RTD plans to soften the impact of a proposed Jan. 1, 2008, fare hike by increasing monthly pass prices less than originally planned for students, the elderly and the disabled.
At the Regional Transportation District’s finance committee meeting Monday evening, agency executives recommended that the local monthly pass for students, seniors, the disabled and Medicare recipients be increased to $30 from the current $29 instead of the $33 a month previously proposed.
The transit agency also proposes to increase the cost of the monthly TeenPass to $30 from the current $25, instead of $31.
RTD is proposing similarly reduced increases in express and regional monthly passes for these same riders.
Proposed increases in cash fares for all categories of riders remain unchanged. If the fare hike is approved by RTD directors on Sept. 25, the regular cash local fare will go to $1.75 from the current $1.50 as of Jan. 1.
RTD has other ways of offering discounted service to low-income, transit-dependent patrons, said RTD General Manager Cal Marsella.
“There is a safety net,” he said, referring to RTD’s program of selling discounted transit tokens to about 175 social service agencies in the Denver area. These agencies give the tokens or sell them at deep discount to clients.
Also at Monday’s meeting, RTD officials said the Park Meadows shopping mall insists on security gates at the bottom of a proposed pedestrian bridge at the County Line rail station to prevent light-rail users from parking in the mall’s lots and using the train.
RTD has spent about $500,000 designing a pedestrian bridge to go from the County Line station platform to the mall.
It will cost at least $3 million to build the bridge – including the gates – but some RTD directors were angered at the shopping center’s demand for a gate-access system.
RTD director Barbara Brohl suggested shoppers consider boycotting Park Meadows because of the mall’s demand.
But others pointed out that direct access from the County Line station to the mall was RTD’s idea, not Park Meadows’.
“They didn’t want our buses,” said director Daryl Kinton, referring to Park Meadows’ earlier opposition to direct bus service. “They didn’t want ‘those kind of people.”‘
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib can be reached at 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com.
