An RTD Jump bus collided with a vehicle east of Boulder on Wednesday morning, skidded up onto the sidewalk and nearly tipped over into a business’ parking lot — yet the majority of the passengers walked away with no injuries.

Colorado State Patrol Trooper Josh Lewis said both the driver of the Boulder-bound bus and the other driver remained at the scene, in the 6500 block of Arapahoe Road, during the investigation into what happened.

“Right now, it’s being investigated as the bus driver doing his best to avoid a collision and ascertaining if any actions by the other driver were faulty,” Lewis said.

Arapahoe Road was closed in both directions between 63rd and 75th streets for several hours following the 8:58 a.m. crash, but reopened about noon. The bus was cleared by 2:20 p.m.

Officials with Rocky Mountain Fire and the state patrol said 14 people were evaluated by medical responders, and out of that, two were treated for minor injuries and released, and one was transported to a local hospital with minor injuries.

It’s not clear how many people were on the bus, or whether the person taken to the hospital was in the bus or was in the other vehicle.

Tina Jaquez, RTD public affairs manager, said the bus driver was a contractor with First Transit. State law requires RTD to contract out half of its non-rail drivers.

“We want to run a safe system and safety is our No. 1 priority, and without knowing information it’s really hard for us to speculate on anything that happened in this incident specifically,” she said.

One of the passengers, Patrick Goslin, said he expected to walk off the bus about 9 a.m. to be at his job at Mondo Robot, 5445 Conestoga Court. Instead, he arrived about 10:30 a.m. after providing his statement to law enforcement investigating the bus crash.

“I walked the rest of the way because I didn’t really want to get back on a bus,” he said. ” … The adrenaline has worn off. I’m still a little bit more shaken up than I thought.”

Goslin said he learned that a car driving east attempted to make a left turn into a business along Arapahoe Road when it was struck by the bus, which was traveling west. He said he was sitting on the left side behind the driver when he felt a big jolt before the bus was on the sidewalk.

“We just tipped over the side and, luckily, there was a tractor-trailer parked there, otherwise we would’ve ended up on our side,” he said. “Being on the left-hand side, obviously we ended up on the right-hand side kind of on top of people.”

He said the bus driver was the last person out, after passengers escaped through windows and emergency exits.

The crash originally was reported as having involved several vehicles, and Lewis confirmed that it involved the bus, the turning vehicle and several parked vehicles.

In the same block of Arapahoe Road on March 20, an RTD bus that also was heading west rear-ended a stopped commercial van, sandwiching it against a semi flatbed and causing the van to burst into flames.

The contract driver of that bus was charged with careless driving resulting in injury. The van driver was airlifted with serious burns, and one of three bus passengers was transported to a local hospital.

‘We didn’t want the bus to roll’

The bus ended up crushing several trailers parked in spaces at Arapahoe Self Storage, 6389 Arapahoe Road.

The self-storage property owners, Dick and June Paquette, said they were sitting around this morning reading a newspaper and waiting for something exciting to happen when they got the call about the crash.

“The way I look at it, it could’ve been worse,” Dick Paquette said.

He said they’re contacting renters with damaged property so they can work out insurance.

One owner who didn’t stop to give his name walked past and said, “My trailer got creamed.”

Several uninjured bus riders walked west along the sidewalk away from the crash they had escaped.

On his third day of a new job and first day of riding the Jump from Lafayette to Boulder, Riley Davis said he didn’t expect to be in a crash.

Davis said he thinks they were in the bus lane when a silver car turned into the lane. He said the driver didn’t slam on the brakes, so nobody was thrown forward, but the bus did run into fences.

“Hit the pole, it turned to shreds and we finally sort of stopped against this semi truck,” he said about leaning against a trailer parked at the storage site. “That was when it started to get scary.”

He said people started falling out of their seats before escaping out the windows.

“It looked like we could just open the doors because the doors were on the ground, but we didn’t want the bus to roll,” he said.

‘Fortunate that it wasn’t a lot worse’

Scott Lewis said he was dozing in the back of the bus before going to work at the University of Colorado when he felt the collision.

“It was not what I was expecting this morning, but it was kind of surreal at the time, didn’t really feel better until we got out,” he said. “I think we were fortunate that it wasn’t a lot worse than it was.”

Jose Salazar and Corey Schafer were also on the bus when it skidded across the sidewalk, hit a power line and toppled sideways.

“This is why I smoke weed!” Salazar said after his ride was cut short. “I was in the backseat, I was just reading and out of nowhere the bus just did its thing.”

Schafer, who was on his way to work at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, helped Salazar get a passenger off the bus.

“Initially, we just kind of were trying to think of the best way to get out because it didn’t look like we could get out to the right since we were flipped over halfway onto the pavement there,” Schafer said. “But then somebody opened the window to our left. Me and Jose stayed around for a while because a disabled guy couldn’t climb out the top window so we had to find a way to get him out the right side.”

Alexis Jaramillo contributed to this report.

Amelia Arvesen: 303-684-5212, arvesena@times-call.com or twitter.com/ameliaarvesen