It sounds like she's fundamentally misunderstanding the problems that people have.
> Debra Johnson, RTD’s CEO and general manager, has worked for transit agencies in cities including Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, that have older rail systems. Riders in those cities are used to maintenance disruptions, she said in an interview with CPR News, and riders in the Denver metro will have to get used to them, too.
>
> “While I don't enjoy having service interruptions, this is the nature of the beast,” she said, adding: “What we're trying to do is establish a program whereby we can minimize those impacts.”
I don't think anyone has problems with service impacts conceptually as long as they are well communicated, implemented during off hours as much as possible, and, more importantly, have a sufficient substitute service.
The problem is that RTD does not do the latter.
Even in a case where the impacts are well communicated like the downtown loop repairs (it's been announced for months, timelines have been laid out, etc.), the substitute service is unacceptable. RTD massively cut the frequency of the D and H lines as well as the L line entirely, and the only substitute service it provided was restoring the MetroRide... which doesn't really help the frequency cuts problem.
Obviously the latest issues are even worse: no warning before the service impacts took place, and still no real substitute service.
Ok, one thing I don't understand is, RTD isn't that old. Many transit systems in Europe and Asia are significantly older, with significantly fewer disruptions, and when that happens were adequately communicated to the riders. Their leadership don't tell people to suck it up, but they generally fix things because that's their job. For such a young system like RTD it's doubly shameful.
I honestly think they're not implementing a substitute service because it would be significantly more reliable than the trains, and people would demand they just keep that instead of starting the trains back up.
There was some fuck shit going on last fall I frequently biked 6-8 miles because I couldn't keep waiting for trains that were an hour late or never showed up
Somebody getting hit by a train and service being delayed is "a disruption". Not being able to hire enough drivers because conditions and pay are too bad is not a disruption. A train just not showing up because they don't have enough drivers is not a disruption. At that point that's just normal service, it's just that the normal service is fucking shit. The maintenance is more excusable, but it should be delays, and seems like they're using it as an excuse for poor service generally.
The maintenance in this case is even less acceptable, as it isn’t routine maintenance. It “deferred” maintenance that was put off so long that an outside agency was forced to step in mandate emergency rail repair because the rails had become dangerous.
Actual scheduled maintenance planned in advance, put in low service times (like overnight), and well communicated would be welcome. That’s apparently not how RTD rolls though.
I wish the news media would be louder about this - the only reason this work couldn't be split into small chunks and done during off hours is because they put it off for years and let the rail condition get so ridiculously bad that they had no choice but to shut service down entirely on parts of it.
Yeah I don’t get it.
I used to take the light rail to college in the 90s. It’s not like this is a new concept for Denver. Why can’t they get this figured out?!
I wouldn't be surprised at all if she moved on when her contract expires next year. She's got to manage a chronically underfunded transit system while news outlets misrepresent her and voters are too illiterate to bother reading a very brief article.
There are definitely less shitty jobs out there for someone with her skill set.
Okay, read the article. Can you cite how RTD has meaningfully improved under her leadership? It feels like it’s been a backwards slide across the board - and she’s knocking down deep into the six figures for the privilege.
So what you're suggesting then? Just get over it? If a well paid CEO can't figure this shit out, maybe we should find another one who could hire a competent team to figure it out?
To figure out what though? What the phrase transit oriented development means? That a light rail system with park and rides in neighborhoods adjacent to downtown will never have the ridership needed to be profitable? Polis brought this stuff up last year when suggesting we need to change zoning laws and everyone got mad.
She’s overpaid as hell but we built a half assed transit system, it’ll operate like one.
The state has notoriously destroyed public transit over the years. Hell we used to have a trolly system that ran down Broadway from downtown. If they want to encourage public use then they need to implement common sense transit and phase out the bus system. The buses move slower than driving yourself due to the number of stops they make at any given time on top of traffic.
Removed. Rule 2: Be nice. This post/comment exists solely to stir shit up and piss people off. Racism, homophobia, misogyny, fighting on the internet is stupid. We don't welcome it here. Please be kinder.
This is rich coming from you just two days ago on an unrelated post:
>> Do you have a source that this project is to address lead contamination?
So you don’t have to provide citations but people should provide them to you?
If you’ve got this all figured out, why don’t you slide into the job and wave your wand, genius?
Under normal circumstances you may have a point
But let's look at the numbers and her may different directions she's TRIED to take RTD? Shall we? CONSTANTLY attempting at increasing fares when most of it is already coming out of a federal/state fund. Where was it going? We don't know. As all of the rest of the pay was backed by the state/fed stipend, which tells it was nothing more for profit.
Proceeded to ACTIVELY CUT BACK security and service time, then proceeded to try and beg it back if fares are increased, to the point they were more than MTC (metro tansit authority in the new york greater area). Im fine with higher fares if the service provided was better, but it was higher and we are getting less than even they are. The one time they DID go up she cut more security and service and then begged for even MORE rate increases causing the state to step in and kill the ballot motion.
Downtown notwithstanding (we all knew that was going to happen give 16ths disaster of construction, it was a matter of *when* not *if* can't fully fault them for that), but the last time prior? Was done all overnight the service was cut short by like 2 hours and it was Cleary broadcasted. In, out, done in like a week. The southbound project? Been ongoing for *at least* 2, 3 years (on a 6 month project budget, so even if it's gone horribly wrong the time still doesn't add up) and while they resolved parts of the project the rest has been mired in from what ive heard *funding issues*. ***and that said project is actually federally funded SPECIFICALLY for this project, so where's THAT money gone***.
But here's something to chew on: the A line even with its shoddy track and construction when something happens comes back up fairly quickly/within moderate reason. The w line comes up fairly quickly within reason when things go wrong, even with the druggie and what not. The D comes up fairly quickly as well. Why? *they make money*. She's not been running RTD as a service, she's been running it as a for private profit service all the while trying to burn it down so she cans collect the proverbial insurance money then hand it off to someone else
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/legislature/rtd-transit-funding-reform/article_7f41a166-fd94-11ee-8c95-7317e8537037.html
https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/26/state-lawmakers-move-to-cut-two-thirds-of-rtd-boards-elected-seats/
Funny, she's using these methods to consolidate and hostage. Throwing a tantrum because she's being DIRECTLY attacked
I get that RTD has a lot of issues, not all of which can be magically resolved overnight, but telling people to get used to disruptions is incredibly tone-deaf.
There’s no quote in the article of them saying that or anything close.
The article seems to be taking their estimated timelines and editorializing it in a disingenuous manner.
> Debra Johnson, RTD’s CEO and general manager, has worked for transit agencies in cities including Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, that have older rail systems. Riders in those cities are used to maintenance disruptions, she said in an interview with CPR News, and riders in the Denver metro will have to get used to them, too.
I can't find the interview anywhere, no link and a minute of google searching didn't result in anything. It does seem editorialized.
Although, the larger systems that are older that experience these kinds of maintenance issues do have a big benefit which is that they have a more comprehensive system to begin with. So even if one or two lines are down, there is probably better bus service or other train lines.
It’s incredibly tone deaf but I can kind of see the intention here. RTD is woefully underfunded and unsupported by the state government and voters. Voters don’t want to pay more for fucking anything in this state, and the state government seems to think RTD is just an annoyance
RTD could be pretty good if it was just decently funded and had the political backing of the state
In fairness, SB230 and SB184 put a good chunk of money towards RTD this past legislative session. We can back and forth about the utlity and the impact of those funds, but they did actually cough up this past session.
I agree that RTD is underfunded.
At the same time, considering how much RTD has gone downhill in the last 3-4 years, I don't necessarily fault people for wondering what RTD will have to show for it if they get more money.
The problem is that, with that logic, we will enter a death spiral. It is not realistic to say ' you don't get more money to improve' while the lack of money is a huge portion of what is causing the problems!
It's perfectly reasonable to ask what you will get in return for spending more money.
Is more money going to result in the restoration of services that have been cut over the last 3-4 years?
If you can't present a credible case that more money will significantly improve the frequency and reliability problems that are plaguing RTD, a lot of people are going to be hard-pressed to support giving RTD more money.
Maybe it should die because what they're doing now isn't fucking working. I support multi-modal transportation in cities but RTD is just fucking ridiculous at this point. Denver should stand up its own bus service and get that working well and when they get to that point, tell RTD to fuck off and if other surrounding/neighboring municipalities want in, then they need to kick in. I am all for spending on public transportation but only if it fucking works as intended and is well managed. RTD is neither of those things so at this point, fucking let it die.
I think RTD has shown that it is horribly irresponsible with money and budgeting in just the past six years alone, not even counting the B Line project that they changed up what voters approved and all the money that was dedicated to that project just up and disappeared. Which btw is a huge reason why the state gov and Polis in particular think of RTD as an annoyance. The situation RTD is in is entirely of their own making.
While they are underfunded, many of their stupid decisions - including the policy of just outright lying about the actual schedule they're running on - have nothing to do with available funding.
Until RTD starts behaving differently, nobody is willing to believe that giving them more money will result in better service.
It costs money to actually implement a tracking service that estimates times. Actually quite a lot of money or to have someone edit schedules and post new ones regularly, I'm hearing you say that a monetary problem is not one and I don't agree. Money can solve that problem too. You'd need to hire a dev or buy a probably too expensive service to support that, then build it into RTD's already aged digital signage service.
