When Ted Johnston took his job as general manager of The Broadmoor Manitou & Pikes Peak Cog Railway, he wasted no time in engaging with the Manitou Springs community.
Johnston, who has served as general manager since January 2022, said he wasn’t involved in the negotiations that resulted in a 50-year tax incentive agreement between the Cog’s owners and the city, which generated controversy among locals.
Among other things, the agreement requires the railway to work with the city to mitigate parking and traffic issues.
“I chose for us to get involved in the community because I recognized we needed to do that with or without the agreement,” Johnston said. “Wanting to be a good community partner is not just something that the Cog wanted to do, but I wanted to do personally.”
Johnston joined the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce and cultivated relationships with local organizations.
The Cog sponsored four sunrise trips to the Pikes Peak summit between July and October this year, Johnston said.
The trips raised $22,000, which resulted in a $5,500 donation to the Carnegie Library fundraising effort, $5,500 to the high school’s Mustang Club and $5,500 to the Mineral Springs Foundation.
“We split the remaining $5,500 between the Volunteer Fire Department and the Police Department,” he said.
The railway also hosted a late afternoon Sept. 29 train ride for the Mineral Springs Foundation for the organization’s fall fundraiser.
We gave them our lowest ticket price – Ted Johnston
“We gave them our lowest ticket price,” Johnston said. The trip was followed by dinner at Border Burger Bar.
“This was the first time we’ve done anything like that,” he said. “It went really well, and it’s something that, if there’s other groups in town that would like to do something like that, we would be happy to hear what their ideas are.”
Mitigation efforts
The Cog has also given more than $300,000 to the U.S. Forest Service for trail maintenance, wildfire mitigation and educational programs. Johnston said the money came from a 50-cent per-ticket fee that has been charged since the Cog reopened. The railway has also partnered with Colorado Springs Utilities, which owns a substantial amount of property above Manitou, on wildfire mitigation in the Ruxton Creek watershed.
“In June, we hosted about 30 people from quite a few state and local agencies and took them up to the summit on the train,” he said. “That let them see an overview of the whole Pike National Forest.”
The railway established an offsite parking lot at the Colorado Springs Shrine Club on South 33rd Street and runs shuttles to and from the railway, Johnston said.
“The biggest thing we’ve done is the communication with our customers and what we tell them prior to their arrival in Manitou,” he said. “We start communicating with them from the moment they get on our website. We have a full section that is dedicated to parking information.”
The day before the trip, ticket buyers get a text message about what to consider before they come to Manitou, including where to park. Customers are urged to use the free lot and shuttle service.
“We continue to send those messages, and we give them very detailed information,” Johnston said.
Non-ticket holders “create issues not only for us, but for everybody else up here” around the Ruxton Avenue railway station, he said. “We turn them around and direct them to where they need to go.”
Most people make reservations online, but the Cog also gets lots of calls on its reservation line from people wanting to know where to stay, where to eat and what to do.
“We have a general answer, and then we always say, ‘We highly recommend you contact the Chamber of Commerce for more information,’” Johnston said.
Teaming with the city
Mayor John Graham said Johnston approached him more than a year ago.
“He said, ‘we’d like to be more part of the community,’” Graham said. “The relationship on a day-to-day basis between the staff and people actually solving problems has been pretty good.”
Graham said he has talked with Johnston about parking and traffic congestion on Ruxton and how they will work together during the Ruxton corridor infrastructure improvement project.
Construction on the project, which includes changing out water and sewer lines, burying power lines and improving sidewalks and streetscapes, is scheduled to begin in November 2024, but the start date could be pushed back to November 2025 if the city isn’t ready next fall, Graham said.
Whenever it occurs, “it’s going to require a huge amount of coordination between the city, (Colorado Springs Utilities) and the Cog,” he said. “It’s going to be very challenging, and it’s something we’ve talked about.”
In general, Graham said, “I think the relationship is much better than it was several years ago and when the negotiating was being done.”