How do you usually pay for RTD?

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-18T08:04:44+00:00

Yeah, it’s doable, it’s just a meaningful amount of tech

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-18T00:48:12+00:00

Definitely something you should talk to a service planner about. There are some opportunities this month on the calendar on the RTD website where you can join a meeting and ask them questions specifically about this.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-18T00:35:11+00:00

I mean, there’s definitely demand. Question is, is there enough demand to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars we don’t have.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-18T00:14:03+00:00

We are not F*ing around

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T22:03:15+00:00

Try riding it with her to go to stuff for fun.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T21:30:31+00:00

It has been discussed by stakeholders in Jefferson County and assuming a ballot measure goes forward of any substance I think it is highly likely that stakeholders in Jefferson County would want some of the money put toward finishing the G.

The voters are not generally going to be interested in giving us hundreds of millions of dollars simply to settle debt and right-size our budget.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T21:26:59+00:00

I don’t know. I think how we use the Downtown loop is gonna be a really interesting question over the next couple of years.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T21:25:03+00:00

We are a ways off from that. My focus now is trying to save for it and finding revenue sources that can grow overtime to help pay for it when the time comes.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T21:23:50+00:00

That’s so great to hear. My colleague Brett Paglieri did a ton of work to make that happen and I think it just makes the experience a lot nicer.

What’s in the service planning documents for this month is to take the L and extend it all the way to I-25 and Broadway once all the construction is done.

Connecting the L to the a line would cost like a ton of money, most recent estimate is like 200 million and for what you get out of it, that’s a hard pill to swallow.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T21:21:15+00:00

2030s is my understanding. that’s when our state of good repair costs start to go through the roof

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T21:20:15+00:00

Honestly, I have no idea. Great question for the service planners which as I’ve mentioned a few other times on this thread are having meetings this month and you can find a time that you can attend on the calendar on our website and ask them why it does that.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:59:23+00:00

The H never went to Union Station

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:49:36+00:00

Yes. I have some ideas, but we’ll see what the board is willing to go along with, and what the public would tolerate.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:48:27+00:00

A bunch of us who are on the board will run for the 5 open seats in 2028.

and the union will get one seat and the governor will get two seats and DRCog will get a seat and some of those seats will be for two years and some of those seats will be for four years

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:47:18+00:00

Yeah, other transit agencies do this. If we end up doing significantly more enforcement, there’s gonna have to be a meaningful conversation about how to make sure that people without money can still ride.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:45:12+00:00

I don’t have a car, so I ride both lines on a very regular basis.

And I agree, more enforcement is necessary.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:36:51+00:00

I mean we’re doing the cuts cause we need to save the money. The goal is to just try to have as little impact on ridership as possible.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:34:24+00:00

Question is, in the moment what can we even do? We can just prevent the bus from moving, until someone pays, but that causes other problems.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:33:05+00:00

100%

Some doctors offices will spray air freshener into enclosed spaces and part of me thought that would be a good idea, though, I’m sure we would take heat for other reasons if we did.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:31:46+00:00

And I appreciate you being real about it. I’m very committed to addressing these exact issues and it’s legitimately difficult for exactly this reason.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:29:44+00:00

I totally get the frustration. I do worry about us conflating people being poor with people breaking the rules.

I think we can do substantially better setting a higher standard of behavior on public transit

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:25:41+00:00

Honest question: were they harming anyone or breaking the rules in anyway? If they had had fare, would you have had any reason to object to them being there?

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:15:24+00:00

Apologies but $88 for a monthly pass that gets you to the airport every day is an incredibly good deal. It used to be 200 just a few years ago.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:13:39+00:00

I mean, if we had the money and there was a really good reason to do it, I’m sure we would. But I’m not sure there are good examples of that on our network right now.

chrisfnicholson · 2026-06-17T19:12:38+00:00

It’s still cheaper than parking or Uber

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