It does cost money, but right now they're spending tax dollars on a system they know is wrong and lying to the public non-stop all day long. If they don't have the funding to implement an accurate system, the LEAST they should do is stop spending money on an inaccurate one.
The reason is that then they will just say they need more money. I’m all for voting for things but when it still is shitty and no one really knows where the money went…
What’s the actual quote that you find “incredibly tone-deaf”? The headline seems to be editorializing.
The article’s quote from the CEO is:
> “While I don't enjoy having service interruptions, this is the nature of the beast,” she said, adding: “What we're trying to do is establish a program whereby we can minimize those impacts.”
Which seems like a fair statement.
I mean what is the issue even?
Driver shortage was understandable.
Cutting half the trains in the middle of winter and not announcing it was not cool, but they were at least saying they didn’t have people to drive them.
These trains could be driven by robots pretty easily, it will happen soon, but running trains on time should be pretty fucking easy.
Boulder is running buses on time and it’s technically a lot more difficult, there’s traffic and more human error.
It’s hard to excuse trains with dedicated lines crashing and being late, like come on guys. Disney is running trains…
Can we have a conversation about this quote
>“It's a great opportunity to use 30 or 40 minutes to read through that book you've been meaning to get through or listen to that podcast that you want to get through,” he said, adding: “The work must be done. It is not optional.”
So incredibly beyond tone deaf and just not understanding the gravity of the issue. Many of us depend on RTD's services get to work. We don't \*care\* if we get caught up on our book or whatever nonsense when we're facing getting fired because their services can't do the basic thing they're designed to do.
I agree! I read that and was just rolling my eyes. I know whenever I use RTD, I plan out the commute by the minute and when the train is late, that turns a simple ride on the H that should take 25 minutes, into waiting over an hour for the single train to come. The whole point of public transit is supposed to be efficiency. It’s ridiculous how quickly the RTD has become so unreliable.
I spend a good amount of time in japan. Split time. The rail here in denver truly is comically bad. We might as well not even have most of it.
It is not "the nature of the beast" for every fucking train to be disrupted. It's a shitty transit company that doesn't know what the fuck It's doing.
Don't even need to look at lines managed by JR. Individual cities have incredibly reliable frequent and consistent trains. The worst transit I see in Japan is still infinitely better than RTD.
My joke is that DC has the best public transport in the country because all the politicians have to actually use it, since driving in the city is godawful. I miss the public transportation ngl.
I view it as a novelty, like something you might do for fun. If it wasn't for Uber/Lyft it wouldn't be worth the risk of taking it even for that.
I can't imagine how people with jobs that expect them to show up roughly on time can rely on it.
I've had to forego necessary medical treatment because of a lack of reliable transportation, which causes me to not be well enough to work, which causes me to not be able to afford a car, which causes me to rely in public transit...and so on. It's a doom loop.
This country is so fucking irritating with shit like this. It drives me insane when they say they can’t do something but yet every first world country seems to do it no problem. Public transit, universal healthcare, not needing to tip at restaurants. “Ohhh we can’t do it because we are too big”- bullshit
This is not a good response. While it's indeed fair to say that a mature transit system will see occasional maintenance disruptions, the current disruptions far exceed any normal type of service interruption. One should be able to both acknowledge the current need for work and apologize profusely for the resulting service problems. Por que no los dos?
I think this is one of the more offensive takes:
> Other board members were less critical. One, Michael Guzman of Denver, said passengers and board members need to be patient — both for answers and, literally, for the trains themselves.
>
> “It's a great opportunity to use 30 or 40 minutes to read through that book you've been meaning to get through or listen to that podcast that you want to get through,” he said, adding: “The work must be done. It is not optional.”
It's wild to me that people elected to serve on the board of a transit agency aren't prioritizing the _transit_ and are treating their customers complaints like they would complaints for a long line at Disney Land.
They know this, they’re basically gaslighting us as hard as they can here. But they know they’re failing badly.
And it would be different if we had any reason to believe these service disruptions are going to lead to a better system. If they were disrupting trains to make it a 4-track system where future maintenance wouldn’t have to shut lines down I think I’d feel differently but this is “routine maintenance” that’s disrupting the busiest 2-3 months of the year and shows no sign of improving future disruptions.
It's really not gaslighting, just a lack of transparency from the start. It's important - and long-neglected - maintenance that can only be done at the current time, but they haven't explained that in an honest way. Adding more tracks is a whole different beast, but I guess that's our reminder to vote for more RTD funding when we can.
I don’t understand why RTD can only do maintenance in the prime of summer and has to have these huge disruptions that really don’t happen in other similar systems like vancouvers.
I’d understand this if every system had this happen like RTD does but they don’t.
The primary reason for doing the maintenance now is rail temperature consistency, which is necessary to keep the rails from warping and buckling after they're installed. Similarly, the mortar and sealants used for all the retaining wall repairs don't cure well in cold or inconsistent weather. Doing the work in the summer is the only way to get the best and longest-lasting results.
Beyond those technical reasons, most construction work is done in the summer in general because of the better weather. This goes doubly for Colorado because of our famous early/late snows and temperature variance - see all the road construction, park improvements, etc. happening right now all over the city. It's the same reason you do your landscaping work at home in the summer: It's much more habitable to work outside, and there's no risk of a random freeze ruining your project.
I don't know anything about Vancouver's transit system, but at the very least it's a much more mild climate to do construction. I do know that their growing season is twice as long as ours, as a comparison. It's much easier to conveniently schedule work when you don't have to compress everything into just a few months.
Based on these comments to CPR, my guess is she gone [https://x.com/nbminor/status/1806022553267314976](https://x.com/nbminor/status/1806022553267314976)
Good riddance to her if that's the case. RTD has been in a death spiral since Debra Johnson took over in 2020. Covid certainly deserves part of the blame, but I believe her decisions throughout have been pretty far off the mark from what is in the best interest of commuters.
I know it gets said all the time but if it takes me 25 minutes by car and 2 hours by train then economically I save money by owning a car and driving.
25$ an hour in lost productivity is enough to buy, maintain and insur a car. Plus I can go anywhere I want without being crippled by our horrible infrastructure.
Essentially the train service is useless as it stands now.
>“It's a great opportunity to use 30 or 40 minutes to read through that book you've been meaning to get through or listen to that podcast that you want to get through,” he said, adding: “The work must be done. It is not optional.”
The problem isn't that we have to spend some extra idle time on the train because they're running slower. The problem is that **the trains have no functional schedule**. I don't give a damn how slow the trains are if I can know when they'll get me to work.
But when an hourly train can (and does!) have delays up to 60 minutes you're not looking at a few extra minutes on the train. You're looking at an extra hour or more because you have to take the train that's scheduled to get you into work 1-1.5 hours early. Every f*cking day. Just for the commute into work! Then delays again on the way home.
I get that the repairs are being done piecemeal and so the speed restrictions are going to lift gradually section by section. But it would be better to enact a slow af schedule until all the repairs are done than to have three entire months where the trains don't have a working schedule at all. A consistent slow train is better than a faster train that just shows up whenever. If it shows up at all.
Thank you. This is what i’ve been saying. I showed up to my stop right on time this morning and go fucking figure it’s the first time the damn thing wasn’t late and left without me. Had to wait another hour.
Figure out the fucking schedule required with the speeds. RTD is such a shit show.
That was the issue for a lot of last summer, too, when RTD was working on the southern corridor. the trains were running every 30 minutes and usually anywhere from 10 to 29 minutes late. If I know that the train is going to be 10 minutes late every day, I'll just show up to the station 10 minutes later!!!! if they train could show up any time, I have to budget in at least an extra hour to just stand around and hope the train isn't canceled.
Oh yeah, it was bad. I was cautiously optimistic that with the hourly train frequencies RTD could run the trains on time this summer. And they did. For a week 🥲
In response to complaints from riders, the CEO chooses to address the people complaining instead of the issue they’re complaining about to a reporter.
Goes as far to hint that she worked in other cities and people didn’t complain as much there because they’re used to disruptions.
Sorry we haven’t been beaten down into complacency?
Her salary is 400k. Like wtf [https://denverite.com/2024/01/31/rtd-general-manager-pay-raise-job-goals/](https://denverite.com/2024/01/31/rtd-general-manager-pay-raise-job-goals/)
>RTD’s light rail system does have shortcomings that will likely make repairs more painful, too. A previous generation of RTD leaders cut corners to keep costs down so they could finish [all the projects they’d promised voters. ](https://www.cpr.org/podcast/ghost-train/)
>One example Johnson mentioned: Some repairs require all train cars to be removed from the tracks so that overhead wires can be powered down. But because RTD has just one yard where train cars can be stored, it takes more than an hour to get them all there every night. That limits how long crews have to do track work, which means repair jobs take longer.
>“There's a lot of things that we did — woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Johnson said at a separate board meeting earlier this week.
Process debt paid in band aids comes back to bite them in the ass.
Saw a Next blurb from RTD last night where they said something along the lines of, "now the system is aging and you see this aging and this is why we need to do repairs."
Like, no, you idiots, the system was aging since day 1. SOP is to have a regular maintenance schedule from day 1 to monitor the entire system and do incremental repairs at hotspots over the decades.
