RTD directors on Tuesday night voted to rescind planned January 2010 bus and light-rail service reductions that were aimed at saving the agency about $663,000 next year.
The action means that the Regional Transportation District will not cut service or otherwise achieve “efficiencies” on at least two dozen transit routes in metro Denver, including a controversial proposal to stop running buses to the Pine Junction park-n-Ride in Jefferson County’s U.S. 285 corridor.
Reduction of that service had been among the most contentious of RTD’s planned January cuts and some users on the U.S. 285 bus route praised RTD’s board members for leaving the service in place.
Earlier in the year, the board had directed RTD’s staff to come up with service reductions as part of cost cutting to help balance the agency’s budget.
But when RTD learned that it would be getting an extra $23 million in sales-tax proceeds over the next two years because of a change in state law relating to tax collections, directors said they could cancel the January cuts.
RTD will be getting the additional sales taxes because Colorado legislators passed a measure earlier this year that eliminated a 3.3 percent “vendor’s allowance” that businesses had been able to deduct from their tax obligation for the timely remittance of sales and use taxes.
The temporary elimination of the vendor tax discount lasts through June 2011 and applies to tax collections by the state and special districts such as RTD, the Football Stadium District and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.
Also Tuesday, RTD board members approved new interim rules for the Business Eco Pass and Neighborhood Eco Pass programs that will be in place until the agency collects actual transit-use data from so-called “smart” farecards it will introduce next year.
The Business Eco Pass is a deeply discounted annual transit pass purchased by employers for all their employees. About 2,000 employers, with 100,000 eligible employees, participate.
With the Neighborhood Eco Pass, residential neighborhoods band together to similarly purchase discounted transit passes in bulk at a single contract price for all households in the neighborhood.
Because RTD has had no way of verifying transit use by those who hold Business and Neighborhood passes, some RTD officials have been worried for years that the agency was pricing the passes too low.
RTD hopes that by the end of 2010, holders of Business and Neighborhood Eco Passes will be issued fare “smartcards” to record actual transit use and help the agency price the pass programs fairly, said Tony McCaulay, RTD’s senior manager for marketing.
In the meantime, RTD is lifting a moratorium it had put in place at the beginning of this year that prevented new neighborhoods joining the pass program.
RTD is lifting the moratorium in advance of having smartcard ridership data in part because the city of Boulder is paying the transit agency $10,000 to back the Neighborhood Pass program, McCaulay said.
About 44 neighborhoods, containing roughly 7,000 households, currently participate in the Neighborhood Pass program. All are in Boulder County.
Households pay from $75 to $170 a year for nearly unlimited transit service in metro Denver and all members of the household get a transit pass, according to Neighborhood Pass rules.
