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ENGLEWOOD — Metro Denver budtender Quentin Ferguson needs Regional Transportation District bus and trains to reach work at an Arvada dispensary from his house, a trip that takes 90 minutes each way “on a good day.”

“It is pretty inconvenient,” Ferguson, 22, said on a recent rainy evening, waiting for a nearly empty train that was eight minutes late.

He’s not complaining, however, because his relatively low income and Medicaid status qualify him for a discounted RTD monthly pass. That lets him save money for a car or an electric bicycle, he said, either of them offering a faster commute.

Then he would no longer have to ride RTD.

His plight reflects a core problem of lagging ridership that RTD directors increasingly run up against as they try to position the transit agency as the smartest way to navigate Denver. Most other U.S. public transit agencies, too, are grappling with a version of this problem.

In Colorado, state-government-driven efforts to concentrate the growing population in high-density, transit-oriented development around bus and train stations — a priority for legislators and Gov. Jared Polis — hinge on having a swift public system that residents ride.

But transit ridership has failed to rebound a year after RTD’s havoc in 2024, when operators disrupted service downtown for a $152 million rail reconstruction followed by a systemwide emergency maintenance blitz to smooth deteriorating tracks that led to trains crawling through 10-mph “slow zones.”

The latest ridership numbers show an overall decline this year, by at least 3.9%, with 40 million fewer riders per year compared with six years ago. And RTD executives’ newly proposed, record $1.3 billion budget for 2026 doesn’t include funds for boosting bus and train frequency to win back riders.

Frustrations intensified last week.

“What is the point of transit-oriented development if it is just development?” said state Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat representing Englewood who chairs the House Transportation, Housing and Local Government Committee. “We need reliable transit to have transit-oriented development. We have cities that have invested significant resources into their transit-oriented communities. RTD is not holding up its end of the bargain.”

At a retreat this past summer, a majority of the RTD’s 15 elected board members agreed that boosting ridership is their top priority. Some who reviewed the proposed budget last week questioned the lack of spending on service improvements for riders.

“We’re not moving the needle. Ridership is not going up. It should be going up,” director Karen Benker said in an interview.

“Over the past few years, there’s been a tremendous amount of population growth. There are so many apartment complexes, so much new housing put up all over,” Benker said. “Transit has to be relied on. You just cannot keep building more roads. We’re going to have to find ways to get people to ride public transit.”

Commuting trends blamed

RTD Chief Executive and General Manager Debra Johnson, in emailed responses to questions from The Denver Post, emphasized that “RTD is not unique” among U.S. transit agencies struggling to regain ridership lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson blamed societal shifts.

“Commuting trends have significantly changed over the last five years,” she said. “Return-to-work numbers in the Denver metro area, which accounted for a significant percentage of RTD’s ridership prior to March 2020, remain low as companies and businesses continue to provide flexible in-office schedules for their employees.”

In the future, RTD will be “changing its focus from primarily providing commuter services,” she said, toward “enhancing its bus and services and connections to high-volume events, activity centers, concerts and festivals.”

A recent survey commissioned by the agency found exceptional customer satisfaction.

But agency directors are looking for a more aggressive approach to reversing the decline in ridership. And some are mulling a radical restructuring of routes.

Funded mostly by taxpayers across a 2,345 square-mile area spanning eight counties and 40 municipalities — one of the biggest in the nation — RTD operates 10 rail lines covering 114 miles with 84 stations and 102 bus routes with 9,720 stops.

“We should start from scratch,” said RTD director Chris Nicholson, advocating an overhaul of the “geometry” of all bus routes to align transit better with metro Denver residents’ current mobility patterns.

The key will be increasing frequency.

“We should design the routes how we think would best serve people today, and then we could take that and modify it where absolutely necessary to avoid disruptive differences with our current route map,” he said.

Then, in 2030, directors should appeal to voters for increased funding to improve service — funds that would be substantially controlled by municipalties “to pick where they want the service to go,” he said.

Reversing the RTD ridership decline may take a couple of years, Nicholson said, comparing the decreases this year to customers shunning a restaurant. “If you’re a restaurant and you poison some guests accidentally, you’re gonna lose customers even after you fix the problem.”

The RTD ridership numbers show an overall public transit ridership decrease by 5% when measured over the 12-month period from August 2024 through July 2025, the last month for which staffers have made numbers available, compared with the same period a year ago.