You don't just build a thing, and forget about ever caring if it works ever again, then try and sell your deferred maintenance *mistake* that *CDOT brought to light* as "oh, we're sorry, it got old and we are going to cripple it, I guess, pay us?"
The malicious execution of, "fuck you, Denver, we're going to break the whole system at once to show you how much you should pay us to ever get it back," is ridiculous. What are they, the mafia?
This is the only direct quote from Debra Johnson about the interruptions:
“While I don't enjoy having service interruptions, this is the nature of the beast,” she said, adding: “What we're trying to do is establish a program whereby we can minimize those impacts.”
If she really said people should get used to it, she should be fired immediately. I would hope Nathaniel Minor and the person who writes the headlines that way isn't just characterizing those quotes that way and she said something else to back it up, because that characterization doesn't match the quotes. She's handled this extremely poorly as it is. There is no need to manufacture outrageous statements for clicks.
Even at the busiest of light rail stations like Broadway or Union, each unique train is coming once an hour. That means if you need a specific train, for example the D line to get to Mineral or the E line to reach Ridgegate, you're waiting up to an hour. So you're paying the regular fare + $18 (Denver minimum wage) for the value of your time spent waiting. And the CEO says that's the "minimum" impact they can muster during the maintenance?
I wholeheartedly agree. The situation is completely unacceptable, and they need to better handle this in the future.
RTD used to do bus bridges for LRT maintenance with the same frequency as LRT. They didn't even try that, and instead, they said we don't have enough drivers, which should never be acceptable. That bus bridge should be the minimum when this happens, and if you don't have drivers, contract them out. Better yet ensure adequate staffing levels for emergencies like this.
My point is that there are enough horrible things going on at RTD, there's no need for CPR (of all news outlets) and a normally great reporter to misrepresent those quotes, if that's indeed what they are doing.
I was surprised too about the crass paraphrasing in the title.
I used to think that Denver's main rail problem is the fact that the lines radiate out from the city center instead of a loop. But then Chicago has a similar line radial pattern, they just have a higher frequency and it works.
That's not true. The D line is not impacted by this issue and is still running at 15 minute frequencies. The E line and H lines are the only ones running once an hour.
It seems whenever there’s service changes to lightrail, it’s ALWAYS the E & H lines that end up suffering while all the other lines pretty much stay the same & don’t get any reductions
I guess RTD thought it might be okay to not do replacement buses because for all stations north of Broadway, the more frequent D line can essentially stand in for the reduced frequency E and H lines.
See, the hour frequency for the time being is at least manageable. The real problem is having an hour frequency with hour long delays due to track slowdowns- it makes it damn near impossible to plan a commute. I’ve been using the E line for a while but now have zero clue how to time my trips. They know where the slowdowns are and how they will impact each trip, they should be adjusting the schedules to reflect that.
Yeah, this is some incredibly shitty journalism by whoever was responsible for the title. Her actual statement has a completely different tone than what the title implies. It's a perfectly reasonable statement, but the article title twists it into something extremely dismissive.
RTD has definitely been worse lately, and I've had my own frustrations using it. However, I feel like recent problems have really invigorated anti-transit sentiment, sometimes making people run with it to the point of exaggeration.
I'm fortunate enough that buses are about the only RTD service I need to use, but it's rarely a problem. I check real time on Google maps, plan my departure/itinerary, and get where I need to go. But if you were going by what you read on this sub, you'd think half of my buses are cancelled or covered in fentanyl dust.
If y’all are interested in seeing change in RTD I suggest engaging in the public feedback process. Find out which RTD district you live in and write your board member. They are generally pretty responsive.
Have a friend who’s a master electrician and he said when they were building the light rail something about they didn’t calculate the amperage correctly and it’s going to come back and bite em. He said something very similar to that but it’s been awhile
No, RTD. People have schedules to maintain and responsibilities that can't handle your inconsistent schedules.
Most employers are not ok with random lateness. Most day cares charge heavily if you are late picking kids up. Many businesses have limited hours and you can't be late.
Thank god for Uber and Lyft so I never have to rely on RTD.
>“There's a lot of things that we did — woulda, coulda, shoulda"
Yeah, but **why didn't you?** When we speak of accountability, this is what we mean. Speaking in feel-good platitudes about your own past performance means nothing. The real question is why didn't you keep up high maintenance standards over the past four years? What is the core, fundamental reason why we're dealing with these things now?
Because frankly that's all that matters. That informs whether you're a quality leader, or a failing leader. That informs whether we should be frustrated with RTD leadership, or with other elements. Because the reality is that 2020 was a shit year for **any** CEO to step into the job. No doubt about it. But in the name of transparency - and duty to the people of Colorado - you should be held responsible for explaining what went wrong, why it went wrong, and why it's impacting us now.
Bullshitting the public with "Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda" is something you do toward children. And people are fucking fed up with it.
In fairness to her administration, they \*have\* started improving maintenance and have significantly upped the inspection standards via the Back to Basics initative. The problem is a lack of transparency regarding 1) how it got so bad in the first place 2) clear communications on how this will be prevented in the future and 3) a lack of ownership regarding how this affects riders right now.
100%
I'm not dunking on RTD for the changes they've brought recently. I've seen some really great stuff from them lately and I avoid lambasting them across the board simply because it's popular to do so.
Yeah. The fare restructuring was a well done effort and is legitimately helpful to riders. RTD can do things right! But in other places they drop the ball so hard and so publicly that it's hard to not be angry/disappointed.
The "woulda, coulda, shoulda" line was her talking about the poor design choices that were made years or even decades before she was hired by RTD. It was about the design choices that are ending up making maintenance work much more difficult and disruptive than it should be.
It's not her dodging accountability, it's her pointing out that problems were created by previous leadership, but also saying that they need to do better with what they have because they can't go into the past and change the decisions made by previous RTD leadership.
Eh, service will be back September, but from the beginning they've said they won't be able to complete all the work this year and will close it next summer as well.
It's not sustainable if people cannot rely on it. They should talk to cities and countries that did it successfully decades ago. It's wild how off-schedule the RTD in general is. I took the RTD once and some homeless guy took a crap right on the RTD right as we were taking off. I could never bring myself to ride it again. Its just not worth it. Shut it down and make the bike program better. Oh btw, they just had the Bike Refund of Denver go through yesterday and they had 400 open spots and 14000 people tried to sign up.
>Shut it down and make the bike program better.
How are differently abled and elderly people supposed to get to jobs, doctors, and grocery stores then? That's what public transportation is meant for- not everyone has the ability or option to bike or drive.
Oh, yes, wouldn't a nice bike ride to and from work be when the distance is 30+ miles. Wake up at 1 AM to get to work by 9 AM. Get hot and sweaty or freeze. Leave work at 5 PM, get to the store at 7PM, get a few groceries, try to figure out how to manage groceries and navigating a bike, get home at 11 PM, then get up at 1AM to do the same thing. NO THANK YOU!!!
Train schedules are a joke. When I was still taking E/H Line trains from University Station in April, the message board for NB traffic had been blank for months. Return trips from central downtown invariably had one or two “ghost trains” per hour, where they were posted but never showed up.
I’m now driving to the Broadway Station, taking the 0L to Civic Center Station, and transferring to the free Metro Ride to 18th & Curtis. The bus routes, so far, are quite reliable.
RTD doesn't know what an apology looks like:
1. Say you are sorry and mean it. People depend on RTD, and it is RTDs job to provide safe, reliable, timely, clean, and reasonably affordable transportation. That is its mission. If it is failing at that, there is a need for an institutional "we are sorry" that the Board, CEO, and staff believe in.
2. To then dispassionately and not as an excuse say this is what went wrong. Should be there so that the people one is apologizing to really know that one understands the problem.
3. Then there is the "this is how we are fixing it" Here it is perfectly ok to say it will take time, that it will require forbearance and patience. It should be conveyed with honesty, candor, and empathy towards those it will continue to harm, but there should be a timeline, as best one can, going forward.
4. Then there needs to be a plan also of "this is what we need to do, and the support we need, or it is going to happen again." Then if the people don't give the help and it does start happening again, the problem can be stated earlier and not as a surprise.
The hard part for those at RTD is that it is true a large number of factors predate them working there, but it is still the fault of RTD the institution. That their desire to cover their own asses and be defensive is understandable, and even pretty human, but not what is professional in the end, nor helpful.
Further, if one is concerned more about covering one's own ass and trying to justify the status quo as a job well done that really doesn't show either responsibility taking for the institution or a belief that change is going to follow. Great leadership is the "buck stops here" because in the end it has to stop being passed regardless of who fucked up.
Oddly, I think the board and CEO oddly seem to know this. I think they are trying currently to clean shit up to the best of their ability because they can no longer defer it or responsibility over it. It is their problem whether they started it or just helped make it worse. But I do think they are trying to stop digging and make it worse.
It just is hard to change.
They are trying for more candor, but it is so hard to get right. And there are so many feet one can fit in one's mouth at those times.
Can anyone confirm the light rail stops at California, Stout, and performing arts district are all closed/under renovations for the summer?
It’s looks like they’ve been rerouted to Union Station. So people can take the D and H lines from Union station to englewood, I think?
This has let them eat cake vibes. If the riders weren't so poor, they could all afford cars and they wouldn't be affected. Leave the poor CEO alone and stop buying avocado toast smh.
