25-03-2025
Colorado groups call for billions in new public transit investments to help meet climate goals
A cyclist rides on the Lakewood Gulch Trail alongside an RTD light-rail track in west Denver on Sept. 6, 2021. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
A coalition of Colorado advocacy groups is urging state and local leaders to scale up the Denver metro area's investment in public transit service by hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending per year.
The new 'vision' unveiled Tuesday by the Alliance to Transform Transportation centers on doubling, from one-third to two-thirds, the share of Denver-area residents living near high-frequency transit lines, defined as providing service every 15 minutes or less. That would require a major expansion of bus service by the Regional Transportation District, the metro area's sprawling and struggling transit agency, with the number of high-frequency bus routes rising from 34 to 83 over the next decade.
'The question we're trying to answer right now is: What does transit need to look like in 10 years' time?' said Danny Katz, director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group, or CoPIRG, at a press event Tuesday at an RTD Park-n-Ride at Broadway and Interstate 25 in Denver. 'And that's important, because it takes a while to build up transit service, so we need to be starting right now if we're going to be increasing transit service and get to the vision that we're putting out there, 10 years from now.'
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The Alliance to Transform Transportation includes CoPIRG, the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, the Denver Streets Partnership and other environmental and progressive nonprofits. The groups commissioned a 2023 study evaluating the potential impact of new public transit investments in the RTD system, especially within its core network of higher-density communities with less car dependency.
Under a plan unveiled last year, Colorado officials are aiming to double transit ridership, biking and walking over the next decade in order to help the state meet its climate goals, part of a broader push from Gov. Jared Polis' administration to encourage more abundant and higher-density housing development. State lawmakers last year passed legislation that will increase funding for multimodal transportation projects and transit operations, including through new fees on rental cars and oil and gas production.
We have to acknowledge that we can't have highly frequent transit in every single part of this region.
– Danny Katz, director of CoPIRG
Advocates say the new funding — which could provide transit operations with a boost of over $100 million annually — is a good start, but their plan calls for a total of over $4 billion in new and expanded bus and train service by 2036. Initially, the largest share of the investment would be directed towards capital costs, like those associated with the construction of bus rapid transit, or BRT, infrastructure. Over time, the funding would shift to cover the operational costs of expanded and higher-frequency service.
RTD, an independent body established by the Legislature in 1969 to oversee transit across all or part of eight Denver-area counties, has been the target of criticism from Polis and state lawmakers in recent years as it has struggled to return its ridership to pre-pandemic levels. A bill to substantially overhaul the agency's governing board stalled during the 2024 legislative session, but a subsequent reform proposal introduced this year would make a variety of changes aimed at increasing transparency and accountability at the agency.
With commuter bus routes serving communities as far-flung as Longmont, Nederland, Brighton and Conifer, RTD's service area of roughly 2,400 square miles is among the largest served by any metropolitan transit agency in the country. The Alliance to Transform Transportation's vision says that new funding for transit 'should be focused on a core part of the region to maximize ridership.'
'We have to acknowledge that we can't have highly frequent transit in every single part of this region,' Katz said. 'There are parts that just don't make sense to have a bus coming every 10 minutes, if it's just a couple homes up in Evergreen. This map is really trying to indicate where we would concentrate those dollars to get that frequency.'
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