No Car, No Problem at CU Boulder
When it comes to getting to class at CU Boulder, “not having a car” would be a tough sell for tardiness — the university prefers students not to have one at all.
“We have a whole toolbox of programs to prevent students from needing to bring a car to campus,” saidBrandon Smith, CU Boulder assistant director of sustainable transportation.
Most of these offerings are free. All students receive (RTD) bus passes and also have access to the university’s electric Buff Buses, , CU NightRide, bike repairs on campus and summer bike storage. A CU ski bus even offers students trips to several ski resorts for $25 round trip.
And Buffs take advantage. In an average week, Buff Buses log about 30,000 boardings, 90% of which are students. In 2023, students rode RTD more than a million times. From January 2023 to November 2024, students took more than 1.3 million trips on BCycle bikes.
The payoffs for sustainable transportation are big.
“More than 60,000 commuters travel into Boulder per day, and 80% of these are single occupancy vehicles,” said Smith. “However, less than 12% of students drive solo to campus. Imagine what Boulder and campus parking, traffic and air quality would be like if we didn’t have programs that got most students out of single-occupancy cars.”
Photo by Casey A. Cass