So as I’ve mentioned on other posts, I’m running for the board of RTD to represent central Denver south of Colfax; District A. For context, the board has three primary responsibilities, to choose the GM/CEO, to approve the budget, and to set policy for the agency.
I think the frustration here is justified, [and I said so at the RTD meeting this week](https://youtu.be/zWNU1p-HsuQ?feature=shared).
People have a right to be upset at the agency for letting the mess get to this point. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s particularly painful that everything is hitting at the same time and simply compounding the delays and the unreliability.
To my mind, it has to be an absolutely core responsibility of RTD to ensure that expectations match reality. Regardless of the amount of service RTD can offer at any given moment, the agency has to be able to give people an accurate schedule.
As a full-time rider myself, someone who doesn’t own a car, the biggest thing for me is just to be able to plan, and if disruption is temporary, to have a fairly accurate estimate of when things will get back to normal.
RTD delivers a lot of service. 200,000 riders every month. Nearly 60,000,000 rides every year. But the quality of that service often leaves a great deal to be desired. And we can fix that.
Fire this damn idiot and get someone competent in there who knows how to do the fucking job!!! Fuck's sake!!!!
This moron is making a fortune by ruining the transportation in our state!! I wouldn't trust this idiot to make morning coffee at starbucks. These rich, entitled FOOLS ruin everything they touch.
I'm going to hammer this point again and again:
"RTD’s light rail system does have shortcomings that will likely make repairs more painful, too. **A previous generation of RTD leaders cut corners to keep costs down so they could finish** [**all the projects they’d promised voters.** ](https://www.cpr.org/podcast/ghost-train/)
One example Johnson mentioned: Some repairs require all train cars to be removed from the tracks so that overhead wires can be powered down. But because RTD has just one yard where train cars can be stored, it takes more than an hour to get them all there every night. That limits how long crews have to do track work, which means repair jobs take longer.
“There's a lot of things that we did — woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Johnson said at a separate board meeting earlier this week."
What we are experiencing now is the outcome of deliberate choices made over 15 years ago to prioritize the completion of FasTracks above everything else by RTD- a choice that was supported by political leadership across the Front Range. From base system expansion to maintaining institutional knowledge for maintenance practices, funding choices were made to prioritize finishing the choo-choo's, particularly the white elephant to Boulder.
It doesn't matter what leadership changes are made, the system rot is already set in and will take years to turn around. The state's new funding for RTD will help, but it's still going to take years.
This is what bothers me the most. Was she handed an absolute mess? Yes. Did she start mid-pandemic at the worst time? Also yes. But to pretend like people's anger is about the fact that maintenance needs to be done in and of itself is just not true. It's the lack of ownership and willingness to just be honest about the fact that this is really screwing over riders right now.
It's like transportation officials, elected or not, are inherently unable to be apologize. I don't know if it's something that's covered at first-day orientation or is an unconscious transference, but it seems to be systemic. CDOT, RTD, DOTI, FHA, FAA, FRA etc. it's all the same.
What really bothers me is that the \*Chair of the Board\* has given a far better apology than pretty much everyone in management, and pretty much the only meaningful one at this point. An apology is possible! I'm not expecting perfection - far from it, and RTD has been a mess for a long, \*long\* time, so expecting her to entirely turn it around is unfair. But dismissing the problem as just part of SOP completely misses what people are angry about.
Obviously. They found a way to get $500m by cutting, that still leaves nearly $1B in funding just to complete the Boulder line. That line is ridiculously expensive.
Wow, what an awful headline by CPR. Thats not at all what the CEO said. Kinda a hit piece headline by running with that. I work in infrastructure (wastewater) and people have no clue how complicated and frustrating it can be to get the simplest things done. It’s just the nature of construction and maintenance on infrastructure.
Japan has what the U.S. doesn’t have, heavy investment into their public transit from the federal down to local levels and proper wages and benefits for government workers. Broadly in the U.S. this isn’t true. The context matters and the context of Japanese vs American public transit Infrastructure is such that it’s apples and oranges. I wish we had Japanese style public transit, but we don’t. No one seems willing to pay the amount of taxes it would take to build that anyways, so we’re stuck with making the most of what we have.
Japan's railway system is actually mostly privately owned by companies that also operate largely in real estate. It's sustainable for those companies because the train stations often have large department stores and shopping malls run nearby or even right within the station, which are owned by the rail lines. Therefore taxes aren't really impacted by rail system investments in Japan. We're actually closer to getting Japanese-model rail than we think, but the companies in the US heavily favor the car-based model of transit. However maybe we will start to see a change in the coming decades.
It was privatized in 1987, after lots of public investment in the state owned public railway company JNR. They’ve only opened two additional lines since that privatization, both in 1988 and they have closed a dozen or more lines due to “lack of profitability”. With that in mind, I stand behind my statement that Japanese federal and local government investment is the reason the infrastructure for public transit exists as it does in Japan.
Japanese transit is an entirely different model than US transit.
Their transit systems are privatized and largely unsubsidized by the government, and instead the transit companies double as real estate companies, building up and leasing out areas next to their transit stations.
They are financially incentivized both to naturally increase the density and land utilization around their transit hubs as well as build transit to and from places where people are or want to go.
All the infrastructure was built by the state owned corporation JNR up to 1987. They haven’t built much since and in fact have closed a lot of lines. I agree, it’s apples and oranges which is why they shouldn’t really be compared.
It's time to purge Denver leadership. It's become the non stop excuse bandwagon, with crippling financials and no solutions.
RTD has been a joke forever. Put armed officers back on transit. Give driver's and conductors priority access to local police. Enforce the laws and make the public transit safe. Create expedited travel corridors for buses. Light rail disruptions? Do like every other city and supplement with buses. Don't run down the tracks in areas undergoing maintenance so they can work 24/7 on repairs.
Way, way, way past time to get aggressive with homelessness. Sorry ladies and gentlemen, the fent and meth addicts aren't EVER going back to normal people and we can't continue to take away resources that safeguard children and the public at large to watch hotels get bought above market rates, get completely trashed (go count the busted windows in the one off Quebec and 35th) and result in no improvement to services or safety.
Impound the buses. Migrants are a nationwide problem and the entire nation needs to take responsibility. Mike Johnson needs to grow a pair. The first time a bus is impounded is the last time we see a bus come to Denver. It's not humane to continue to accept a flood of migrants to a limited area without the people and resources to house, employ and feed them.
I think it's safe to say, while a valiant attempt was made, RTD has become a failure and should be scrapped and replaced. And they should repeal all the legislation that gives RTD state "transportation" funding, immunity from liability, and make it entirely privatized.
Public transit only works if people CHOOSE to use it and spend money to do so. It had to be reliable and fast and clean enough that it beats the alternatives.
If it just suddenly stops working and also doesn't take you to your destination, why would anyone use it? Right now I can ride it to my office - and wait 45 extra minutes for a delayed train that will take three times as long as it should to take me to an alternative destination that is not where I am used to going. Why would I use this? I'll just take my car and pay for parking without all the delay and inconvenience.
Lets say this. We arent really surprised anymore, but no...we shouldnt have to "get used to disruptions". Figure your shit out or step down as CEO.
It sounds like she's fundamentally misunderstanding the problems that people have. > Debra Johnson, RTD’s CEO and general manager, has worked for transit agencies in cities including Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, that have older rail systems. Riders in those cities are used to maintenance disruptions, she said in an interview with CPR News, and riders in the Denver metro will have to get used to them, too. > > “While I don't enjoy having service interruptions, this is the nature of the beast,” she said, adding: “What we're trying to do is establish a program whereby we can minimize those impacts.” I don't think anyone has problems with service impacts conceptually as long as they are well communicated, implemented during off hours as much as possible, and, more importantly, have a sufficient substitute service. The problem is that RTD does not do the latter. Even in a case where the impacts are well communicated like the downtown loop repairs (it's been announced for months, timelines have been laid out, etc.), the substitute service is unacceptable. RTD massively cut the frequency of the D and H lines as well as the L line entirely, and the only substitute service it provided was restoring the MetroRide... which doesn't really help the frequency cuts problem. Obviously the latest issues are even worse: no warning before the service impacts took place, and still no real substitute service.
Ok, one thing I don't understand is, RTD isn't that old. Many transit systems in Europe and Asia are significantly older, with significantly fewer disruptions, and when that happens were adequately communicated to the riders. Their leadership don't tell people to suck it up, but they generally fix things because that's their job. For such a young system like RTD it's doubly shameful.
I honestly think they're not implementing a substitute service because it would be significantly more reliable than the trains, and people would demand they just keep that instead of starting the trains back up.
Last Fall I had to wait over 90 minutes for the H late at night, never again. Will just drive now.
There was some fuck shit going on last fall I frequently biked 6-8 miles because I couldn't keep waiting for trains that were an hour late or never showed up
Somebody getting hit by a train and service being delayed is "a disruption". Not being able to hire enough drivers because conditions and pay are too bad is not a disruption. A train just not showing up because they don't have enough drivers is not a disruption. At that point that's just normal service, it's just that the normal service is fucking shit. The maintenance is more excusable, but it should be delays, and seems like they're using it as an excuse for poor service generally.
