By Brad Hubbard | 6/18/2024
It’s probably not unreasonable to say that unless you’ve been living under a rock in Denver, you’ve heard of the latest issues with RTD (Regional Transportation District). Currently they have sections of two lines that have to go 10 mph due to issues with the rail line that is in the process of being fixed. While that in itself is not good, the bigger issue has been RTD’s communication about it.
RTD was quiet about all this until the local media began investigating. Colorado Public Radio (CPR) and the NBC affiliate 9 News have done a tremendous job holding RTD accountable and to that I give them a tip of the cap. They did such a good job in asking question after question that RTD finally did a press conference with one member who was out explaining the situation. That just so happened on the day that a whole lot of people were going to use RTD to get to a concert at Mile High Stadium…sorry, Empower Field and catch a Rockies game.
Apparently RTD was not under any obligation to report the issues with their state regulator who has obviously since found out and is asking for constant updates. But RTD apparently was not required to notify its riders either. Or at least chose not to. That is concerning but the moment is now gone and RTD will be doing nothing but playing catch up on the repair work and on the communication front.
While safety is and should be the number one priority for RTD, not letting people know what was happening, which lines were affected and when things might be corrected caused people like me, who since the pandemic have rarely taken RTD when before I was a daily user, another reason not to use the service. Between this and the issues of safety on the trains and buses and the timeliness of those services, doing your part to take a car off the road and push back on climate change seem like distant goals when presented with these transit issues.
We need more people to use public transit which can mean less gas powered, carbon emitting vehicles on the road. But when you don’t know when or if the train will come and missing it means you wait another hour, well that is just not a recipe for success. Real time updates on an app certainly seem possible as Uber and Lyft can do it. Why that isn’t done for RTD to help riders know if and when the train or bus is arriving or departing confuses even the simplest of us.
What has been a great here has been the work of journalists and I’m not talking about some random person with a smart phone. I am talking about trained journalists who hear about something and do good ole fashion shoe-leather reporting. Contacting, interviewing, requesting documents and staying on the story until they get some sort of answer for the public. CPR and 9 News among others have done a fantastic job in getting information to the public about what is going on with RTD. In RTD’s current state, I have a feeling that RTD is going to be the government organization that just keeps on giving the news media story after story the rest of the year.
Brad Hubbard.com 