Future plan may rest on a tax hike
Transit agency’s idea is to dream big as it looks toward 2050
As the Regional Transportation District prepares to launch a freefare promotion in August, it’s also charting out long- term dreams of a future when metro Denver’s transit system can again think more boldly than a one- month pilot.
The goals are lofty: Provide more robust, frequent service. Make it safe and reliable. Offer new options to get people to more places they need to go. And do it on a big scale.
Those are the kinds of changes that would entice more new and returning riders to stick around after a month of free rides, as state and community leaders hope will happen after August’s state- subsidized pilot program. As it stands, some transit advocates fear RTD is poorly positioned to capitalize on the “Zero Fare for Better Air” promotion, which could be repeated in August 2023. Its system has been stretched thin by pandemicslashed service, severe staffing shortages, drastically changing commuting patterns and bleak financial prospects that are expected to persist for years, as The Denver Post explored in a series this year.
Yet RTD’S new Mobility Plan for the Future, now being finalized at the end of the nearly threeyear “Reimagine RTD” initiative, looks past all those challenges, which are common to urban transit agencies these days. It looks ahead to 2050 and asks agency leaders, along with the community, to think ambitiously and creatively about what they want RTD to become.
RTD’S board is poised Tuesday to sign off on an optimization plan that will guide how it restores more service in coming years, with an end goal of reaching 85% of prepandemic service levels by 2027, up from about 70% now. The longer- term Mobility Plan sets this fiscally constrained level as the floor for the future, asking if more is possible as RTD regains its strength.
Serious new investment, potentially as high as $ 35 billion over the next three decades in the most ambitious “aspirational” scenario, would allow RTD to expand its system and grow ridership aggressively. Such an infusion
would go toward building RTD’S shelved Fastracks projects, developing more bus- rapid- transit corridors and other new services, and covering higher operating expenses.
And it would take RTD to a new level as a transit agency, planners and consultants said in recent briefings of RTD’S board and advisory committees on the emerging plan — serving as the transit moon shot needed to help the warming Front Range keep greenhouse gas emissions in check.
But much of the plan comes back down to earth.
It recognizes that, say, asking long- skeptical metro voters to approve a new sales tax increase for RTD — doubling the current 1% rate under that most ambitious scenario — is a bit of a nonstarter at the moment. Much of the most recent public draft instead focuses on strategies RTD could use well short of that to foster better transit service, whether or not it’s provided by RTD itself.
“There’s likely no appetite for that today,” RTD Director Vince Buzek, who leads the agency’s 15- member elected board, said in an interview about a tax increase. “And maybe not for a while — until we can really prove ourselves and are maybe making some changes that are impactful and positive.”
But he likes that the longterm plan thinks big. He also likes the more modest ideas it delves into, including emerging discussions about local partnerships in which cities such as Denver or suburban cities might step up and bankroll local buses or other services RTD can’t afford.
“It’s really easy to get caught sort of looking at your feet, slogging forward,” Buzek said. “I think that’s the whole point of the Mobility Plan for the Future, is trying to be aspirational — because for so long, RTD has been stuck in this scenario where we have so much going on today, we haven’t been able to think about tomorrow.”
Most of the Mobility Plan is complete, with final components expected by late August, said Brian T. Welch, RTD’S senior manager of planning technical services.
Challenges have hurt RTD’S reputation, report says
Not that RTD’S longstanding problems can easily be dismissed.
“Debt obligations, rising operation and capital costs, and staffing shortages — all combined with declining ridership — have hurt the agency’s reputation and bottom line,” the Mobility Plan’s latest public draft says frankly.
The plan lays out thorny questions that the current and future RTD boards will grapple with as they seek to get the system on a firmer, and perhaps more expansionist, footing:
• How big should RTD be? Its service area exceeds 2,300 square miles, giving it one of the nation’s largest urban transit agency footprints. Giving up some sprawling, outlying areas would reduce service strains, but that also would mean less tax revenue.
• What role should RTD serve? RTD provides nearly all public transportation service currently. But lowercost scenarios envision the agency focusing on providing a strong regional backbone — including train lines and major bus routes — while local governments and partners create their own services to fill the gaps.
