RTD operators on Sunday will start leaving elevator doors open at three busy rail and bus stations in a test to try to reduce rampant drug use, urination and other illegal activities inside elevators.
Elevators at the Nine Mile station in Aurora, the Colorado station southeast of where Interstate 25 meets Colorado Boulevard, and the Southmoor station in southeast Denver will be reprogrammed to rest with doors open, RTD manager Debra Johnson announced Friday.
“I am confident that this pilot program will provide customers with a greater sense of personal safety and security,” Johnson said in a news release.
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Hundreds of times a month, RTD bus and light rail train riders call for help and make complaints about unwanted and illegal activities inside elevators, RTD officials said. In January and February, RTD operators received more than 350 reports of problems in elevators at those three high-use stations. Problems in and around elevators included homeless people camping and vandalism.
“These activities not only impeded customer access to RTD’s services but also obstructed our efforts to create a welcoming transit environment,” RTD’s chief of police and emergency management Joel Fitzgerald said in the news release. “Setting elevators to a default open status dissuades usage to anything other than what is intended.”
The pilot project aligns with broader agency efforts to reduce and prevent crime by improving lights and landscaping, installing smoke detectors in restrooms, and increasing TV monitoring screens that show images from surveillance cameras.
Between now and June, RTD officials will closely monitor calls and complaints about problems in the elevators at the three stations and make comparisons. If there’s a reduction in calls and problems, officials said, they’ll consider keeping elevator doors open at the three stations and expanding the change systemwide.
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