Ride Bend, a free summer shuttle offered by Cascades East Transit, will connect visitors and residents to downtown Bend, the Old Mill District, Century Drive, and Galveston. This is the second year for the free shuttle and the service will operate June 29 through September 3, 2018. Ride Bend is made possible by a joint partnership between City of Bend, Visit Bend, and Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council. Service hours are enhanced for 2018, operating between 12 pm and 10 pm, seven days a week throughout the summer, with buses running every 15 minutes. Dial-A-Ride service will be provided for ADA riders who are unable to use the fixed-route service. All buses and bus stops are ADA accessible.
To celebrate Ride Bend’s first trip in 2018, a launch event will take place on June 29 at 11:30 am, with opening remarks from funding partners and community members. The event location is at the Ride Bend stop at the corner of Franklin Ave. and Wall St. Event attendees are invited to ride the first bus leaving at Noon. CET and partner organizations will also host fun activities at a new stop located on Bluff Drive in the Old Mill District.
For more information, visit our Ride Bend web page
I am a local and love your free shuttle. I Can’t believe more folks aren’t using it. Have you considered asking local hotels to put a brochure in each room (those near the route)? Something must be wrong with marketing the service, it seems to me. The fact it comes every 15 minutes is sure a plus. If your marketing folks rode it a few times, they might get some new ideas.
Those are my thoughts.
Hi Barbara,
Thanks for your comment. Our team has conducted extensive outreach to all of the surrounding hotels and we were able to get in an article about the service in all of the hotel guest books that are in the room. It is up to individual hotels as to how they wish to display the information – most have the brochures at the front desk. Ridership is up compared to last year and I rode the shuttle last Friday to explore some new marketing ideas. We’ve been posting a lot of info on our Facebook and Twitter pages and now have Instagram. We are planning some special promotions in August that align with Bend concerts and brew tours. Thanks
We rode the shuttle to and from the concert at the Old Mill District last Saturday night, we were staying at the Fairfield Marriott and walked the short distance to downtown, got to shuttle, saw the concert and then caught the shuttle home. I hope people take advantage of this great service it was wonderful for the six of us!
Thanks for the comment and it was nice seeing your group use the shuttle on Saturday night – we are glad you got home safely!