• Does RTD need more money to provide better service? The most politically fraught question could involve putting a plan before voters, asking state lawmakers for help or seeking another source of money.
RTD leaders have discussed going to voters by fall 2024 for a smaller ask than a tax increase: authority to lift revenue growth caps under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights that will kick in after RTD finishes paying off one set of old debt, called a “de- Brucing.” That move would allow the agency to avoid forgoing about $ 82 million from sales tax collections in 2025 through 2027. Through 2050, the amount RTD could hang onto is projected to reach nearly $ 2 billion.
The Mobility Plan backs that move. It also recommends “that RTD seek voter approval for an additional sales and use tax to meet long- term community needs,” according to the latest draft, but Buzek, who represents north metro communities, isn’t the only RTD board director who sees that as likely destined for defeat — for now.
It’s RTD’S failure to finish about $ 2.2 billion in components from the 2004 voterapproved Fastracks program that has engendered so much public distrust. The bulk of that is the extension of the B- Line commuter rail to Boulder and Longmont, the focus of a new study exploring the potential for limited peak- period service.
Several suburban elected officials pointed to that distrust as a significant roadblock during a recent Reimagine RTD advisory committee meeting. Lone Tree Mayor Jackie Millet said addressing RTD’S current big problems on its services, including drug use and safety perceptions, could help build goodwill.
“Making the existing system safe, clean, inviting and reliable — so, I understand you can’t expand it, but if you improve the experience on the lines today with prioritizing that, I think it would increase credibility” with the public, she said.
Recent RTD board discussions have fixed on the idea of hosting a regional summit on RTD’S challenges, inviting leaders such as Millet to weigh in more fully.
RTD Director Peggy Catlin, who represents Jefferson County, expressed hope last month that a summit would spur leaders across metro Denver to “rally around the realities of the RTD situation,” planting the seeds for future solutions. Buzek says it’s in the works.
RTD ridership still lags pre- pandemic levels
Sometimes lost in the debate about RTD’S struggles is that a lot of people are still riding it each day. Its buses, trains and other services recorded nearly 5.1 million boardings in April, up 35% over the same month last year — although that total still lagged the same month in 2019, prior to the pandemic, by a full 44%.
That growth was evident on the Boulder- bound Flatiron Flyer’s FF1 regional bus out of Denver’s Union Station on a recent Tuesday evening. The 5: 10 p. m. coach bus was about 80% full, with commuters making up the bulk of the passengers as more downtown employees have returned to work in person, at least some of the time.
At times, with several Flyer routes still suspended, the main route’s buses have people standing in the aisles.
“I’ll try to leave work a little bit earlier so I don’t wait in, like, a 100- person line,” said Ethan Fleer, 24, who’s taken the Flyer from Boulder to downtown for the past few weeks after starting a new consulting job. “At Union Station, ( the line) will go all the way down the terminal at like 5: 30.”
RTD’S System Optimization Plan, up for a final vote by the board Tuesday, pegs a few Flyer routes for eventual restoration, including the express FF2 route and two rush- hour variations, the FF3 and FF4, which would ease the crunch. But as with the rest of that plan, when they’ll come back depends in large part on how soon RTD reaches a firmer footing on its operator shortages.
As of May, the driver vacancy rate stood at a stubborn 21%, according to an internal bus operations report. Back in March, RTD approved a new union contract containing big pay raises for frontline employees that officials hope will help attract and retain more workers.
As it looks decades out, the Mobility Plan for the Future isn’t just about the size of RTD. It also dives into strategies to build a more sustainable workforce at RTD and to adapt the agency’s offerings as needs change.
“Ongoing industry advancements and societal shifts are substantially altering how and when people travel, how cities function, and how mobility options are factored into broader visions and goals; transit agencies must evolve and adapt to remain a relevant part of the mobility equation,” the plan states.
For transit advocate Danny Katz, part of that evolution should start now — with more community buyin to improve RTD.
“Let’s make sure we really lean into the August fare- free month and really make that successful,” said Katz, director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, during the June 30 Reimagine RTD advisory committee meeting. “Because that’s a phenomenal opportunity to expose people to RTD and start building some momentum.”