For decades, Boise State Football fans have had the option of taking a shuttle from Downtown Boise to home football games.
But this year, just which entity would provide the shuttles remained uncertain as recently as June following a proposal process that yielded no qualified shuttle providers.
Downtown Boise Association Executive Director Jennifer Hensley said that the association has organized game day shuttles to encourage game goers to utilize the ample parking resources in downtown Boise, and in the process, attract patrons to downtown businesses. Last year, Valley Regional Transit, the region’s public transit agency, provided game day shuttles for the first time instead of Caldwell Transportation Company, a private company which had provided the service since it was first offered in the 2000s, irking the company’s general manager at the time, Mike Stephenson, and Caldwell City Council Member Chuck Stadick.
Then early this year, Hensley said DBA launched a formal bid process for the shuttles contract for fall 2024 and “didn’t receive any qualified responses,” leaving leadership to explore other options. The association turned to Boise State itself, which has agreed to provide the shuttles this fall.
But even with Boise State providing shuttles, Hensley said it would be in a “much more limited capacity than it was last year,” adding that the association will be working with Lime, the rentable bike and scooter company, to “make sure there are other well-marketed options to put in front of folks to get from downtown to the stadium.”
Meanwhile, Stephenson said allowing VRT to provide game day shuttle service last year cost his company $31,000 in revenue, and Stadick said the situation between VRT and Caldwell Transportation Company led to his advocacy against the city approving funding for two new bus lines this year.
But VRT CEO Elaine Clegg maintained that the agency followed established rules and Federal Transit Administration approval procedures in offering the shuttle service, though it declined to apply to provide the service this year.
Providing accessible shuttles
Hensley said a strong desire to offer accessible buses was the driving factor behind the DBA awarding VRT the shuttle contract last year and DBA’s request for shuttle contract bids this year.
“We run on the idea that a downtown that’s not for everyone is a downtown for no one,” Hensley said. “We have to make sure everything is available to everybody.”
Every year, Hensley’s association coordinates with local businesses to create shuttle stops in the downtown area where people can catch the buses to football games.
Hensley said that the company that had historically provided shuttles, the Caldwell Transportation Company, used a fleet of school buses, including a single accessible bus that could be called on demand with a phone number.
But Hensley said that over the years, DBA received feedback from shuttle users that the school buses, even with an accessible shuttle option, posed accessibility barriers for riders. For example, some people found it difficult to climb up and down the steps into the buses, she said.
She said anyone needing capabilities such as wheelchair access or other accessibility accommodations needed to call the number for the accessible bus, potentially waiting about 20 minutes for pick-up. That meant that sometimes families split up if some family members wanted to use the regular shuttles instead of waiting for pick-up by the accessible shuttle.
2023: Valley Regional Transit provides shuttles
When it came time to select the shuttle service provider for the 2023 season, Hensley said DBA leadership “had decided that we wouldn’t run an inaccessible program.”
Hensley told BoiseDev that DBA had casually floated the potential for VRT offering game day shuttles during conversations on other matters, as opposed to DBA specifically asking VRT to offer the shuttle service.
Clegg, who became VRT’s CEO in early 2023, said that the agency had been asked by community members previously about providing the game day shuttles, but knew that DBA had an agreement with a private company.
“As we understood it last year, that sort of fell apart, and DBA determined for a variety of reasons that wasn’t the direction they wanted to go,” Clegg said.
She said that public agencies like VRT are allowed to provide supplemental bus service — lines outside of their established routes — when it’s determined that no private company can provide the service. One recent example is the agency providing the Treeliner for Treefort Music Fest to shuttle festival goers around to various venues.
But Stephenson, the former general manager of the Caldwell Transportation Company, said letting VRT provide shuttles for the football games did not sit well with him. Caldwell Transportation Company provided the game-day shuttles since 2013, when it purchased Boise Shuttle Service, which operated the shuttles for years prior to that.
Stephenson also questioned the idea that DBA was interested in VRT providing the shuttles because of accessibility reasons. He said he couldn’t recall anyone from DBA telling him about accessibility complaints with the company’s buses.
“I think they used the accessibility thing after the fact because we were able to provide one wheelchair-equipped bus, and quite frankly, I don’t know how much use it got over the years,” he said.
Though there was no written contract between Caldwell Transportation Company and DBA, federal laws and regulations prohibit a publicly funded agency like VRT from taking business from the private sector in several ways, Stephenson said. If VRT were going to charge a fee for the shuttle service, it would first need to reach out to private companies and see if they could do the work, he said.
But Clegg said that in talking to the Federal Transit Administration, VRT staff and FTA staff agreed that offering game day shuttles would not be considered a charter service, and therefore, they were not required to reach out to Caldwell Transportation or other private companies to ensure they were not already planning to offer it for a fee.
