Transportation  September 27, 2018

RTD delays plan to trim Longmont-to-Denver bus service

LONGMONT — Facing howls of protest from riders and officials alike, the Regional Transportation District on Wednesday announced that it was tabling until next summer a newly announced plan to end much of the one-bus service between Longmont and Denver.

The delay in implementing the new plan was revealed Wednesday night at the Longmont Public Library, at a hearing attended by about 50 generally unhappy RTD commuters.

“There was a variety of pushback, including my own throwing fits,” said Judy Lubow, the RTD board member who represents Longmont, Lafayette and Broomfield. When Lubow heard about the plan about three weeks ago, she said, she went to Boulder County Transportation Director George Gerstle and RTD general manager Dave Genova to complain. Then just hours before Wednesday’s public hearing, she said, she found out that the decision had been tabled until next August.

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The service changes, which would have taken effect in January on the “LD” routes, would have taken riders from Longmont or Lafayette not all the way to Union Station in downtown Denver, as has been available six days a week for decades, but instead to an outdoor transfer point at either the Flatiron Crossing or Broomfield park-and-ride locations along U.S. Highway 36, where they would have to disembark and wait for one of the Flatiron Flyer buses that connect Boulder and Denver along that corridor.

Only the Interstate 25 express routes designated “LX” would have been unchanged and still provided one-bus service between Longmont and Denver — and then only on weekday rush hours.

RTD officials blamed the cutbacks on low ridership. Lead service planner and scheduler Nataly Handlos told the Longmont crowd that too few people were riding the midday runs, making the average per trip passenger count only about 11 “through riders.”

“That’s well below what we’re looking for,” Handlos said. “Even local suburban routes average 15, and we need at least 25 for a regional route. This is nowhere near that.”

Members of the audience who signed up to comment or ask questions contested RTD’s use of “through riders” as a metric, however, pointing out that many more passengers get on and off along the route between Longmont, Lafayette, Broomfield and Westminster instead of making the entire trip.

“If you’re only counting through riders, that’s unfair,” said Longmont City Councilwoman Joan Peck.

Handlos also cited shortages of drivers and maintenance personnel. “We are putting more resources into this area than is warranted” by the ridership, she said, adding that the cutbacks would have been made long ago had Boulder County not kicked in money to keep it going.

The county’s three-year, $2 million-plus grant was to expire in January, but Lubow and Peck said the extension until August was possible because about $700,000 remained in the grant.

Handlos defended the service changes, stating that because two of the three LD routes would use the high-speed Northwest Parkway to reach the Flatiron Crossing transfer point, the total commute actually could be cut by five minutes and layover times would be no more than seven minutes because of the frequency of express buses along the U.S. 36 corridor.

There currently is no direct service between Longmont and Denver on Sundays; instead, riders must transfer at the downtown Boulder transit center. However, Handlos said that under the new plan, “we would have given you Sunday service as well.”

That drew a furious response from Jake Marsing, who commutes daily between the central Longmont transfer point at Eighth Avenue and Coffman Street and Denver’s Union Station, and said he found the “given you” language condescending. RTD’s mission statement calls for service throughout the taxing district, Marsing said. “We pay the same thing Denver people pay, and we get half the service — and then you come here and smirk at us.”

Other speakers cited what they called a continued decline in RTD service to Longmont over the years, including service cuts in Boulder and Lyons, elimination of the RockiesRide to and from baseball games at Coors Field, and a Northwest rail line between Longmont, Boulder and Denver that was promised when voters first approved RTD’s FasTracks rapid-transit plan in 2004.

“We’ve got to get stuff off the roads,” said Longmont City Councilwoman Polly Christensen. “We need the rail that we paid for.”

One speaker suggested using smaller buses, but Handlos said that after the initial capital expenditure, the cost of staffing and maintenance would be about the same.

Lubow said the plan would come up again in late spring when RTD announces its list of August service changes, and in the meantime she and other local government and transit-advocacy officials would explore options to keep as much of the one-bus service intact as possible. She said she will attend the public hearing on the service changes that is scheduled for 6 p.m. next Wednesday, Oct. 3, at the Lafayette Public Library, 775 W. Baseline Road.

A session designed to teach the public about the bus system and how to use it is scheduled from 5 to 9 p.m. Oct. 17 at the Longmont Museum, 400 Quail Road.

“We’re paying the taxes. We need some better marketing,” Peck said. “We need to get more people to ride the bus.”

LONGMONT — Facing howls of protest from riders and officials alike, the Regional Transportation District on Wednesday announced that it was tabling until next summer a newly announced plan to end much of the one-bus service between Longmont and Denver.

The delay in implementing the new plan was revealed Wednesday night at the Longmont Public Library, at a hearing attended by about 50 generally unhappy RTD commuters.

“There was a variety of pushback, including my own throwing fits,” said Judy Lubow, the RTD board member who represents Longmont, Lafayette and Broomfield. When Lubow heard about the…

Christopher Wood
Christopher Wood is editor and publisher of BizWest, a regional business journal covering Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer and Weld counties. Wood co-founded the Northern Colorado Business Report in 1995 and served as publisher of the Boulder County Business Report until the two publications were merged to form BizWest in 2014. From 1990 to 1995, Wood served as reporter and managing editor of the Denver Business Journal. He is a Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder. He has won numerous awards from the Colorado Press Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the Alliance of Area Business Publishers.
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