The Regional Transportation District’s proposed 2027 expense budget is a step closer to addressing the transit agency’s deficit but still leaves the transit agency nearly $150 million in the hole amid its ongoing budget crisis, according to a proposed budget released Tuesday.
The agency is planning for a $148 million deficit next year, an improvement from 2024, when the transit agency reported a $282 million deficit, the agency said.
The budget “embodies cautious optimism,” RTD general manager and chief executive officer Debra Johnson said at an RTD finance and planning committee meeting Tuesday evening.
“Recognizing these gains, the agency continues to face pressures as operating costs outpace core revenue sources and long-term capital needs exceed available resources,” Johnson said.
The agency predicts operating costs will total $915 million in 2027, a decrease of nearly $206 million compared with 2026, according . Thatap largely driven by a $192 million decrease in spending on outside services, which included cuts to the agency’s Access-on-Demand program. However, that figure doesn’t yet include the cost of the East Colfax Bus Rapid Transit, which will carry forward from prior years. It is not clear how much that will be.
RTD also attributes the decrease in operating costs to staff cuts after restructuring and vacancy eliminations. The agency is expected to spend nearly $11 million more on salaries and benefits in 2027 compared with 2026, according to the draft budget.
An additional $615 million of the budget is set aside for capital expenses, $549 million of which is being carried forward from ongoing projects, including work on the Downtown Rail Reconstruction Project. The agency expects that project, aimed at replacing old light rail infrastructure, to be completed in 2027, according to the draft budget.
“We’ve eliminated vacancies, travel has been reduced, supplies have been reduced. I think you’ve looked pretty much under every rock trying to find some savings,” Director Karen Benker said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Director Chris Nicholson said the board hasn’t done enough to find cost savings, particularly because the transit agency plans to cut $20 million in services, which could mean bus or rail routes, next year.
“We need to look even harder at where we can find that $20 million in the rest of the budget,” he said. “I think we owe that to the public to have at least gone through that process.”
RTD expects revenue of $1.19 billion in 2027, according to the draft budget.
More than three-quarters of that, or about $940 million, is expected to come from a 1% sales and use tax in metro Denver, according to a September forecast from the Business Research Division of the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business.
Fares are expected to bring in $66 million, and grants and other revenue tally about $185 million. That figure doesn’t yet include the federal grant funding the agency hasn’t yet used for the East Colfax BRT project, RTD staffers wrote in the budget. RTD budgeted $138 million in grant funding for that project in 2026, and it is not clear how much hasn’t been used.
But that revenue won’t be enough to cover RTD’s expenses.
RTD has been forced to find ways to cut expenses and find additional revenue as the agency grapples with a structural budget deficit driven in part by rising operating costs. In 2025, the board committed to eliminating its deficit in time for the 2028 budget.
In July, the board rejected fare increases and voted in July to cut $20 million in services.
The draft budget doesn’t specify what routes would be cut to achieve the $20 million figure. RTD has said that staffers are expected to bring recommendations for those service cuts in early 2027, to go into effect in May and June.
Director Lynn Guissinger expressed concern about committing to cutting $20 million in services before the board understands how many riders use certain routes, information that would be provided in a study that won’t be completed by the time directors have to make those decisions.
“I would not like to see too many service modifications, or certainly service cuts, before we get through the process where we’re analyzing it,” Guissinger said.
Nicholson and Benker agreed the board should “take a hard look” at past capital projects that were appropriated by previous boards.
The board also should turn its attention to finding revenue sources, Benker said. That could come in an increased cost for SkyRide, the bus service used to take passengers to the Denver International Airport.
The finance and planning committee is set to vote on the proposed budget, and any amendments, on Nov. 10. The board will then decide whether to adopt that budget Dec. 1.
The budget would run from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31 next year.