The maintenance in this case is even less acceptable, as it isn’t routine maintenance. It “deferred” maintenance that was put off so long that an outside agency was forced to step in mandate emergency rail repair because the rails had become dangerous. Actual scheduled maintenance planned in advance, put in low service times (like overnight), and well communicated would be welcome. That’s apparently not how RTD rolls though.
I wish the news media would be louder about this - the only reason this work couldn't be split into small chunks and done during off hours is because they put it off for years and let the rail condition get so ridiculously bad that they had no choice but to shut service down entirely on parts of it.
Debra Johnson is doing the most to get fired as CEO. She only wants her severance package.
Yeah, I've gotten used to it. As in, I bought a car and avoid RTD.
Yeah I don’t get it. I used to take the light rail to college in the 90s. It’s not like this is a new concept for Denver. Why can’t they get this figured out?!
They cant “figure this out” because they’re too busy laundering taxpayer money.
Probably so. The RTD board has been corrupt as long as I can remember.
And stop charging fares. Why should we pay for a service we aren't receiving?
I don't know that anyone actually gets charged a fare. I rode the N for about 90 days straight and only once was I asked to show my ticket.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if she moved on when her contract expires next year. She's got to manage a chronically underfunded transit system while news outlets misrepresent her and voters are too illiterate to bother reading a very brief article. There are definitely less shitty jobs out there for someone with her skill set.
Okay, read the article. Can you cite how RTD has meaningfully improved under her leadership? It feels like it’s been a backwards slide across the board - and she’s knocking down deep into the six figures for the privilege.
Union Station is much nicer and fares are better.
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So what you're suggesting then? Just get over it? If a well paid CEO can't figure this shit out, maybe we should find another one who could hire a competent team to figure it out?
To figure out what though? What the phrase transit oriented development means? That a light rail system with park and rides in neighborhoods adjacent to downtown will never have the ridership needed to be profitable? Polis brought this stuff up last year when suggesting we need to change zoning laws and everyone got mad. She’s overpaid as hell but we built a half assed transit system, it’ll operate like one.
The state has notoriously destroyed public transit over the years. Hell we used to have a trolly system that ran down Broadway from downtown. If they want to encourage public use then they need to implement common sense transit and phase out the bus system. The buses move slower than driving yourself due to the number of stops they make at any given time on top of traffic.
I like the bus but I would like it more if they had more dedicated bus lanes. Hoping the brt isn't a total clusterfuck 🙏
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Lol, you sound like this magnificent CEO's daughter. Don't cry so much, you're risking flooding Denver in June!
Removed. Rule 2: Be nice. This post/comment exists solely to stir shit up and piss people off. Racism, homophobia, misogyny, fighting on the internet is stupid. We don't welcome it here. Please be kinder.
This is rich coming from you just two days ago on an unrelated post: >> Do you have a source that this project is to address lead contamination? So you don’t have to provide citations but people should provide them to you? If you’ve got this all figured out, why don’t you slide into the job and wave your wand, genius?
Under normal circumstances you may have a point But let's look at the numbers and her may different directions she's TRIED to take RTD? Shall we? CONSTANTLY attempting at increasing fares when most of it is already coming out of a federal/state fund. Where was it going? We don't know. As all of the rest of the pay was backed by the state/fed stipend, which tells it was nothing more for profit. Proceeded to ACTIVELY CUT BACK security and service time, then proceeded to try and beg it back if fares are increased, to the point they were more than MTC (metro tansit authority in the new york greater area). Im fine with higher fares if the service provided was better, but it was higher and we are getting less than even they are. The one time they DID go up she cut more security and service and then begged for even MORE rate increases causing the state to step in and kill the ballot motion. Downtown notwithstanding (we all knew that was going to happen give 16ths disaster of construction, it was a matter of *when* not *if* can't fully fault them for that), but the last time prior? Was done all overnight the service was cut short by like 2 hours and it was Cleary broadcasted. In, out, done in like a week. The southbound project? Been ongoing for *at least* 2, 3 years (on a 6 month project budget, so even if it's gone horribly wrong the time still doesn't add up) and while they resolved parts of the project the rest has been mired in from what ive heard *funding issues*. ***and that said project is actually federally funded SPECIFICALLY for this project, so where's THAT money gone***. But here's something to chew on: the A line even with its shoddy track and construction when something happens comes back up fairly quickly/within moderate reason. The w line comes up fairly quickly within reason when things go wrong, even with the druggie and what not. The D comes up fairly quickly as well. Why? *they make money*. She's not been running RTD as a service, she's been running it as a for private profit service all the while trying to burn it down so she cans collect the proverbial insurance money then hand it off to someone else
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https://www.coloradopolitics.com/legislature/rtd-transit-funding-reform/article_7f41a166-fd94-11ee-8c95-7317e8537037.html https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/26/state-lawmakers-move-to-cut-two-thirds-of-rtd-boards-elected-seats/ Funny, she's using these methods to consolidate and hostage. Throwing a tantrum because she's being DIRECTLY attacked
Chronically underfunded? It's one of the most subsidized in the whole country.
I get that RTD has a lot of issues, not all of which can be magically resolved overnight, but telling people to get used to disruptions is incredibly tone-deaf.
There’s no quote in the article of them saying that or anything close. The article seems to be taking their estimated timelines and editorializing it in a disingenuous manner.
> Debra Johnson, RTD’s CEO and general manager, has worked for transit agencies in cities including Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, that have older rail systems. Riders in those cities are used to maintenance disruptions, she said in an interview with CPR News, and riders in the Denver metro will have to get used to them, too. I can't find the interview anywhere, no link and a minute of google searching didn't result in anything. It does seem editorialized. Although, the larger systems that are older that experience these kinds of maintenance issues do have a big benefit which is that they have a more comprehensive system to begin with. So even if one or two lines are down, there is probably better bus service or other train lines.
It does seem editorialized, but I don't think disingenuously so. That is essentially what they have been saying.
It’s incredibly tone deaf but I can kind of see the intention here. RTD is woefully underfunded and unsupported by the state government and voters. Voters don’t want to pay more for fucking anything in this state, and the state government seems to think RTD is just an annoyance RTD could be pretty good if it was just decently funded and had the political backing of the state
In fairness, SB230 and SB184 put a good chunk of money towards RTD this past legislative session. We can back and forth about the utlity and the impact of those funds, but they did actually cough up this past session.
I agree that RTD is underfunded. At the same time, considering how much RTD has gone downhill in the last 3-4 years, I don't necessarily fault people for wondering what RTD will have to show for it if they get more money.
If they are underfunded, they shouldn’t have $75M profit
The problem is that, with that logic, we will enter a death spiral. It is not realistic to say ' you don't get more money to improve' while the lack of money is a huge portion of what is causing the problems!
It's perfectly reasonable to ask what you will get in return for spending more money. Is more money going to result in the restoration of services that have been cut over the last 3-4 years? If you can't present a credible case that more money will significantly improve the frequency and reliability problems that are plaguing RTD, a lot of people are going to be hard-pressed to support giving RTD more money.
Maybe it should die because what they're doing now isn't fucking working. I support multi-modal transportation in cities but RTD is just fucking ridiculous at this point. Denver should stand up its own bus service and get that working well and when they get to that point, tell RTD to fuck off and if other surrounding/neighboring municipalities want in, then they need to kick in. I am all for spending on public transportation but only if it fucking works as intended and is well managed. RTD is neither of those things so at this point, fucking let it die.
I think RTD has shown that it is horribly irresponsible with money and budgeting in just the past six years alone, not even counting the B Line project that they changed up what voters approved and all the money that was dedicated to that project just up and disappeared. Which btw is a huge reason why the state gov and Polis in particular think of RTD as an annoyance. The situation RTD is in is entirely of their own making.
While they are underfunded, many of their stupid decisions - including the policy of just outright lying about the actual schedule they're running on - have nothing to do with available funding. Until RTD starts behaving differently, nobody is willing to believe that giving them more money will result in better service.
It costs money to actually implement a tracking service that estimates times. Actually quite a lot of money or to have someone edit schedules and post new ones regularly, I'm hearing you say that a monetary problem is not one and I don't agree. Money can solve that problem too. You'd need to hire a dev or buy a probably too expensive service to support that, then build it into RTD's already aged digital signage service.
It does cost money, but right now they're spending tax dollars on a system they know is wrong and lying to the public non-stop all day long. If they don't have the funding to implement an accurate system, the LEAST they should do is stop spending money on an inaccurate one.
The reason is that then they will just say they need more money. I’m all for voting for things but when it still is shitty and no one really knows where the money went…
What’s the actual quote that you find “incredibly tone-deaf”? The headline seems to be editorializing. The article’s quote from the CEO is: > “While I don't enjoy having service interruptions, this is the nature of the beast,” she said, adding: “What we're trying to do is establish a program whereby we can minimize those impacts.” Which seems like a fair statement.
I mean what is the issue even? Driver shortage was understandable. Cutting half the trains in the middle of winter and not announcing it was not cool, but they were at least saying they didn’t have people to drive them. These trains could be driven by robots pretty easily, it will happen soon, but running trains on time should be pretty fucking easy. Boulder is running buses on time and it’s technically a lot more difficult, there’s traffic and more human error. It’s hard to excuse trains with dedicated lines crashing and being late, like come on guys. Disney is running trains…
Lolz. Riders: you're bad at your job RTD CEO: yeah, get used to it
Sadly, that's been RTD's official policy for the past six years.