Bus ridership decreased by 2% and light rail by 18% over that period. In a typical month, RTD officials record around 5 million boardings — around 247,000 on weekdays.

The emergency maintenance blitz began in June 2024 when RTD officials revealed that inspectors had found widespread “rail burn” deterioration of tracks, compelling thousands of riders to seek other transportation.

The precautionary rail “slow zones” persisted for months as contractors worked on tracks, delaying and diverting trains, leaving transit-dependent workers in a lurch. RTD driver workforce shortages limited deployment of emergency bus shuttles.

This year, RTD ridership systemwide decreased by 3.9% when measured from January through July, compared with that period in 2024. The bus ridership this year has decreased by 2.4%.

On rail lines, the ridership on the relatively popular A Line that runs from Union Station downtown to Denver International Airport was down by 9.7%. The E Line light rail that runs from downtown to the southeastern edge of metro Denver was down by 24%. Rail ridership on the W Line decreased by 18% and on R Line by 15%, agency records show.

The annual RTD ridership has decreased by 38% since 2019, from 105.8 million to 65.2 million in 2024.

Light rail ‘sickness’ spreading

“The sickness on RTD light rail is spreading to other parts of the RTD system,” said James Flattum, a co-founder of the Greater Denver Transit grassroots rider advocacy group, who also serves on the state’s RTD Accountability Committee. “We’re seeing permanent demand destruction as a consequence of having an unreliable system. This comes from a loss of trust in RTD to get you where you need to go.”

RTD officials have countered critics by pointing out that the light rail’s on-time performance recovered this year to 91% or better. Bus on-time performance still lagged at 83% in July, agency records show.

The officials also pointed to decreased security reports made using an RTD smartphone app after deploying more police officers on buses and trains. The number of reported assaults has decreased — to four in September, compared with 16 in September 2024, records show.

Greater Denver Transit members acknowledged that safety has improved, but question the agency’s assertions based on app usage. “It may be true that the number of security calls went down,” Flattum said, “but maybe the people who otherwise would have made more safety calls are no longer riding RTD.”

RTD staffers developing the 2026 budget have focused on managing debt and maintaining operations spending at current levels. They’ve received forecasts that revenues from taxpayers will increase slightly. It’s unclear whether state and federal funds will be available.

Looking ahead, they’re also planning to take on $539 million of debt over the next five years to buy new diesel buses, instead of shifting to electric hybrid buses as planned for the future.

RTD directors and leaders of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, an environmental group, are opposing the rollback of RTD’s planned shift to the cleaner, quieter electric hybrid buses and taking on new debt for that purpose.

Colorado lawmakers will “push on a bunch of different fronts” to prioritize better service to boost ridership, Froelich said.

The legislature in recent years directed funds to help RTD provide free transit for riders under age 20. Buses and trains running at least every 15 minutes would improve both ridership and safety, she said, because more riders would discourage bad behavior and riders wouldn’t have to wait alone at night on often-empty platforms for up to an hour.

“We’re trying to do what we can to get people back onto the transit system,” Froelich said. “They do it in other places, and people here do ride the Bustang (intercity bus system). RTD just seems to lack the nimbleness required to meet the moment.”

Riders switch modes

Meanwhile, riders continue to abandon public transit when it doesn’t meet their needs.

For Denver Center for the Performing Arts theater technician Chris Grossman, 35, ditching RTD led to a better quality of life. He had to move from the Virginia Village neighborhood he loved.

Back in 2016, Grossman sold his ailing blue 2003 VW Golf when he moved there in the belief that “RTD light rail was more or less reliable.” He rode nearly every day between the Colorado Station and downtown.

But trains became erratic as maintenance of walls along tracks caused delays. “It just got so bad. I was burning so much money on rideshares that I probably could have bought a car.” Shortly before RTD announced the “slow zones” last summer, he moved to an apartment closer to downtown on Capitol Hill.

He walks or rides scooters to work, faster than taking the bus, he said.

Similarly, Honor Morgan, 25, who came to Denver from the rural Midwest, “grateful for any public transit,” said she had to move from her place east of downtown to be closer to her workplace due to RTD transit trouble.

Buses were late, and one blew by her as she waited. She had to adjust her attire when riding her Colfax Avenue route to Union Station to manage harassment. She faced regular dramas of riders with substance-use problems erupting.

Morgan moved to an apartment near Union Station in March, allowing her to walk to work.