Denver's Regional Transportation District finally released its proposed fare hikes. As previously noted, increased ridership caused a decline in farebox revenue. At last night's Regional Transportation District meeting, the RTD board approved some fare hikes.
Ten days ago, Regional Transportation District staffers proposed a fare increase to deal with rising fuel prices and other financial pressures that called for boosting the regular local cash fare to $2, the express cash fare to $3.50 and the regional fare to $4.50 a trip.
The proposal called for increases in the prices of transit passes reflecting a traditional discount that rewards customers for pre-paying.
On Tuesday, RTD director Chris Martinez supplied data showing that under the proposal, cash customers would pay about 5 cents more per trip than pass holders. To close that gap, Martinez offered an amendment that boosted the proposed new cost of regular monthly passes by $2 in each fare category — to $70 a month for a local pass, to $128 for an express pass and $164 for a regional pass.
These fare increases are a step in the right direction. While still not covering all costs, the fares will increasingly help the users pay for a larger share of the transit. Unfortunately, there is still the Eco Pass system, where large employers (government, hospitals, and private sector corporations) can provide yearly passes for a small fraction of the cost of a monthly pass. While the RTD board approved some small fare hikes for Eco Pass, Director John Tayer fought to keep the Eco Pass cheap.
The fare-increase proposal includes a 19 percent in per-employee Eco Pass and Neighborhood Pass rates as well as provisions that would tack on a $5 skyRide fee for these pass holders.
The fare proposal also would require 50 employees as the minimum for employers participating in Eco Pass and it proposed a moratorium on new or expanded Neighborhood Pass contracts.
Tayer's amendment tried to eliminate the 50-employee minimum, the $5 skyRide surcharge and the Neighborhood Pass freeze, but it was soundly defeated.
Under the pass programs employers enroll all their employees, or community associations sign up blocks of neighbors, to get deeply discounted transit passes that give users access to all of RTD's service — local, express, regional and skyRide service to DIA.
A 19 percent fare increase for Eco Pass is not nearly enough. Today, the cheapest per employee Eco Pass price is $38 for unlimited local, express, and regional services. A 19 percent increase makes the pass $45.22 per year. Conversely, the local pass will become $70 per month ($840 per year). This means that the Eco Pass costs 5.38 percent of the monthly local pass. RTD may come to taxpayers begging for more money for Fastracks and operations. However, RTD needs to answer for these deeply discounted, fiscally irresponsible Eco Passes before the taxpayers even consider giving the district more money. by Civil Sense
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