Ride Longmont To Add Vans, Extend Weekend Evening Service In 2027

Tamara Brown does not enjoy driving.

When I asked the Longmont nurse why her family likes living with one car, she did not complain about the cost of driving or anything that would prevent her from owning or driving a car. Her husband drives to work, and she navigates happily without driving while he’s away.

Brown uses RTD buses, Uber and Ride Longmont to navigate the city from near her front doorstep by the post office on Coffman Street.

Since Ride Longmont’s launch, Brown said it has become the most powerful wedge in her car-free tool belt.

“I use it just about daily for back and forth to work and errands, and I’ve been using it since the start of the program,” Brown said.

Ride Longmont provides rides throughout the city for a flat fare of $2. Customers order rides through a mobile app. Ride Longmont vans can also take passengers to the Bustang stop near Interstate 25 in Firestone.

The service can be a useful alternative to rideshares. Driver availability on apps like Uber and Lyft can be scarce in Longmont, and trips can cost $10 to $15 for a simple ride of a few miles to King Soopers.

Longmont seems to have latched onto the service, and city data show demand for vans often outstrips supply. Brown said the shortage becomes particularly noticeable around school pickup and commuting hours.

“In the beginning, it was more reliable,” Brown said. “The wait time was less than 15 minutes. Now the wait time is consistently anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes—and the majority of the time, you can’t even get a ride.”

City data back up Brown’s experience. Public Information Officer Jill Lis compiled data from city transportation staff for this story.

The average Ride Longmont wait time during 2026 has been approximately 21 minutes, and the service’s “met demand rate” is 82.2%. That means 17.8% of requested trips have not been available through the system.

Ride Longmont has been providing between 6,000 and 7,000 completed rides per month this year. The service completed 7,041 rides in July alone.

“I’ll start trying to get a van about an hour before I have to be somewhere,” Brown said. “Even then, I’m constantly hitting ‘try again’ just to get assigned to a driver.”

The Ride Longmont app and driver navigation can also be glitchy, and Brown hopes technology improvements will accompany the service’s expansion.

She said that when she returns home from the grocery store, the app sometimes directs the driver to drop her near Urban Field or another location a few blocks from her home. She then has to carry her groceries the rest of the way.

For pickups, drivers are also sometimes dispatched to locations several blocks away, including farther up Coffman Street near Third or Fourth Avenue.

“It’s just not a consistent drop-off point,” Brown said. “You never know where you’re getting dropped off or what that’s going to look like.”

More funding, vans and service hours

Ride Longmont has received several previous grants to operate and expand the service. Those include $1.15 million through RTD’s 2023 Partnership Call for Projects, $1.4 million through the 2025 program and $1 million in federal funding covering 2026 and 2027.

The city’s latest award is substantially larger.

Longmont received $4,041,000 through RTD’s 2026 Partnership Program Call for Projects. The grant will allow Ride Longmont to add two vans, including one wheelchair-accessible vehicle.

The current fleet has only one wheelchair-accessible van available to Longmont residents with disabilities.

Adding two vans will allow Ride Longmont to increase its annual service hours from 22,000 in 2026 to approximately 27,280 in 2027.

That is a 24% increase and may come as particularly good news to residents who want an alternative to driving to restaurants, breweries and other destinations on weekends.

Ride Longmont will extend Friday and Saturday service until 10 p.m. next year.

“I am excited to hear that they are going to be running the van until 10,” Brown said. “I feel like 8 is too early.”

Will two vans be enough?

The expansion does not come with a guarantee that every requested ride will become available. City staff did not provide an estimate for exactly how adding two vans will affect peak-hour waits or reduce the number of unaccommodated requests.

Officials said the additional service hours are expected to increase availability and reduce overall wait times, although riders may continue to experience variability throughout the day after the expansion.

The city plans to measure the results by continuing to track its met demand rate—the percentage of requested trips the system can make available.

Brown welcomes the additional vans and later weekend hours, but she remains uncertain that the expansion will keep pace with the service’s growing popularity.

“I don’t really think two vans are going to be enough,” Brown said. “The word got out, and a lot of people utilize it.”

Still, she plans to keep Ride Longmont in her transportation tool belt.

“Sometimes I feel like, ‘What do you expect for two bucks?’” Brown said. “But at the same time, I want to be able to utilize the service consistently.”