Aurora and Golden push back

Civic leaders in Golden and Aurora are pushing back at substantial proposed service cuts to two light-rail lines that they say could leave them with inadequate service.

Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan this week penned a stern letter to the Regional Transportation District stating that it is “completely unacceptable to cut service on the R-Line after just beginning the service within the last five months.”

Over in Golden, City Council members passed a resolution in August beseeching the Regional Transportation District to consider delaying any service cuts to the W-Line by a year or, short of that, tinker instead with the line’s weekend or late-night schedule.

The RTD board is expected to make a final decision on service changes across the entire district at its Oct. 17 meeting. The changes would take effect in January.

RTD spokesman Nate Currey said R-Line service reductions between the Florida Station in Aurora and the Lincoln Station in Lone Tree — and between the Federal Center Station and the Golden Station on the W-Line — are necessary because of poor ridership.

With an average of only 41 passengers boarding per hour on the R-Line, Currey said the line “is not even half of what the RTD board has deemed should be the minimum boarding per hour.”

The agency is proposing an end to weekday off-peak R-Line service south of the Florida Station and eliminating all weekend service on that stretch.

He said Aurora residents will still be able to travel south of the Florida Station any time of the week, but it will require making transfers to other light-rail lines. Most travel between Aurora and the Denver Tech Center is done by weekday commuters, who won’t be impacted by the service cuts, Currey said.

Aurora has 2,500 residential units along the RLine under construction or ready to be built over the next 18 months, along with hotels slated for various stations, Hogan said in an interview Friday with The Denver Post.

In his letter to RTD, the mayor said axing midday service Monday through Friday and on weekends “ensures that a new rail line will never realize its full potential and instead will fail.”

The city will hold a public meeting with RTD at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Aurora Municipal Center to discuss the proposed changes.

RTD board member Natalie Menten said the transit agency has to make tough decisions every year on service adjustments.

“We have to treat taxpayer money like it’s our own,” she said. “We have to be very good stewards of it.”

Menten represents a large swath of Jefferson County, where the W-Line opened in 2013. She said the light-rail line got off to a slow start and adjustments had to be made to increase hourly boardings.

For next year, RTD is looking at curtailing weekday frequency on the WLine — from every 15 minutes to every 30 minutes — between the Federal Center Station and the Golden Station between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. and between 6 and 9 p.m. The agency said low ridership doesn’t merit keeping existing train frequency on that stretch.

Golden City Council expressed concern last month that the service changes could jeopardize the success of a $100,000 pilot program it launched Aug. 28 that added a second bus to its flex bus program helping people get from their homes to the rail station.

Menten said she understands the desire by local communities to maintain as robust a rail service as possible, but schedules have to make sense.

“It starts to get expensive when you’re running these trains in the off-peak hours,” she said. “If it’s not performing, it has to be adjusted.”