RTD discusses impact of pandemic on riders
Budget shortfalls, reduced ridership force service cuts
Boulder’s City Council heard an update on the changes that 2020 brought to the Regional Transportation District and how they might affect residents.
The district that ser ves eight counties in Colorado, including
Boulder and Broomfield, has in a year lost more than half of its ridership due to the coronavirus pandemic, hired a new general manager and CEO and sworn in five new board members. It also formed a district accountability committee, on which former Boulder County
Commissioner Elise Jones ser ves.
Lynn Guissinger and Erik Davidson, who represent Boulder and Broomfield counties on the RTD board of directors, spoke Tuesday at the Council meeting of the budget shor tfalls and reduced ridership that
pushed RTD to reduce service and noted Boulder routes were not immune to this.
RTD announced earlier this month that Route GS, Route 205
and Route 225 would be suspended, partially discontinued or reduced. Councilmember Aaron Brockett later asked about some of the service reductions in Boulder, including those at Gunbarrel and Boulder Junction, and questioned how the district would prioritize routes if and when it begins ramping up ser vice.
Guissinger said those spots are on her radar but noted the district has work to do in terms of determining how best to ser ve those areas.
RTD was awarded $232 million in federal funding last year and another $200 million this year that Guissinger said allowed the district to stay afloat and maintain employees that it expected to have to lay of f.
Moving for ward, Guissinger and Davidson agreed that bringing longtime riders back and recruiting new ones is a priority as the transportation district works to bounce back from the financial crisis it’s faced.
“We could look at our pass programs in Boulder and in other areas,” Davidson said, referencing a way to improve ridership.
Councilmember Mary Young reminded the directors about the pass program working group, of which she was a member, that met for a year beginning in March 2017 to evaluate RTD’S pass programs.
“There were lots of ideas and a lot of thought put into the recommendations that came out of that,” she said.
“Just a reminder that all that information is out there and to make sure that we don’t do things over again that have already been looked at.”
Among the ideas proposed by the working group Young sat on were recommendations to add a low-income and youth pass.
Furthermore, Davidson said it’s become apparent that RTD needs to collaborate and find ways to work better with the local communities it ser ves, whether by forming regional councils or via other means.
“It became clear that our headquarters in Denver can’t possibly know the characteristics of all of our lines and where the core and full-time riders are,” Davidson said.