“We weren’t required to. In hindsight, that might have been a good thing,” Clegg said. VRT’s board will consider adopting a supplemental services policy that requires the agency to contact any entity that has previously provided a service that VRT is considering providing, regardless of whether it’s a charter or not, she said.
Historically, Caldwell Transportation Company had been paid by DBA to provide the shuttle services, which amounted to about $31,000 in 2022, Stephenson said. He claimed VRT skirted that rule by simply offering to do the game day shuttle service for free.
“These people are continuously asking for more funding,” Stephenson said, referring to VRT, “and you know, if they don’t have enough funding, why are they volunteering to do something for free when it’s obviously going to cost them money?”
Clegg said that VRT did not offer to do the shuttle service for free, saying VRT is not allowed to charge a fee for its services if another entity would provide the service for a fee. Instead, VRT staff offered to design a service, including determining the costs and whether they could sell enough advertising to cover the costs.
Clegg said it looked as though VRT would be able to sell enough advertising to cover some costs, and confirmed with the City of Boise that it could use part of the city’s contribution to VRT to cover the cost of the service itself.
Ultimately, VRT’s buses provided 10,000 rides to football fans during Boise State’s 2023 football season, Clegg said.
Hensley said, “People loved them,” noting feedback included how easy the buses were to get on and off and to track when the next one would arrive using a phone app. For many, it was their first time riding VRT buses, she said.
2024: “No qualified proposals” for shuttle service
Hensley said that DBA decided to do a request for proposals for the 2024 shuttle season “to see if there was anyone we were missing that could provide fully accessible shuttle service.”
Stephenson said that Caldwell Transportation Company submitted a proposal and did receive a response.
Hensley told BoiseDev that the association had received no qualified proposals, and confirmed that though CTC staff had provided a shuttle service proposal, DBA staff felt it did not meet the requirements set forth in the proposal application guidelines.
Hensley said requirements included providing a minimum of six shuttles that run for two hours before and one hour after each game, and that all of the shuttles needed to be fully accessible. Encouraged but not required items included the ability for shuttles to carry bikes and for a technology that allowed riders to track shuttles, she said.
Clegg said that VRT decided not to submit a proposal. While the agency is legally allowed to apply to submit proposals in such a process, because of limitations with competing with the private sector, VRT could only be selected as the responsive bidder if there were no other qualified bidders, she said.
While Clegg said she stands by how VRT offered the service last year, she said she’s not “interested in being in competition with the private sector,” if that’s how such services are viewed.
If VRT decides to ever throw its hat in the ring for shuttle service again, certain factors would need to shift to make it financially sustainable, Clegg said. For example, VRT’s costs for providing the service include the running of the buses, staff time, and the cost of the buses being used for shuttle service not being available for regular VRT routes. Staff time includes both drivers as well as supervisors, and other roles.
Without a qualified bidder, Hensley and DBA met with Boise State, reaching an agreement in June for the university to provide shuttles.
Caldwell bus service under scrutiny
VRT’s shuttle service in 2023 also did not sit well with Caldwell City Council Member Chuck Stadick, who also serves as the Caldwell City Council appointee to VRT’s Board of Directors. (Caldwell Mayor Jarom Wagoner currently serves as the VRT board chair.)
When Stephenson told Stadick he had lost revenue due to DBA choosing VRT to provide shuttle service, Stadick said it raised a red flag partly because the agency is always seeking grants and donations to operate.
And when Stadick heard that DBA was asking for shuttle service proposals for the 2024 season, he wrote an email to Hensley questioning why the request seemed “geared to the type of equipment only VRT has for the most part.”
“Obviously, with these types of features, no company could serve the type of program you’re asking for except VRT,” Stadick said in the email, obtained by BoiseDev under the Idaho Public Records Act.
The Caldwell City Council was soon voting on how much funding to provide VRT, Stadick said in his email. The amount of funding in the initial proposal — approved but not finalized as part of the city’s fiscal year 2024 budget process — was for $645,000: about $345,000 for VRT’s baseline service, and an additional $300,000 to create the city’s first two intra-city bus lines.
However, given the DBA-VRT situation, Stadick did not want to support additional funding for VRT.
“After I found out what was going on and the loss of revenue to private business — which, to me, it’s against the Federal Transit Administration — I said, ‘we’re not going to do this,’” and recommended the council fund only the baseline service, Stadick told BoiseDev. VRT subsequently asked the city council for reimbursem*nt for $69,000-worth of materials it had purchased for the service expansion before the council voted against it. The council voted against the reimbursem*nt, but agreed to revisit the matter at a later date.
“I’m not discounting what CTC should have done — they should probably have gotten (a contract) in writing … but for twenty-some years, they just did it (verbally) or through emails or whatever, and CTC just assumed that they were going to get that business last year, too,” Stadick said.
