[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: MCC/RTD update from Matt

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Appelbaum, Matt

Colleagues - This third update stems from a meeting of the US36 MCC that I attended at Suzanne's request since she had a conflict.  This was a quarterly meeting with RTD's general manager and staff.

Perhaps most importantly, if you aren't already aware of this, Dave Genova, who has been RTD's interim GM since the previous GM Phil Washington left, has been chosen as the permanent GM.  I know Dave rather well and like him.  He's smart, he listens, and he will clearly provide needed leadership.  We had a long conversation about the new fare structure last spring and he made the critical decision regarding the staff recommendation, which at the last moment supported our position.  That said, Dave of course still works for the RTD Board and has to juggle a large set of underfunded priorities and political realities, so one should not make any assumptions about the likelihood of Boulder and our surrounding area getting additional service, whether that's "fair" or not.

I've attached the meeting agenda, which mostly consisted of updates to various projects.  As I've noted many times before, there is still work to be done on US36 BRT including real-time arrival displays, pre-paid fares, bus-on-shoulder, etc., all of which are coming.  Not coming anytime soon, it appears, is wi-fi on buses.  Longer term issues include bi-directional bus lanes on the I-25 managed-lane segment and of course arterial BRT beginning with SH 119 (the Diagonal).

While there were no unexpected controversies at this meeting, I did spend some time asking about BRT and airport schedules and bus stop locations.  Regarding schedules, we've been fighting for continuation of mid-day express buses and better service from Boulder Junction.  RTD's response continues to be that they'll monitor ridership and add service as it is justified.  While not unreasonable in theory, this is not possible in practice for the simple reason that RTD has no way of knowing (and doesn't attempt to find out) how many mid-day riders would prefer an express bus over an all-stop, or would use the bus from Boulder Junction if they could (and didn't need to transfer at Table Mesa).  RTD has also claimed that the all-stop bus only takes a few minutes longer - which of course cannot be the case; in fact, the new schedule shows the all-stop buses taking ~12 minutes longer than the expresses, a very significant impact for such a short trip.  (Anecdotally, I've used the mid-day expresses very often; on my final run recently, the bus had 35 riders even though an all-stop was leaving a few minutes later.)  Although I didn't suggest it at the meeting, I think the best solution for now would be to turn one mid-day run per hour into an express and schedule the all-stops every 20 minutes instead of every 15; folks on the all-stops would on average add 2 ½ minutes to their trips, while those on the express would reduce travel time by ~12 minutes.

This same problem exists for the airport bus.  The current hourly service greatly discourages people from using it, and it is impossible to know how many more people would in fact use it if service were every half-hour, or even every forty minutes, at least during the busiest periods.  While AB buses quite often run full - or with people standing the entire way - that still doesn't seem to be sufficient for RTD.  Thankfully, RTD will change the AB route to use the NW Parkway/E-470 in a few months when rail to the airport opens, but service levels are still critical.

So...at this meeting, after some discussion, RTD staff and Dave simply admitted that RTD does not have any way to determine when more service would be justified and they need to figure out how to do that.  And we need to keep pushing hard on this.

As for the removal of most of the local stops for the BRT buses (I guess I should be calling them Flatiron Flyer), our staff has tried very hard to convince RTD to keep at least some of those stops.  True, as RTD notes, the travel time from downtown to Table Mesa can be as long as from Table Mesa to Denver, and some speeding up of the buses is probably in order.   But the theory that riders who are now fairly long distances from BRT stops can simply take a local (Skip) bus and transfer isn't terribly practical.  For now, RTD is keeping one important stop, but more work needs to be done here as well.

Finally there is the ongoing issue of pricing for passes, particularly the Eco Pass product.  RTD remains committed to setting up a working group, and I asked again about whether that group would get access to all of RTD's data, which I was assured it would.  RTD understandably worries about its data for rail riders, but data for bus riders should be pretty good.  Clearly the makeup of this working group will be of great importance to us, as well as its charter, access to data, ability to independently analyze that data, etc.  There are important policy issues as well that must be discussed, although RTD has previously agreed on the level of discount for such passes.  In addition there are issues like dealing with people who get multiple passes, perhaps having non-geographically based "neighborhood" pass products, etc.  Lots of work to do here...

--Matt
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