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

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

Limiting trips to the ADA service area will have an incredibly negative effect on users who live in outlying places. For example, I choose to make my home in Brighton so I can be near my family. The Access on Demand program has been incredibly helpful for me, both for getting to medical appointments and for accessing social events in a variety of places. RTD services to Brighton and other outlying areas is sketchy at best, and it has been cut back even more since the pandemic, although we all pay taxes to support public transportation, the same as urban citizens do.

Regards,
Jo Elizabeth Pinto

Please visit my author Website:
https://www.brightsideauthor.com

From: Colorado-Talk <colorado-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Curtis Chong via Colorado-Talk
Sent: Thursday, January 9, 2025 1:14 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

Greetings all:

RTD typically produces PDF documents that are hundreds of pages long and incredibly difficult for nonvisual users to read. Nevertheless, I was able to extract some information from a document released in conjunction with the November meeting of RTD's Operations, Safety, and Security Committee. Here is what I was able to glean from the data I obtained.


  *   By reducing the number of rides subsidized per month from 60 to 30, staff estimates the cost savings to be $241,451.
  *   By charging a base fare of $4.50 (LiVE participants would pay $2.25), staff estimates new revenue of $212,850.
  *   By changing the service area to reflect the Americans with Disabilities Act, staff estimates a cost savings of $48,814.
  *   The estimated net savings would be $503,115.

These figures are based on data from the month of September, 2024 as follows:


  *   Total number of boardings for the month: 61,340.
  *   Average cost per trip: $17.20.
  *   Total number of trips over the 30 trip cap: 14,040.
  *   Total September costs = $1,054,886.

There are other figures pertaining to the number of trips which, in part or in whole, were started or terminated outside of the ADA service area, but given that the estimated savings for limiting trips to the ADA service area is only approximately $48,000, one could argue that this savings is negligible compared to the negative public relations impact to RTD and the cost that would accrue by software changes and staff time required to enforce this limitation.

Notice that there is nothing in any of this which discusses trips with multiple stops. RTD's use of the term "equity" in conjunction with this issue is, in my view, disingenuous.

Cordially,

Curtis Chong

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