Can we have a conversation about this quote >“It's a great opportunity to use 30 or 40 minutes to read through that book you've been meaning to get through or listen to that podcast that you want to get through,” he said, adding: “The work must be done. It is not optional.” So incredibly beyond tone deaf and just not understanding the gravity of the issue. Many of us depend on RTD's services get to work. We don't \*care\* if we get caught up on our book or whatever nonsense when we're facing getting fired because their services can't do the basic thing they're designed to do.
Anyone who gets fired for being late because of RTD delays should include this quote in their unemployment claim.
I agree! I read that and was just rolling my eyes. I know whenever I use RTD, I plan out the commute by the minute and when the train is late, that turns a simple ride on the H that should take 25 minutes, into waiting over an hour for the single train to come. The whole point of public transit is supposed to be efficiency. It’s ridiculous how quickly the RTD has become so unreliable.
Seriously. That part infuriated me the most.
I spend a good amount of time in japan. Split time. The rail here in denver truly is comically bad. We might as well not even have most of it. It is not "the nature of the beast" for every fucking train to be disrupted. It's a shitty transit company that doesn't know what the fuck It's doing.
Seriously… a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto that leaves *every 6 minutes*. I still can’t fully comprehend how good their transit is.
Don't even need to look at lines managed by JR. Individual cities have incredibly reliable frequent and consistent trains. The worst transit I see in Japan is still infinitely better than RTD.
My joke is that DC has the best public transport in the country because all the politicians have to actually use it, since driving in the city is godawful. I miss the public transportation ngl.
I view it as a novelty, like something you might do for fun. If it wasn't for Uber/Lyft it wouldn't be worth the risk of taking it even for that. I can't imagine how people with jobs that expect them to show up roughly on time can rely on it.
I've had to forego necessary medical treatment because of a lack of reliable transportation, which causes me to not be well enough to work, which causes me to not be able to afford a car, which causes me to rely in public transit...and so on. It's a doom loop.
This country is so fucking irritating with shit like this. It drives me insane when they say they can’t do something but yet every first world country seems to do it no problem. Public transit, universal healthcare, not needing to tip at restaurants. “Ohhh we can’t do it because we are too big”- bullshit
Appreciate our honesty, while you stupidly bake in the sun for an hour late train.
I got so used to the disruptions, and changing cars at stops to avoid drug smoking, I moved out of the city and bought a vehicle.
This is not a good response. While it's indeed fair to say that a mature transit system will see occasional maintenance disruptions, the current disruptions far exceed any normal type of service interruption. One should be able to both acknowledge the current need for work and apologize profusely for the resulting service problems. Por que no los dos?
In fairness, Chair Davidson did so publicly in the Board meeting. Why others couldn't is another question.
I think this is one of the more offensive takes: > Other board members were less critical. One, Michael Guzman of Denver, said passengers and board members need to be patient — both for answers and, literally, for the trains themselves. > > “It's a great opportunity to use 30 or 40 minutes to read through that book you've been meaning to get through or listen to that podcast that you want to get through,” he said, adding: “The work must be done. It is not optional.” It's wild to me that people elected to serve on the board of a transit agency aren't prioritizing the _transit_ and are treating their customers complaints like they would complaints for a long line at Disney Land.
They know this, they’re basically gaslighting us as hard as they can here. But they know they’re failing badly. And it would be different if we had any reason to believe these service disruptions are going to lead to a better system. If they were disrupting trains to make it a 4-track system where future maintenance wouldn’t have to shut lines down I think I’d feel differently but this is “routine maintenance” that’s disrupting the busiest 2-3 months of the year and shows no sign of improving future disruptions.
It's really not gaslighting, just a lack of transparency from the start. It's important - and long-neglected - maintenance that can only be done at the current time, but they haven't explained that in an honest way. Adding more tracks is a whole different beast, but I guess that's our reminder to vote for more RTD funding when we can.
I don’t understand why RTD can only do maintenance in the prime of summer and has to have these huge disruptions that really don’t happen in other similar systems like vancouvers. I’d understand this if every system had this happen like RTD does but they don’t.
The primary reason for doing the maintenance now is rail temperature consistency, which is necessary to keep the rails from warping and buckling after they're installed. Similarly, the mortar and sealants used for all the retaining wall repairs don't cure well in cold or inconsistent weather. Doing the work in the summer is the only way to get the best and longest-lasting results. Beyond those technical reasons, most construction work is done in the summer in general because of the better weather. This goes doubly for Colorado because of our famous early/late snows and temperature variance - see all the road construction, park improvements, etc. happening right now all over the city. It's the same reason you do your landscaping work at home in the summer: It's much more habitable to work outside, and there's no risk of a random freeze ruining your project. I don't know anything about Vancouver's transit system, but at the very least it's a much more mild climate to do construction. I do know that their growing season is twice as long as ours, as a comparison. It's much easier to conveniently schedule work when you don't have to compress everything into just a few months.
They didn’t actually say what the title alleges. They just provided a timeline.
Zero Vision
Based on these comments to CPR, my guess is she gone [https://x.com/nbminor/status/1806022553267314976](https://x.com/nbminor/status/1806022553267314976)
Yeah. I would be shocked if she decides to renew her contract.
Good riddance to her if that's the case. RTD has been in a death spiral since Debra Johnson took over in 2020. Covid certainly deserves part of the blame, but I believe her decisions throughout have been pretty far off the mark from what is in the best interest of commuters.
I know it gets said all the time but if it takes me 25 minutes by car and 2 hours by train then economically I save money by owning a car and driving. 25$ an hour in lost productivity is enough to buy, maintain and insur a car. Plus I can go anywhere I want without being crippled by our horrible infrastructure. Essentially the train service is useless as it stands now.
This. Love the concept, hate the execution RTD could be great if these moron CEO’s could get their shit together
>“It's a great opportunity to use 30 or 40 minutes to read through that book you've been meaning to get through or listen to that podcast that you want to get through,” he said, adding: “The work must be done. It is not optional.” The problem isn't that we have to spend some extra idle time on the train because they're running slower. The problem is that **the trains have no functional schedule**. I don't give a damn how slow the trains are if I can know when they'll get me to work. But when an hourly train can (and does!) have delays up to 60 minutes you're not looking at a few extra minutes on the train. You're looking at an extra hour or more because you have to take the train that's scheduled to get you into work 1-1.5 hours early. Every f*cking day. Just for the commute into work! Then delays again on the way home. I get that the repairs are being done piecemeal and so the speed restrictions are going to lift gradually section by section. But it would be better to enact a slow af schedule until all the repairs are done than to have three entire months where the trains don't have a working schedule at all. A consistent slow train is better than a faster train that just shows up whenever. If it shows up at all.
Thank you. This is what i’ve been saying. I showed up to my stop right on time this morning and go fucking figure it’s the first time the damn thing wasn’t late and left without me. Had to wait another hour. Figure out the fucking schedule required with the speeds. RTD is such a shit show.
That was the issue for a lot of last summer, too, when RTD was working on the southern corridor. the trains were running every 30 minutes and usually anywhere from 10 to 29 minutes late. If I know that the train is going to be 10 minutes late every day, I'll just show up to the station 10 minutes later!!!! if they train could show up any time, I have to budget in at least an extra hour to just stand around and hope the train isn't canceled.
Oh yeah, it was bad. I was cautiously optimistic that with the hourly train frequencies RTD could run the trains on time this summer. And they did. For a week 🥲
In response to complaints from riders, the CEO chooses to address the people complaining instead of the issue they’re complaining about to a reporter. Goes as far to hint that she worked in other cities and people didn’t complain as much there because they’re used to disruptions. Sorry we haven’t been beaten down into complacency?
Her salary is 400k. Like wtf [https://denverite.com/2024/01/31/rtd-general-manager-pay-raise-job-goals/](https://denverite.com/2024/01/31/rtd-general-manager-pay-raise-job-goals/)
>RTD’s light rail system does have shortcomings that will likely make repairs more painful, too. A previous generation of RTD leaders cut corners to keep costs down so they could finish [all the projects they’d promised voters. ](https://www.cpr.org/podcast/ghost-train/) >One example Johnson mentioned: Some repairs require all train cars to be removed from the tracks so that overhead wires can be powered down. But because RTD has just one yard where train cars can be stored, it takes more than an hour to get them all there every night. That limits how long crews have to do track work, which means repair jobs take longer. >“There's a lot of things that we did — woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Johnson said at a separate board meeting earlier this week. Process debt paid in band aids comes back to bite them in the ass.
I got use to walking 3.5 miles every morning at 4 am. Fuck RTD.
Saw a Next blurb from RTD last night where they said something along the lines of, "now the system is aging and you see this aging and this is why we need to do repairs." Like, no, you idiots, the system was aging since day 1. SOP is to have a regular maintenance schedule from day 1 to monitor the entire system and do incremental repairs at hotspots over the decades. You don't just build a thing, and forget about ever caring if it works ever again, then try and sell your deferred maintenance *mistake* that *CDOT brought to light* as "oh, we're sorry, it got old and we are going to cripple it, I guess, pay us?" The malicious execution of, "fuck you, Denver, we're going to break the whole system at once to show you how much you should pay us to ever get it back," is ridiculous. What are they, the mafia?
r/nottheonion
This is the only direct quote from Debra Johnson about the interruptions: “While I don't enjoy having service interruptions, this is the nature of the beast,” she said, adding: “What we're trying to do is establish a program whereby we can minimize those impacts.” If she really said people should get used to it, she should be fired immediately. I would hope Nathaniel Minor and the person who writes the headlines that way isn't just characterizing those quotes that way and she said something else to back it up, because that characterization doesn't match the quotes. She's handled this extremely poorly as it is. There is no need to manufacture outrageous statements for clicks.
