying, they're building a huge hotel. The onus is on them. They're the ones that need it,” she said in an interview with CPR News.
Telluride, like most Colorado ski towns, is already an extremely expensive place to live, she said. Though her home on Main Street is “probably worth $4 million,” Ries said she isn’t wealthy. The house was a ski-bum crash pad when she and her partner bought it for less than $1 million more than a decade ago, she said, and the couple put lots of sweat equity into it.
“We got lucky,” she said, adding: “It’s hard to live here … I want people to be able to buy here and live here. And things like this make it very difficult for locals.”
Averill said the groups that drafted the ballot language — local governments, the Telluride ski resort, the Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association and the transit authority — all compromised with each other to come up with the ultimately successful measure.
“This is the best way that leadership thought we could get there,” he said. “So that's what we went for.”
