The burning question before the Regional Transportation District Board of Directors is whether riders in Wheat Ridge and Westminster suffered years of long wait times for commuter trains because of gross oversight, mismanagement or malfeasance.
We think there is value in getting to the bottom of the matter, and fortunately, the RTD board agrees. The audit committee is .
The Denver Post reported last week that, despite being contractually obligated to provide more frequent train service on RTD’s B and G commuter rail lines, a private company has been doing about half of what the contract required — 15-minute and 30-minute frequency, respectively. RTD has continued to make full payments to Denver Transit Partners and Denver Transit Operators despite the lapse in services to 30 minutes and an hour.
“I don’t know what the cost of this was to the agency,” said RTD board member Karen Benker at a planning and finance committee hearing Wednesday. “Could we have started this frequent service two years ago? We’ve lost time increasing service versus how much money we have paid DTO.”
Less reassuring was the response from RTD general manager and CEO Debra Johnson, who wanted to emphasize that the audit committee does not have the power or authority to “investigate” the issue but can only audit the financial question.
Limiting an audit committee’s authority is problematic because auditors should conduct forensic audits to look for malfeasance and mismanagement.
Johnson did send out a memo to board members explaining the history of reduced services on the B and G lines.
But like many of the board members, we still have questions – the type of questions that will best be answered by looking at the correspondence between Denver Transit Partners and RTD at the time decisions were made.
Johnson laid out the timeline of decisions in her memo and the complex public-private partnership. RTD is obligated to make payments to Denver Transit Partners monthly for three things: operations and maintenance, paying off bond debt and profit for the company’s partners. In exchange, the company manages and maintains operations on the rail lines and rail cars owned by RTD, with the level of service dictated by the contract.
Since its inception, the relationship between Denver Transit Partners and RTD has been fraught. One dispute over more than $100 million went all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court and then the court of appeals, where it was determined DTP was responsible financially for delays and costs associated primarily with problems on the A-line commuter rail to the airport.
Now, it appears that RTD gave the private company some leeway during the pandemic because of low ridership and the struggle to find employees to drive the trains on the B and G lines. Without lowering the payments being made to the company, RTD allowed the operators to reduce service frequency on the B and G lines. It is unclear if other concessions were made by Denver Transit Partners to offset the reduction in services.
That decision was made in 2020, however, and RTD is only now demanding that service frequency be restored.
Johnson’s memo does not explain why service was never increased on the lines, but it does explain that in 2023, RTD asked Denver Transit Partners to move some train cars from the B and G lines to the A Line to help with the weekend rush of passengers on that line. The adjustment did not cost RTD anything. It seems unlikely that the extra cars moving to the A line would have prevented more frequent service from returning at that time to the B and G lines.
We are glad that service is being restored to Westminster and Wheat Ridge, but this is no small matter.
Riders in Westminster were getting train service every hour, a frequency that makes train commuting difficult to rely on.
Riders in Wheat Ridge were getting service every half hour.
Under the restored service plan, those wait times will go down to 30 minutes and 15 minutes, respectively. Those are time periods that make utilizing the train much more attractive to riders, which in turn will bolster RTD’s bottom line. Ticket sales and ridership on the lines all pour into RTD’s coffers.
The public deserves a full accounting of the lapse and assurances that the contracts with Denver Transit Partners will be implemented faithfully.
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