The Regional Transportation District enters 2025 with seven newly elected directors and a green light from voters to keep hundreds of millions in tax revenues to make moving around metro Denver easier and faster.
But public transit riders will face continued service disruptions that delay trips, including 10-mile-per-hour trains crawling through slow zones.
A $152 million reconstruction of RTD’s 30-year-old downtown rails will resume this summer, forcing diversions of trains and vehicle detours. A wider-than-expected deterioration of rails across the rest of RTD’s 60-mile system, which led to the imposition of the slow zones last summer for safety, requires more track replacement and repair. RTD’s annual ridership has decreased to 65 million, down from 106 million in 2019, and transit advocates demand better service.
“We want to see ambitious and robust goals,” said Rep. Meg Froelich, who chairs Colorado’s House Transportation, Housing and Local Government Committee. “We need to have a conversation about not only how we can meet a standard that is appropriate for a world-class city, which is what we want to be, but also to meet the governor’s transportation goals. ….. There’s no reason to think we wouldn’t be able to return to that higher (106 million) annual ridership,” Froelich said.
“Frequency is everything. A bus or train that comes every 45 minutes? That’s just not workable, even assuming it comes on time. It’s a deterrent to a commuter, or an hourly wage worker, and is just not sustainable.”
Colorado lawmakers, who created the RTD in 1969, again are pressing for a turnaround. They’re finalizing reform legislation to increase lawmakers’ control by requiring RTD directors to set goals and report on progress. Last year, lawmakers proposed an RTD governance overhaul that would have placed state-appointed directors on the board. Full details of the latest bill have not been disclosed.
RTD’s chief executive and general manager Debra Johnston, defended the agency’s performance and said, in an interview, that RTD has the potential, through services such as the A-Line to Denver International Airport, to be valued as “an economic engine” for the region.
While more disruptions are likely in 2025, agency managers believe fewer will be unexpected, Johnson said. “We know what we’re faced with” in addressing a $329 million maintenance backlog. She blamed the lagging ridership on the pandemic, which spurred a shift toward remote work and less public transit commuting, saying 15% of RTD’s ridership will never be restored. “Societal issues that RTD can’t control,” such as “scofflaws” boarding public buses and trains for shelter and using illegal drugs, also are hurting ridership, she said.
At a committee meeting last week, RTD staffers proposed performance goals for 2025.
The most aggressive was an increase in the share of light rail trains showing up at stations as scheduled to 96%. Last year, trains arrived 94.3% of the time (208,412 of 223,205 trips), according to agency documents. Historically, 99% of RTD’s buses and trains made it to stations as scheduled, documents show.
RTD administrators also proposed a goal of increasing RTD’s ridership by 3%, about 2 million annual boardings or 5,400 a month.
They plan to devote portions of a record $1.2 billion budget, secured by voters’ approval of an exemption from Colorado Taxpayer Bill of Rights revenue limits, to increase transit police patrols. They’ll be searching for a new police chief after Johnson fired the previous one, who has filed a lawsuit alleging racist retaliation. They’re negotiating with union leaders about boosting pay for operators — the current starting pay ranges between $26 and $33 an hour — to attract and retain enough to increase service.
Those goals reflect an agency culture of trying to be merely functional instead of aspiring to meet metro Denver residents’ needs, said Sen. Faith Winter, who chairs the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee.
“We can be much more ambitious,” Winter said, noting she used to ride an RTD bus to work until service was canceled.
“We need a future where more people choose public transit.”
Greater Denver Transit members, advocates for better public transit, called the proposed goals “unserious” and urged board members to reject them. GDT members pointed to Salt Lake City, Austin, Houston, Sacramento, and other cities where ridership on buses and trains recovered to at least 75% of pre-pandemic levels.
“Frequency is a major tool in increasing ridership” and aggressive goals could help spur improvement, GDT spokesman Richard Bamber said. “And if there’s not significant improvement in the way the downtown rail disruption is managed compared with last year, achieving an increased ridership goal will become difficult if not impossible.”
How long will rail transit slow zones persist?
Johnson pointed to the Boston area’s Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority as an example of an agency tackling deferred maintenance. “They had slow zones for 20 consecutive years,” she said, but declined to commit to a date for completion of track repairs in Denver.
“We have made significant improvements. It is going well,” she said.
The seven new leaders on RTD’s 15-member board include three selected for executive committee and leadership roles — Karen Benker of Longmont as treasurer, south suburbs representative Patrick O’Keefe as vice chairman, and downtown Denver representative Chris Nicholson as secretary.
“If we can get to a 15-minute frequency, that’s enough,” Nicholson said, acknowledging past estimates that such service could cost as much as $2 billion a year due to the RTD’s 2,342-square-mile service area spanning eight counties.
Nicholson cited the popularity of RTD’s A-Line to DIA and the relatively robust use of transit to downtown events such as a Taylor Swift concert. “We need to be able to show folks how we fit into their lives,” he said.
“The best thing we can be doing right now is hiring more operators. ….. Can we run more lines that people want to use? If we want to grow our ridership over the next 10 years, we need to ask: What gets people who have a car to ride RTD? We need transit lines that are as convenient as driving a car.”
In 2025, RTD directors must decide the future of a popular Access-on-Demand free ride service for people with disabilities. RTD managers have deemed it unsustainable due to costs that have ballooned to more than $1 million a month.
Construction will continue on a $280 million Bus Rapid Transit project to convert two car traffic lanes on East Colfax Avenue for bus-only transit. The Colorado Department of Transportation is leading the planning for additional BRT projects to relieve vehicle congestion on Federal and Colorado boulevards.
RTD riders soon can begin using a new credit card tap option to pay fares as they approach buses and trains, designed to make riding public transit more convenient.
Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.