The Island Express will not be returning to Coronado this summer to provide on-demand electric shuttle services, but the free summer shuttle will be available.
The Island Express pilot program ended in December and on March 18, the City Council unanimously voted to direct city staff to come up with a feasible financial proposal before making any final decisions on whether to continue the service.
This was an experimental program that introduced six electric mini shuttles and two electric transit vans for free door-to-door drop-off service on the island.
It ran on Coronado from June 4 to Dec. 4, 2024 and was operated by Circuit Transit, a ride-share company that has focused exclusively on electric shuttle services for over a decade.
The Island Express provided a total of just about 30,000 rides, averaging around 163 rides per day with 90% of the rides occurring within the residential Village area and 10% in the Cays.
The financial proposal, as requested by council members, will include an analysis of ride fares and resident versus nonresident fees, request for proposal (RFP) options and other concerns brought up by council members.
The Island Express
City Manager Tina Friend said that designing a plan for the program and having a RFP would take upwards of six months, leaving it to be potentially implemented in the summer of 2026 if approved.
Richard Grunow, director of community development, suggested that if the city were to continue this program past the pilot, there are some potential cost saving options.
It cost the city just over $561,000 to run the Island Express for six months. That included a call center to request a ride and wrapping for the vehicles.
One cost-saving option would be to charge for the service.
Even though the service was free to those in Coronado, it cost the city about $7 per passenger to ride within the Village and $29 if traveling to and from the Cays.
The fare models suggested charging riders a range from $1 per ride to $5 per ride.
“The other thing to keep in mind is, the more you raise fares, you’re probably going to depress ridership to some extent,” Grunow pointed out.
Another explored option was to work with local hotels, since the Hotel del Coronado and the Marriott were among the main pick-up and drop-off locations.
The program was intended to be for the citizens, but somewhere along the way, we switched it up and they started servicing the hotels.
Carelyn Reynolds, president of the Coronado Cab Company
“The program was intended to be for the citizens, but somewhere along the way, we switched it up and they started servicing the hotels,” said Carelyn Reynolds, president of the Coronado Cab Company, during public comment.
Many of the council members agreed, stating that staff should look into working with the hotels to get financial support.
“The hotels should pay,” Council member Amy Steward said.
The free summer shuttle
The city has another ride service running in the summers, the free summer shuttle, and it has been in use since 2013, running every year except in 2020 due to the global pandemic.
The City Council voted 4-1 to continue the free summer shuttle service this year, with Steward being the only member against the idea.
In 2024, it ran an abbreviated schedule from July 1 to Labor Day – it normally starts up on Memorial Day – and had its best ridership since the pandemic, even with the Island Express as a competitor service.
Providing this service would cost the city around $156,000 for the 2025 season. In 2024, it gave around 847 rides per day and cost the city about $2 per passenger.
However Steward, who voted not to revive the free summer shuttle program this summer, said that in observing the bus, she didn’t see many people utilizing it, sometimes seeing no one on the bus that day.
“You see these numbers, but it doesn’t correlate with my personal observation,” Steward said.
She also said the buses were too big for Coronado’s streets and getting rid of them would clear up greenhouse gases emitted into the air.
Grunow pointed out that there was a difference between the Island Express and free summer shuttle; the former is a door-to-door service using smaller vehicles while the latter follows a fixed route using large, municipal buses.
“They kind of have different customer bases, they serve different needs,” Grunow said. “In some ways they complement, in other ways they’re probably drawing from the same pool of passengers.”
