[Colorado-Talk] RTD ridership drops 60% amid coronavirus outbreak, but agency isn't cutting service

[Curtis Chong]

Here is a more readable version of the article rather than the Denver Post
Website.

 

CORONAVIRUS CRISIS RTD ridership drops 60%; agency not cutting service.

 

By Jon Murray and John Aguilar. Ridership on RTD's buses and trains is
falling off a cliff as the coronavirus crisis causes many metro commuters to
work from home, but the transit agency says it doesn't plan to cut service -
at least, not significantly..

 

Across the country, transit systems are grappling with "an unprecedented
crisis," as one public transportation expert called it. Remaining riders
often depend on buses and trains to get to their jobs. Now they also worry
about maintaining a sufficient distance from other passengers to reduce
exposure risks.

 

The Regional Transportation District estimated Wednesday afternoon that
ridership appears to have fallen about 60% from normal, according to
informal counts of boardings in recent days. Based on last year's average
ridership statistics, it says, that would mean a drop from 347,800 trips
each weekday to about 139,000.

 

"We're continuing to operate service at the current level that we have,"
said RTD spokes- person Pauletta Tonilas.

 

But that comes with caveats: The agency long has grappled with a shortage of
operators and drivers, resulting in recurring cancellations of routes to
adjust; it was already planning to trim back some service in May as a
result. The highly contagious coronavirus, which can cause the COVID-19
respiratory disease, could throw a new wrench into the equation if employees
become sick, requiring more daily cancellations. So far, no RTD operators
have tested positive, Tonilas said, but some are self-isolating at home
because of potential exposures.

 

On Wednesday, RTD announced a change for its Access-a-Ride service, which
provides transportation for people with disabilities by appointment. Because
of a significant drop in demand and higher than normal cancellation rates,
starting Thursday it will limit advance bookings to the day before, instead
of further out.

 

Elsewhere, several large city transit systems have resisted cutting service
in response to coronavirus. That includes Bay Area Rapid Transit, a largely
commuter-serving system in Northern California that said ridership was down
70% from average Monday.

 

The overlapping San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency did reduce service on
its buses Tuesday, while the Minneapolis-St. Paul area's Metro Transit was
poised to cut overnight service. The Washington, D.C., area's transit system
began running less frequent trains Monday and put bus routes on their
holiday schedules.

 

Green Bay Metro Transit, a much smaller Wisconsin agency, took the ultimate
step: It suspended regular operations, citing concerns about coronavirus
exposure risks for employees and riders.

 

RTD's Tonilas says the agency doesn't yet foresee moving to a later stage of
its pandemic plan that calls for reducing weekday service levels to the
normal Saturday schedule. For now, RTD's efforts include more intensive
scrubbings of surfaces inside vehicles.

 

"Things have to get pretty severe for it to get to that level," Tonilas
said, "because changing to a whole different service plan is a very big
undertaking. She added: "We have a lot of people who are transit dependent
who rely on us and who need to get to work every day," including health care
workers.

 

James Burrell, a part-time janitor, took the G-Line train Tuesday morning
from downtown Denver to Wheat Ridge. While waiting for a bus to get to his
job in Arvada, he said losing RTD service would "impact me tremendously.

 

Over his shoulder, a normally packed suburban parking lot for Denver-bound
rail commuters was 25% full, at best.

 

"I basically take all the transportation RTD offers - the MallRide, the
train and the bus," Burrell said. "It's very important. If it shuts down, it
would be my boss that would have to pick me up and drop me off at the job
sites.

 

About a mile away, at the Ward park-n-Ride off Interstate 70, Clarence Banks
said RTD was his "sole method of transportation. The warehouse worker, who
was waiting for the Route 38 bus back home to Denver, said he relies on RTD
to get to work and to visit family members.

 

"I would tell them (that shutting down) would be just as bad as losing a
place to live," Banks said. "If you can't get around, you can't live.

 

The coronavirus pandemic poses potentially long-lasting challenges for
transit agencies.

 

"Public transit in the U.S. is facing an unprecedented crisis," Jarrett
Walker, a Portland-based transit consultant, wrote Tuesday on his "Human
Transit" blog. "Fare revenue will collapse as people stay home, while the
tax revenues that transit relies on will also decline steeply as we go into
a recession.

 

Walker pushed for agencies considering cutbacks to first reduce frequency on
their best-served routes, rather than trimming service hours or
shortchanging lower-ridership lines, since those steps would make a transit
network less useful and affect lower-income riders more.

 

RTD Director Shontel Lewis, who represents an area from northeast Denver to
the airport, vocally urged the agency to move toward a shutdown - or at
least to curtail service - on Twitter late last week. She added the hashtag
#shutitdown to a Saturday tweet, writing: "We shouldn't wait for people to
die or be infected.

 

On Tuesday, Lewis acknowledged that such a move could disproportionately
affect those who rely on RTD most. If the situation worsens, she said in an
interview, RTD and state officials need to be prepared to help riders,
perhaps with financial assistance.

 

"I think RTD should be working with the governor and state representatives
so that people don't have to choose between a paycheck and their health -
their life," she said. "What are we doing to ensure protections for hourly
workers are put in place? We should take care of that at the front end.

 

Cordially,

 

Curtis Chong

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