Front Range schools back low youth fares
RTD eyes discounts for young, low-income riders
Metro-area school districts are lining up to support a sweeping overhaul of the Regional Transportation District pass program that will cut fares for students and low-income families.
A 25-member working group has spent the past year working out the details of the proposals which are being mulled by RTD officials. The recommendations call for low-income riders to get a 50 percent discount to ride, while customers ages 13 to 19 should receive a 70 percent cut at the fare box. Kids 12 and younger would ride free if accompanied by a fare-paying rider.
The Denver Public School Board voted recently to back the recommendations as did the school boards for the Jefferson County and Boulder Valley school districts. The Colorado Charter School Institute, which oversees several metro charter schools, also endorsed the plan.
The school boards for Aurora Public Schools and the Adams 12 District will soon consider the proposals, Janiece Mackey, co-founder of Young Aspiring Americans for Social and Political Activism, the group working with Together Colorado to lobby school boards to back the fare proposal.
“We want to have a nice, regional approach to this issue,” Mackey said. “We don’t want this to be a Denver-centric issue because affordable passes impact a lot of people across the area.”
Approval of the recommendations will be up to the RTD Board of Directors. If they are approved later this year, the fares would go into effect in early 2019, a RTD spokesman said.
Affordable transportation for students has been an issue in Denver for several years. Denver Public Schools is considered a national leader in providing school options for families outside of their neighborhood school.
But critics point out that DPS generally doesn’t provide transportation to a school of choice, leaving many students –especially from low-income families — struggling to find an affordable way to get to a preferred school.
“More than 10,000 DPS high school students did not have access to DPS-provided transportation to get themselves to and from school this year,” Together Colorado’s Karen Mortimer said. “That is two-thirds of DPS students who do not have access to simple transportation.”
DPS has more than 31,000 students eligible for transportation, while an average of 19,000 students use DPS buses to get to class, DPS officials said. Some 2,500 high school students use RTD.
The district currently spends $1.1 million for RTD pass-eligible students while local schools and PTAs also chip in for RTD passes, DPS said.
If RTD approves the new fares, DPS will be able to buy additional passes within its existing budget and make it easier for families to get to school and jobs, officials said.
DPS board member Angela Cobian said when she was attending a DPS school, her entire family relied on an RTD bus to get to-and-from work, school and home everyday because they couldn’t afford any other form of transportation.
“We relied on the bus through rain, sunshine or snow,” Cobian said. “The need for transit quality in our city is real.”
DPS is also still considering recommendations from the Donnell-Kay Foundation to revamp its transportation policies that the group termed “antiquated.”
One recommendation calls for removing a requirement that to be eligible for an RTD pass, high school students must attend the boundary school that serve the neighborhoods where they live. That policy runs counter to the district’s position that school choice is available to everyone, Donnell-Kay special projects director Matt Samelson said.
“School choice without transportation is not a choice at all,” Samelson said.