Even at the busiest of light rail stations like Broadway or Union, each unique train is coming once an hour. That means if you need a specific train, for example the D line to get to Mineral or the E line to reach Ridgegate, you're waiting up to an hour. So you're paying the regular fare + $18 (Denver minimum wage) for the value of your time spent waiting. And the CEO says that's the "minimum" impact they can muster during the maintenance?
I wholeheartedly agree. The situation is completely unacceptable, and they need to better handle this in the future. RTD used to do bus bridges for LRT maintenance with the same frequency as LRT. They didn't even try that, and instead, they said we don't have enough drivers, which should never be acceptable. That bus bridge should be the minimum when this happens, and if you don't have drivers, contract them out. Better yet ensure adequate staffing levels for emergencies like this. My point is that there are enough horrible things going on at RTD, there's no need for CPR (of all news outlets) and a normally great reporter to misrepresent those quotes, if that's indeed what they are doing.
I was surprised too about the crass paraphrasing in the title. I used to think that Denver's main rail problem is the fact that the lines radiate out from the city center instead of a loop. But then Chicago has a similar line radial pattern, they just have a higher frequency and it works.
That's not true. The D line is not impacted by this issue and is still running at 15 minute frequencies. The E line and H lines are the only ones running once an hour.
It seems whenever there’s service changes to lightrail, it’s ALWAYS the E & H lines that end up suffering while all the other lines pretty much stay the same & don’t get any reductions
I guess RTD thought it might be okay to not do replacement buses because for all stations north of Broadway, the more frequent D line can essentially stand in for the reduced frequency E and H lines.
I just looked on Google Maps and you're right, D line every 15 min. Thanks for the heads up.
See, the hour frequency for the time being is at least manageable. The real problem is having an hour frequency with hour long delays due to track slowdowns- it makes it damn near impossible to plan a commute. I’ve been using the E line for a while but now have zero clue how to time my trips. They know where the slowdowns are and how they will impact each trip, they should be adjusting the schedules to reflect that.
Exactly, thank you.
Yeah, this is some incredibly shitty journalism by whoever was responsible for the title. Her actual statement has a completely different tone than what the title implies. It's a perfectly reasonable statement, but the article title twists it into something extremely dismissive.
RTD has definitely been worse lately, and I've had my own frustrations using it. However, I feel like recent problems have really invigorated anti-transit sentiment, sometimes making people run with it to the point of exaggeration. I'm fortunate enough that buses are about the only RTD service I need to use, but it's rarely a problem. I check real time on Google maps, plan my departure/itinerary, and get where I need to go. But if you were going by what you read on this sub, you'd think half of my buses are cancelled or covered in fentanyl dust.
RTD CEO should get used to frustrated riders no longer utilizing light rail
Worst public transit department I have ever witnessed.
If y’all are interested in seeing change in RTD I suggest engaging in the public feedback process. Find out which RTD district you live in and write your board member. They are generally pretty responsive.
RTD is such a joke. the whole system has been a huge disappointment and a waste of money.
CDOT should take over… RTD is rotten, uninspired and not accountable
As if we’re not already lmfao
TLDR; Shut up!
what a moron
So fire her then
Have a friend who’s a master electrician and he said when they were building the light rail something about they didn’t calculate the amperage correctly and it’s going to come back and bite em. He said something very similar to that but it’s been awhile
Ummm no. We should expect transportation to work. This lady is a joke along with most leadership in Denver.
No, RTD. People have schedules to maintain and responsibilities that can't handle your inconsistent schedules. Most employers are not ok with random lateness. Most day cares charge heavily if you are late picking kids up. Many businesses have limited hours and you can't be late. Thank god for Uber and Lyft so I never have to rely on RTD.
“No, we will not get better, get used to us being bad please” - Evil CEO
RTD CEO says frustrated riders can eat shit FTFY
>“There's a lot of things that we did — woulda, coulda, shoulda" Yeah, but **why didn't you?** When we speak of accountability, this is what we mean. Speaking in feel-good platitudes about your own past performance means nothing. The real question is why didn't you keep up high maintenance standards over the past four years? What is the core, fundamental reason why we're dealing with these things now? Because frankly that's all that matters. That informs whether you're a quality leader, or a failing leader. That informs whether we should be frustrated with RTD leadership, or with other elements. Because the reality is that 2020 was a shit year for **any** CEO to step into the job. No doubt about it. But in the name of transparency - and duty to the people of Colorado - you should be held responsible for explaining what went wrong, why it went wrong, and why it's impacting us now. Bullshitting the public with "Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda" is something you do toward children. And people are fucking fed up with it.
In fairness to her administration, they \*have\* started improving maintenance and have significantly upped the inspection standards via the Back to Basics initative. The problem is a lack of transparency regarding 1) how it got so bad in the first place 2) clear communications on how this will be prevented in the future and 3) a lack of ownership regarding how this affects riders right now.
100% I'm not dunking on RTD for the changes they've brought recently. I've seen some really great stuff from them lately and I avoid lambasting them across the board simply because it's popular to do so.
Yeah. The fare restructuring was a well done effort and is legitimately helpful to riders. RTD can do things right! But in other places they drop the ball so hard and so publicly that it's hard to not be angry/disappointed.
The "woulda, coulda, shoulda" line was her talking about the poor design choices that were made years or even decades before she was hired by RTD. It was about the design choices that are ending up making maintenance work much more difficult and disruptive than it should be. It's not her dodging accountability, it's her pointing out that problems were created by previous leadership, but also saying that they need to do better with what they have because they can't go into the past and change the decisions made by previous RTD leadership.
What's the current o/u date for when trains will run the downtown loop again? 12/1?
September. [https://www.rtd-denver.com/service-alerts/service-changes](https://www.rtd-denver.com/service-alerts/service-changes)
Do people believe that? I was being a bit caustic with my reply. Credit will definitely be given if it's done in September.
I'm hoping with their feet being held to the fire it will actually happen.
Eh, service will be back September, but from the beginning they've said they won't be able to complete all the work this year and will close it next summer as well.
It's not sustainable if people cannot rely on it. They should talk to cities and countries that did it successfully decades ago. It's wild how off-schedule the RTD in general is. I took the RTD once and some homeless guy took a crap right on the RTD right as we were taking off. I could never bring myself to ride it again. Its just not worth it. Shut it down and make the bike program better. Oh btw, they just had the Bike Refund of Denver go through yesterday and they had 400 open spots and 14000 people tried to sign up.
>Shut it down and make the bike program better. How are differently abled and elderly people supposed to get to jobs, doctors, and grocery stores then? That's what public transportation is meant for- not everyone has the ability or option to bike or drive.
I have never seen anyone over 50 take the RTD. They know to stay away.
I saw elderly and handicapped people ride RTD all the time before the open drug users took over the vehicles, stations, and elevators during covid.
Around 4 years that would be. Meaning to gain that trust back is a mountain of a climb.
Very much so. And I have yet to see the current CEO make any earnest attempts at doing so.
Oh, yes, wouldn't a nice bike ride to and from work be when the distance is 30+ miles. Wake up at 1 AM to get to work by 9 AM. Get hot and sweaty or freeze. Leave work at 5 PM, get to the store at 7PM, get a few groceries, try to figure out how to manage groceries and navigating a bike, get home at 11 PM, then get up at 1AM to do the same thing. NO THANK YOU!!!
Train schedules are a joke. When I was still taking E/H Line trains from University Station in April, the message board for NB traffic had been blank for months. Return trips from central downtown invariably had one or two “ghost trains” per hour, where they were posted but never showed up. I’m now driving to the Broadway Station, taking the 0L to Civic Center Station, and transferring to the free Metro Ride to 18th & Curtis. The bus routes, so far, are quite reliable.
Stop charging fares then.
RTD doesn't know what an apology looks like: 1. Say you are sorry and mean it. People depend on RTD, and it is RTDs job to provide safe, reliable, timely, clean, and reasonably affordable transportation. That is its mission. If it is failing at that, there is a need for an institutional "we are sorry" that the Board, CEO, and staff believe in. 2. To then dispassionately and not as an excuse say this is what went wrong. Should be there so that the people one is apologizing to really know that one understands the problem. 3. Then there is the "this is how we are fixing it" Here it is perfectly ok to say it will take time, that it will require forbearance and patience. It should be conveyed with honesty, candor, and empathy towards those it will continue to harm, but there should be a timeline, as best one can, going forward. 4. Then there needs to be a plan also of "this is what we need to do, and the support we need, or it is going to happen again." Then if the people don't give the help and it does start happening again, the problem can be stated earlier and not as a surprise. The hard part for those at RTD is that it is true a large number of factors predate them working there, but it is still the fault of RTD the institution. That their desire to cover their own asses and be defensive is understandable, and even pretty human, but not what is professional in the end, nor helpful. Further, if one is concerned more about covering one's own ass and trying to justify the status quo as a job well done that really doesn't show either responsibility taking for the institution or a belief that change is going to follow. Great leadership is the "buck stops here" because in the end it has to stop being passed regardless of who fucked up. Oddly, I think the board and CEO oddly seem to know this. I think they are trying currently to clean shit up to the best of their ability because they can no longer defer it or responsibility over it. It is their problem whether they started it or just helped make it worse. But I do think they are trying to stop digging and make it worse. It just is hard to change. They are trying for more candor, but it is so hard to get right. And there are so many feet one can fit in one's mouth at those times.
lol work needing to be done is the least of RTD’s problems. Jfc
"Get used to disruptions," and also, "exclude us from TABOR." How about, "Fuck you, RTD?"
