Despite unanswered financial questions, RTD last month lifted a moratorium on expanding its deeply discounted Neighborhood Eco Pass program and Boulder officials subsequently increased their subsidies to prop up the venture.
The Regional Transportation District doesn’t know whether Neighborhood Pass loses money for the agency, makes money or breaks even.
“We don’t know how many ride or how frequently they ride,” said RTD customer service chief Bruce Abel about the program.
That should change next year, when RTD expects to issue “smart” fare cards to holders of Neighborhood and Business Eco Passes to record actual transit use as a step toward determining fair pricing of the passes.
For more than 10 years, the Neighborhood Pass program has allowed residents to band together and buy unlimited transit service on RTD for a discounted annual fee per household.
To date, only neighborhoods in Boulder County — nearly all in the city of Boulder — have taken advantage of the pass program, which delivers local, express and regional bus and light-rail service to Neighborhood Pass holders at drastically discounted rates.
Boulder city and county officials help neighborhood coordinators recruit households to join.
“Remind residents that $50 to $116 per household … is unbeatable, especially for those who are paying up to $1,800 for one annual pass or $350 a year for a local student pass!” the county says in a promotional flier.
This year, passes were available for about 12,000 people in 44 neighborhoods, though RTD reports that slightly more than 6,500 passes were issued.
RTD got a total of about $652,100 (roughly $100 from each pass issued), said Tony McCaulay, the agency’s senior marketing manager. The city and county of Boulder subsidized the program by paying $208,700, about 32 percent of the total.
RTD officials say they have no idea if Neighborhood Pass holders would buy $1 million in transit services annually or some other amount if the program were not in place.
Kathy Gard said she doesn’t think RTD is losing money on the venture in her Boulder neigborhood, Melody Catalpa. There, 135 households pay about $180 each, or $24,000, to participate in the program. (Boulder adds an $11,000 subsidy to help cover the neighborhood’s full contract cost.)
Since an average of about three passes are issued per household, each pass costs about $75 a year for unlimited transit service.
“My hunch is that there are fewer bus rides being taken than being paid for,” said Gard, pass coordinator for Melody Catalpa.
RTD’s Abel is not so sure.
“In looking at the per-passenger revenue” of about $100 a year that RTD gets for Neighborhood Eco Pass, “it raised the question as to whether the program has been appropriately priced,” Abel said.
With the new farecards, RTD plans to total the value of all trips taken by residents of a neighborhood and then apply a 40 percent discount to the cash value of the trips as a way to determine a neighborhood’s contract price. The discount is comparable to those on other prepaid-fare products.
To help get the moratorium on Neighborhood Pass lifted, Boulder pledged to pay an extra $10,000 next year to RTD for the program.
“It encourages us to use transit when normally we wouldn’t,” said Boulder senior transportation planner Chris Hagelin in explaining the city’s ardor for the program.
Two existing neighborhoods in the pass program have submitted requests to expand their boundaries in 2010 and two new neighborhoods are bidding to join, McCaulay said.
To illustrate how inexpensively RTD may be offering the unlimited transit service, McCaulay said a recent travel survey of households on a block that Boulder’s East Chautauqua neighborhood is trying to add to its pass program found RTD should get $190 a year for each new household — nearly double the $100 a year that households on nearby blocks are being charged.
East Chautauqua was having trouble collecting enough money for its 2010 contract, but Boulder has increased its subsidy and the neighborhood now should be able to stay in the program next year, said Jim Hartman, the neighborhood’s pass coordinator.
Rather than charging its households a flat annual rate for passes like some neighborhoods, East Chautauqua uses a sliding scale, getting as little as $20 a year and as much as $650 per year from households, Hartman said.
“RTD should get smart cards in as soon as possible,” he added. “Folks appreciate the Eco Pass program and want it to be fair.”
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
