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

Wed Jan 8 21:42:36 UTC 2025

Hi, all,

Before they implement their recommendations, whether they go with the draconian set they’ve already laid out or they moderate them a bit, I want to see some numbers.

What monthly operating expense would be sustainable?

How does that compare to the number they’d get if the people currently taking the most trips paid the $4.50 fare for each ride? What if some of them paid the $2.25 reduced rate?

How much will they save if they no longer allow rides outside of the Access-a-Ride Perimeter and hours of operation?

I’ll be urging the Board to at least get answers to these questions before they proceed.

I don’t hold out much hope that RTD management is going to significantly change their recommendations; in fact, I’ll be shocked if they change them at all.

So, that means that anyone who will be impacted by these changes needs to appeal directly to the RTD Board. You can email them at their main address, rtd.boardoffice at rtd-denver.com <mailto:rtd.boardoffice at rtd-denver.com> , and/or you can email individual members at their private addresses. You can find some of those here: https://www.rtd-denver.com/about-rtd/board-of-directors

In addition, you can make public comment at their meetings, either in person or online. The next one is Tuesday, January 28, and the February meeting, at which the current timeline indicates that they’ll make their decision, is Wednesday, February 26. Both meetings are at 5:30 at their building downtown, 1660 Blake Street.

For those interested, I’ll post the Zoom details closer to each meeting.

Half the Board is new as of this month, so it’s tough to know where they stand, but the Board is likely to simply approve management’s recommendations unless we can make a compelling case to convince them otherwise.

There are a couple recommendations, like limiting operations to within the Access-a-Ride area and hours and forcing people to use Access-a-Ride actively for three months before they can use Access On Demand, that I don’t believe will make the program appreciably more sustainable.

As far as the number of trips per month goes, now that riders will be paying a fare for each ride, I would ask why they feel the need to cut the number of trips at all.

There’s also the fact that if they limit people to 30 trips a month, that’s going to push more people to use Access-a-Ride, which costs four times much per trip as an average Access On Demand trip.

So, their recommendations may not actually make the program more sustainable.

I had to use Access-a-Ride a few times last month to try to limit my number of trips, and boy, is that like going back in time, and not in a good way.

It’s clear that Access-a-Ride itself also needs an overhaul, which is something management has been promising to do for years. So, any recommendation that’s approved should include more specifics of how management will improve Access-a-Ride, complete with a required timeline by which they will make these improvements.

Whew, didn’t expect this to be this long! 😊

Anyway, that’s my $0.02.

Cheers,

Tim

From: Colorado-Talk <colorado-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Curtis Chong via Colorado-Talk
Sent: Wednesday, January 8, 2025 12:53 PM
To: 'NFB of Colorado Discussion List' <colorado-talk at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Curtis Chong <chong.curtis at gmail.com>
Subject: [Colorado-Talk] RTD's Conundrum With Access-on-Demand

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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