Plans for Change

What should be done?

• Demand that RTD make safety and order its top priority. No one will choose to ride transit over driving a car if we don’t keep our buses, trains, stops and stations clean, orderly, and free of crime.

• Demand that RTD increase service frequency everywhere it provides service. There is no point riding transit if it takes you 3 times as long to get there.

• Make reliability the first priority of everyone who works for RTD. Everyone needs to show up to work on time - so does RTD. And if for some reason a train or bus is late it needs to be communicated immediately.

• Insist that RTD does everything it can to make sure fares are a growing and important source of funding. Fares should be set to maximize ridership and revenue, full stop.

• Make sure that RTD management has performance goals based on increasing ridership, frequency, and reliability, and that they are held accountable to those goals.

How will you do it?

• Make the hard choices. None of these improvements are possible the way things currently are. RTD either needs more money overall to fund these improvements, or it needs to cut the least economic service so it can fund first rate service on the lines that benefit the most people. RTD should immediately re-allocate its resources so it can prove that it can deliver world class safe, frequent, and reliable service on at least one train line and one bus line. Then, if sufficient funding is not available from other sources, it should propose to raise taxes so that it can deliver first rate service everywhere it covers.

• Do what it takes to ensure safety and order on trains and buses. RTD needs to increase the personnel devoted to keeping trains and buses safe and orderly until crime and drug abuse are the rare exception on RTD facilities, not a common expectation. In many cases, this does not have to mean RTD cops - uniformed safety ambassadors should be part of the solution. But if more police are needed they should be brought on board. Fares should be enforced on trains so we keep many of the scofflaws off the trains in the first place.

• Focus on ridership. RTD’s ridership has never been more than a single digit percentage of trips in metro Denver. The vast majority of metro Denver residents use automobiles to get around. For RTD to succeed, for the region to achieve its emissions goals, for traffic to decrease - then RTD must get people who currently drive to take trains and buses. RTD must focus on converting car drivers to transit riders by making a trip on transit superior to driving in many more cases for people who have a choice.

• Explore automation technology on trains and buses. Self-driving cars are currently a reality in San Francisco and China. Self-driving trains exist throughout the world. RTD should be looking to acquire the technology necessary to automate a bus on a fixed route and a train on fixed tracks. The public deserves for RTD’s leadership do everything it can to maximize productivity so everyone gets the best service possible for the least cost possible.

Questions or comments? Contact Matt at
email: larsenforrtddistricte@gmail.com
call or text: 720-595-6325