Regional Transportation District. Let’s think about that name. Regional. Transportation. District. RTD. Their goal is to get you out of your car and onto a bus/lightrail car. Perhaps the single best incentive for that has been the EcoSystem pass, where businesses can purchase all-access transit passes for their employees. Now RTD wants to dump this successful program, partially because RTD has so ridiculously overspent its budget for FasTracks. But to do away with one of the single biggest incentives to ride The Ride, well… they’re shooting themselves in the proverbial foot.
The heart of RTD’s proposal is to eliminate the availability of EcoPass for businesses with fewer than 50 employees. This would eliminate more than 500 businesses — roughly two- thirds of total business participation — and almost 9,000 employees. At a stroke, RTD may be putting almost 9,000 people back in their cars and back on our roads — a perverse course of action for one of the most celebrated transit agencies in the country.
BANG!
One Comment
I am an eco pass user and I share your frustration. RTD is running out of money because they can’t manage or budget well. I get the distinct displeasure of riding on the routes that have been leased to other companies…(ones that pay their drivers about 9$ an hour.) I can drive to work in 15-20, RTD takes 30 to 55.
they may not be fast, but they sure are slow. It is the company provided Eco pass however that makes driving instead, a waste of my money. Luckily my company has more than 50 people and I would not be getting this equivilent of a pay cut.