RTD commuters Wes Newman and Barb Grim recalled the scary moment last month when a mechanically challenged bus taking them from downtown Denver to Arvada crawled along westbound Interstate 70 nearly without power at 10 miles an hour.
“During this trip, all of the passengers were concerned for their safety,” Newman and Grim said in a complaint to RTD. “We all moved to the center of the bus in case we were involved in an accident.”
The object of their ire is First Transit Inc., one of the private contractors that operate bus routes for the Regional Transportation District.
Half of RTD’s bus service must be farmed out to private contractors because of a legislative mandate from the Colorado General Assembly.
RTD supplies the buses, but the private firms must maintain them and hire their own drivers.
Newman, a computer support worker for Qwest and bus commuter since 2000, said First Transit-operated express bus service has been plagued by mechanical problems and inexperienced drivers for years.
“We shouldn’t have to work this hard to be a customer of RTD,” he said about frequent breakdowns and delayed service on the 68X and 76X routes between Denver and Arvada.
Relief is on the way, RTD official Bruce Abel told Newman and Grim when the commuters showed up at a recent meeting of agency directors to air their complaints.
This month, RTD will begin replacing 13-year-old buses in the First Transit fleet with vehicles that are no more than 5 years old, said Abel, who runs RTD’s contracted-services program.
In November, First Transit will start getting new buses under RTD’s vehicle-replacement program, said Roger Chapin, the private company’s district general manager.
By the end of the year, First Transit expects to have 23 new buses and 20 5-year-old buses to replace an equal number of 11- and 13-year-old vehicles now operating in the fleet, Chapin said. Commuters “will love these new buses.”
“I’ll believe it when it see it,” Grim said, still fuming at the series of mechanical breakdowns this summer that had her commuting in 100-degree weather with no air conditioning. “We’ve been told too many things too many times.”
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-820-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
