The late summer sun beamed down onto the Jefferson County Government Center – Golden Station platform Saturday afternoon as a few dozen county officials, city planners and Regional Transportation District board members gathered to celebrate the unveiling of a project years in the making.

Displayed beside a small dark podium emblazoned with the silhouette of a white bird, wings stretched in midflight, was a map of the new Westracks route, a free shuttle service between the station and the town of Morrison set to pilot next summer.

The project, which has been in development since 2023, is part of a collaboration between several regional agencies and governments, representatives from which attended Saturday’s public debut.

“Everyone talks about the Red Rocks shuttle, and yes that was the genesis for the idea, but this is so much more than that,” said Jefferson County Commissioner Andy Kerr. “We’ve been talking about this Westracks connections — music tracks, mountain biking tracks, hiking tracks, dinosaur tracks, motocross tracks — all of these tracks in this valley coming together.”

As currently planned, the free service will run on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays between Memorial Day and Labor Day next summer, officials said. The shuttles, all of which are ADA accessible, will operate every 15 minutes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The service will stop at the following locations between the station and Morrison:

• The Jefferson County Government Center – Golden Station
• Matthews/Winters Park
• The Martin G. Lockley Center at Dinosaur Ridge
• Red Rocks Trading Post
• Downtown Morrison
• The Morrison Natural History Museum

Much of the program’s funding came from the RTD, which committed $840,000 toward the service for an initial three-year run from 2026 through 2028, according to a news release from last week. With the service branching off an existing light rail station, it will expand the agency’s transportation network.

While organizing a shuttle that services a venue as popular as Red Rocks was part of the idea, the true motivation for the service had more to do with making Denver’s near outdoors more accessible to those without access to a car.

“I have friends who I grew up with in inner city Denver who have still never been to Red Rocks,” said Ean Tafoya, vice president of state programs for GreenLatinos, a nonprofit that worked with the organizers on the project. “This regional cooperation is going to provide thousands of acres of access to people.”

Additionally, organizers noted that reducing traffic congestion and operating with environmental sustainability in mind also played a significant role in the project’s development.

“Our biggest focus with sustainability is reducing people in single-occupancy vehicles and getting them on shuttle buses,” said Jefferson County Open Space Trails and Access Program Manager Emily Guffin. “We haven’t determined whether we’ll do a fully electric shuttle fleet or not, but that’s something in consideration for the future.”

Each shuttle will come equipped with a wheelchair elevator, Guffin said. The vendor that supplied them already operated a similar contract in Boulder County; Jefferson County was able to acquire the vehicles used in next summer’s pilot program through a quick bid.

While the service aids those who want to explore the outdoors, learn about Colorado’s dinosaur history or spend time in downtown Morrison, it will not yet operate during most peak concert times. Serving concertgoers, said Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Transit Director David Krutsinger, includes many added logistical considerations outside the scope of the initial program.

“I think it’s possible, I think there’s just more logistics that have to be worked out to make the service easy for people to use,” Krutsinger said. “There would have to be a lot of things worked out with private buses, shuttles and ride shares as well. There has to be a balance in the marketplace so you’re not putting them out of business.”

Krutsinger noted that adding a handful of shuttle buses to the already congested roadway traffic during peak concert travel wouldn’t provide the high level of service they envision. He did add that there could be a way to widen the existing road to add a dedicated bus lane, but said that nothing concrete has been decided just yet.