[Colorado-Talk] RTD's Conundrum With Access-on-Demand

[Andrea Brandies]

Curtis,

You have done a fantastic job in articulating all the questions and problems surrounding RTD’s actions.  How could they have so mismanaged cost projections and allocating enough money for future appropriations?

Andrea


Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 8, 2025, at 12:54 PM, Curtis Chong via Colorado-Talk <colorado-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> conundrum Hello to my fellow Coloradans:
>  
> When the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) started providing Access-on-Demand service to paratransit customers to the tune of $25 per ride, sixty rides per month, and no restrictions as to when and where a customer would be picked up or dropped off within its large service area, its intentions may have been altruistic, but the end result seems to be a system that is now costing RTD more than $1.2 million every month. RTD is telling us that this cost is "not sustainable."
>  
> I have to wonder how it is that RTD created this spectacular disaster in the first place. Did its well-paid management staff not know that the traditional Access-a-Ride service was plagued with so many problems that most people chose not to sign up for the service unless they were desperate for transportation? Did RTD management not understand that they would create much less resentment and public acrimony if they had started by offering a little bit of service and gradually expanded the service as they could afford to provide it rather than throwing opening the floodgates, offering everybody everything for nothing, then finding themselves in a position where they had to take services away from people who have now become dependent on it? Why is RTD surprised that Access-on-Demand has been flooded with a lot of new customers who would never have applied to receive Access-a-Ride services to begin with?
>  
> The Access-on-Demand service as we now know it has been operating for a little more than two years. Before Access-on-Demand, what did the people who now rely on this service do to go to and from work, participate in social events, or travel to medical appointments? I am fairly confident that while some folks did stay at home, other people found alternative ways to get around--ways, I fully recognize, that cost a lot more than Access-on-Demand does today.
>  
> RTD is now in an untenable position. No matter what it does to keep Access-on-Demand alive, it will incur the wrath of a community of paratransit customers who will feel that they have been forced to make a sacrifice in their personal independence simply to help a large government bureaucracy to reduce spending. We, the blind community and the community of folks with other disabilities, will experience  a reduction in one or more aspects of the Access-on-Demand program. The hope is that RTD will learn from its mistakes, obtain meaningful data from the community of paratransit riders, and implement cost-saving reductions in Access-on-Demand that hurt the fewest individuals.
>  
> Sincerely,
>  
> Curtis Chong
>  
>  
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