RTD

A plan to widen the road to Denver International Airport, which would make traffic worse and wipe out the city’s newly-minted goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, will get a vote from the Denver City Council on Monday.

RTD will start accepting applications for its long-awaited discount program starting July 29. The cost of riding buses and trains in the Denver Metro will go down 40% for people who qualify for the new income-based program. 

The ride-hail company recently admitted that it needs to poach huge numbers of transit riders to make a profit. But RTD counts its recent partnership with the ride-hail company a success.

With more than 188 open positions for bus and train operators at RTD & Bustang, we sat down with Bustang driver Krista Dolton to learn what the job is like. “It’s a career. It’s not a job,” she said. “You're transporting precious cargo. You're transporting somebody’s mom, somebody’s dad, somebody’s brother. And that cannot be replaced like a bag of groceries."

Today, women hold less than a third of of leadership roles at RTD, which is why the agency hosted a career day Monday. There, middle school girls met more than a dozen women who work at RTD, including Amy Homyak, a Transit Police sergeant and the agency’s K-9 handler, who is responsible for Thor, a bomb-sniffing dog.  

When people step onto a bus, many get nervous about holding up everyone while they search for exact change or find a transfer ticket. As Denver’s traffic worsens and bus ridership continues to plummet, why is it easier to buy buy an Aquafina from a vending machine than it is to hop on a bus?

After tracking 102 train rides, RTD’s rail reliability clocks in at 36%. As a growing metropolis, we need more reliable transit, says Ryan Dravitz.

RTD pays nearly 60 percent more per mile to power the 16th St. Free MallRide electric buses than its diesel buses. In California, two electric utilities changed their commercial pricing to encourage electric vehicle adoption, a model Xcel Energy could follow.

Uber and Lyft will certainly raise prices, which will price out many Coloradans. For those who return to transit, they will soon learn that officials have repeatedly cut bus service in the region’s densest neighborhoods.