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Image courtesy of Westword
Addressing the current state of RTD,
Chase Woodruff - Westword has a rather long, meandering retrospective with standard transit 'wisdom' that for the uninitiated may be a worthy read.
Thinking of San Diego as being a very good peer city comparison I checked into their financial performance. In 2018 they had a recover rate of just under 40% excluding depreciation and a recovery ratio of nearly 26% after depreciation is included which would compare to RTD's 18.5%. While not ideal a ratio of 25% should be the absolute minimum.
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Everyone should ride RTD buses?
Why is that?
Because we say so!
What if it's not convenient or useful to people?
Doesn't matter; everyone should ride da bus.
Have you ever considered making the service more useful to people?
Why would we do that?
Picture some young entrepreneurs meeting with a room full of Venture Capitalists asking for hundreds of millions of $'s using the same logic as transit agencies? Either laughter or total confusion would be the response.
But this is Public Transportation; it's a gift to the poor people.
But poor people are no more likely to use transit if it's not useful.
Well everybody should ride our buses.
I know: because you say so.
Have you ever considered creating a 'public' system that would actually be useful and popular and approach 100% recovery ratio - before depreciation?
Nah, that's too hard. Everybody should ride the bus.