[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Fwd: RTD Launches Pass Program Working Group

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Young, Mary

Colleagues and Hotline followers,

Below is a summary written by Scott McCarey of where we are at with a community wide ecopass.

Also, there is a link to the county's website page that will contain all meeting information for the RTD Pass Working Group on which I am serving. I am looking into having a page on the city's website that at a minimum links to the county's website on this issue.

We had our first meeting yesterday. While it is a large group, it is a good group and well facilitated. The county webpage provides details from yesterday's meeting.

Thank you.

Mary Dolores Young
Boulder City Council
303-501-2439

Begin forwarded message:

From: "McCarey, Scott" <smccarey at bouldercounty.org<mailto:smccarey at bouldercounty.org>>
Date: March 14, 2017 at 2:26:13 PM MDT
To: "McCarey, Scott" <smccarey at bouldercounty.org<mailto:smccarey at bouldercounty.org>>
Subject: RTD Launches Pass Program Working Group

Good afternoon Community Eco Pass PAC and TAC members,
It has been a while since I have been in communication with you regarding the communitywide Eco Pass efforts in Boulder County. Since our last meeting the City of Longmont City Council voted to continue to fund the successful Ride Free Longmont<https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/g50rBOiVJwkcx?domain=bouldercounty.org> program providing fare free rides on all four local buses inside the City. Ridership continues to increase and City and County staff continue to market the program to build ridership even further.
Also since our last meeting, the City of Lafayette placed a property tax measure on the ballot that would have produced enough revenue to purchase Eco Passes for all residents inside the City of Lafayette. Through analysis we determined the cost of the program to be $10/ per $100,000 of assessed property value. (So the tax increase on a $350,000 home was $35 annually) Despite an amazing effort by Mayor Berg, the measure came up just short with 45% in favor. Unfortunately we were never able to get RTD staff to consider our cost estimates and we believe this uncertainty led to lower voter support.
You will recall from our meetings discussion of the formation of a RTD Pass Program Working Group. It was felt by RTD staff and elected officials that the formation and execution of this working group was the appropriate venue to tackle how RTD would address requests from local agencies for new pass programs. At long last this working group has commenced and four members of our PAC/TAC are on the this group namely Mary Young, John Tayer, David Cook and myself. I am very excited that RTD and others across the district are coming together to advance pass program concepts and pricing mechanisms. To provide all of you with easy access to information presented and discussed in the working group, I have created a webpage with all things related to the group: guiding principles, meeting agendas, presentations, working group members and so forth: http://www.bouldercounty.org/roads/transit/pages/rtdtransitpassupdate.aspx<https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/oXm5BJf165Jt9?domain=bouldercounty.org> At the bottom of the webpage is a comment form that sends an email directly to Mary, John, David and myself. We encourage your constituents to use this comment form so that all four of us are hearing the same input.
You will see that the kick-off meeting for the group was held yesterday and while the meeting was almost entirely logistical, I think it’s a terrific group that has potential to get something done. Future meeting materials should be provided to us at least a week in advance and upon reception I will immediately post to the webpage and send you an email notification.
There has been so much great work done by all of you on advancing community passes in Boulder County. I see this RTD Pass Working Group as our next opportunity to make progress and I hope you will too.
Best,
Scott

Scott McCarey, PE, AICP
Multimodal Division Manager
Boulder County Transportation
smccarey at bouldercounty.org<mailto:smccarey at bouldercounty.org>
720-564-2665 (direct)
303-441-3900 (office)