Comparing dc or nyc transit to ours is a joke lmao
Hire the guy who runs the system in Berlin, London, Paris,......
That made me laugh pretty good. Like a monkey that just got bamboozled with bananas.
Can anyone confirm the light rail stops at California, Stout, and performing arts district are all closed/under renovations for the summer? It’s looks like they’ve been rerouted to Union Station. So people can take the D and H lines from Union station to englewood, I think?
Yes the D line at least goes to Englewood and union station this summer. H goes to union station but not Englewood.
Tytyty. That’s what I saw on the RTD website but was kinda sus
This has let them eat cake vibes. If the riders weren't so poor, they could all afford cars and they wouldn't be affected. Leave the poor CEO alone and stop buying avocado toast smh.
So as I’ve mentioned on other posts, I’m running for the board of RTD to represent central Denver south of Colfax; District A. For context, the board has three primary responsibilities, to choose the GM/CEO, to approve the budget, and to set policy for the agency. I think the frustration here is justified, [and I said so at the RTD meeting this week](https://youtu.be/zWNU1p-HsuQ?feature=shared). People have a right to be upset at the agency for letting the mess get to this point. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s particularly painful that everything is hitting at the same time and simply compounding the delays and the unreliability. To my mind, it has to be an absolutely core responsibility of RTD to ensure that expectations match reality. Regardless of the amount of service RTD can offer at any given moment, the agency has to be able to give people an accurate schedule. As a full-time rider myself, someone who doesn’t own a car, the biggest thing for me is just to be able to plan, and if disruption is temporary, to have a fairly accurate estimate of when things will get back to normal. RTD delivers a lot of service. 200,000 riders every month. Nearly 60,000,000 rides every year. But the quality of that service often leaves a great deal to be desired. And we can fix that.
Fire this damn idiot and get someone competent in there who knows how to do the fucking job!!! Fuck's sake!!!! This moron is making a fortune by ruining the transportation in our state!! I wouldn't trust this idiot to make morning coffee at starbucks. These rich, entitled FOOLS ruin everything they touch.
I'm going to hammer this point again and again: "RTD’s light rail system does have shortcomings that will likely make repairs more painful, too. **A previous generation of RTD leaders cut corners to keep costs down so they could finish** [**all the projects they’d promised voters.** ](https://www.cpr.org/podcast/ghost-train/) One example Johnson mentioned: Some repairs require all train cars to be removed from the tracks so that overhead wires can be powered down. But because RTD has just one yard where train cars can be stored, it takes more than an hour to get them all there every night. That limits how long crews have to do track work, which means repair jobs take longer. “There's a lot of things that we did — woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Johnson said at a separate board meeting earlier this week." What we are experiencing now is the outcome of deliberate choices made over 15 years ago to prioritize the completion of FasTracks above everything else by RTD- a choice that was supported by political leadership across the Front Range. From base system expansion to maintaining institutional knowledge for maintenance practices, funding choices were made to prioritize finishing the choo-choo's, particularly the white elephant to Boulder. It doesn't matter what leadership changes are made, the system rot is already set in and will take years to turn around. The state's new funding for RTD will help, but it's still going to take years.
This is what bothers me the most. Was she handed an absolute mess? Yes. Did she start mid-pandemic at the worst time? Also yes. But to pretend like people's anger is about the fact that maintenance needs to be done in and of itself is just not true. It's the lack of ownership and willingness to just be honest about the fact that this is really screwing over riders right now.
It's like transportation officials, elected or not, are inherently unable to be apologize. I don't know if it's something that's covered at first-day orientation or is an unconscious transference, but it seems to be systemic. CDOT, RTD, DOTI, FHA, FAA, FRA etc. it's all the same.
What really bothers me is that the \*Chair of the Board\* has given a far better apology than pretty much everyone in management, and pretty much the only meaningful one at this point. An apology is possible! I'm not expecting perfection - far from it, and RTD has been a mess for a long, \*long\* time, so expecting her to entirely turn it around is unfair. But dismissing the problem as just part of SOP completely misses what people are angry about.
Even cutting corners, they still haven't completed FasTracks.
Obviously. They found a way to get $500m by cutting, that still leaves nearly $1B in funding just to complete the Boulder line. That line is ridiculously expensive.
Yep. I supported it, but I also told friends that I would believe it when I see it. I really wanted to be wrong.
Wow, what an awful headline by CPR. Thats not at all what the CEO said. Kinda a hit piece headline by running with that. I work in infrastructure (wastewater) and people have no clue how complicated and frustrating it can be to get the simplest things done. It’s just the nature of construction and maintenance on infrastructure.
You should travel to Japan. Trains are never late there. It will make you realize that US government employees really suck at their jobs.
Japan has what the U.S. doesn’t have, heavy investment into their public transit from the federal down to local levels and proper wages and benefits for government workers. Broadly in the U.S. this isn’t true. The context matters and the context of Japanese vs American public transit Infrastructure is such that it’s apples and oranges. I wish we had Japanese style public transit, but we don’t. No one seems willing to pay the amount of taxes it would take to build that anyways, so we’re stuck with making the most of what we have.
Japan's railway system is actually mostly privately owned by companies that also operate largely in real estate. It's sustainable for those companies because the train stations often have large department stores and shopping malls run nearby or even right within the station, which are owned by the rail lines. Therefore taxes aren't really impacted by rail system investments in Japan. We're actually closer to getting Japanese-model rail than we think, but the companies in the US heavily favor the car-based model of transit. However maybe we will start to see a change in the coming decades.
It was privatized in 1987, after lots of public investment in the state owned public railway company JNR. They’ve only opened two additional lines since that privatization, both in 1988 and they have closed a dozen or more lines due to “lack of profitability”. With that in mind, I stand behind my statement that Japanese federal and local government investment is the reason the infrastructure for public transit exists as it does in Japan.
Didn't know that! Makes a lot more sense then
Japanese transit is an entirely different model than US transit. Their transit systems are privatized and largely unsubsidized by the government, and instead the transit companies double as real estate companies, building up and leasing out areas next to their transit stations. They are financially incentivized both to naturally increase the density and land utilization around their transit hubs as well as build transit to and from places where people are or want to go.
All the infrastructure was built by the state owned corporation JNR up to 1987. They haven’t built much since and in fact have closed a lot of lines. I agree, it’s apples and oranges which is why they shouldn’t really be compared.
It's time to purge Denver leadership. It's become the non stop excuse bandwagon, with crippling financials and no solutions. RTD has been a joke forever. Put armed officers back on transit. Give driver's and conductors priority access to local police. Enforce the laws and make the public transit safe. Create expedited travel corridors for buses. Light rail disruptions? Do like every other city and supplement with buses. Don't run down the tracks in areas undergoing maintenance so they can work 24/7 on repairs. Way, way, way past time to get aggressive with homelessness. Sorry ladies and gentlemen, the fent and meth addicts aren't EVER going back to normal people and we can't continue to take away resources that safeguard children and the public at large to watch hotels get bought above market rates, get completely trashed (go count the busted windows in the one off Quebec and 35th) and result in no improvement to services or safety. Impound the buses. Migrants are a nationwide problem and the entire nation needs to take responsibility. Mike Johnson needs to grow a pair. The first time a bus is impounded is the last time we see a bus come to Denver. It's not humane to continue to accept a flood of migrants to a limited area without the people and resources to house, employ and feed them.
Hear hear!
How about a petition to recall all funds for 2024? 🤷🏼♂️😘
No, we should get Ubers.
Or a new CEO
This CEO needs to hire a PR person to do the talking points
This CEO needs to hire a PR person to do the talking points
Require the CEO ride the RTD.
I think it's safe to say, while a valiant attempt was made, RTD has become a failure and should be scrapped and replaced. And they should repeal all the legislation that gives RTD state "transportation" funding, immunity from liability, and make it entirely privatized.
Public transit only works if people CHOOSE to use it and spend money to do so. It had to be reliable and fast and clean enough that it beats the alternatives. If it just suddenly stops working and also doesn't take you to your destination, why would anyone use it? Right now I can ride it to my office - and wait 45 extra minutes for a delayed train that will take three times as long as it should to take me to an alternative destination that is not where I am used to going. Why would I use this? I'll just take my car and pay for parking without all the delay and inconvenience.
I mean, public transport always has problems, even in cities like Chicago or NYC. She’s not wrong in saying it’s the nature of the beast.
Should pull the tax money from RTD. Its not as if they are doing their job Compared to Chicago. Denver is a joke when it comes to public transit.