As a member of RTD’s board of directors, I understand the frustration about the agency’s finances. I share that frustration.

RTD’s current financial situation was years in the making. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, RTD faced a labor shortage that necessitated a significant wage increase to attract and retain critical staff.

After the pandemic, inflation drove operating costs up faster than tax revenues could keep pace. Remote work reduced ridership, and fare revenue declined as a result. Federal relief temporarily covered RTD’s structural deficit until that funding source expired in 2023, after which the agency faced a $282 million shortfall in fiscal year 2024.

RTD began using its strong liquidity position, as well as drawing on reserves, to cover rising operating costs and ongoing investments in the system.

Last year, management outlined a stark fiscal reality. It would be necessary for us to reduce costs by more than $200 million to eliminate the structural deficit. In April 2026, they recommended a 20% service hour reduction to save more than $60 million annually.

The board could have accepted that recommendation. It did not.

Directors pushed back. We questioned management’s assumptions and asked whether something less damaging could put RTD on stable footing, at least temporarily. The public responded with overwhelming concern about service reductions on 16th Street and elsewhere. Our committees split. We disagreed with each other in public, at length, on camera.

Public deliberation is rarely tidy. Our disagreements happened in the open because directors were genuinely weighing the alternatives, rather than simply accepting the recommendation presented by management. The example scenarios requested by the board and designed to give a better understanding of possible service hour modifications unnecessarily alarmed riders. We owed it to the public to be clear that these scenarios were preliminary.

On Tuesday, the board chose its own path. We directed management to build the proposed 2027 budget based on a $20 million service reduction taking effect no later than the May/ June 2027 service changes. The changes in service will be decided through a public process directed by the criteria we set Tuesday night: 1) preservation and growth of ridership, 2) local transit needs, and 3) board-adopted service standards in alignment with the comprehensive operational analysis.

We voted down consideration of a rushed fare increase, which could have raised costs for riders without extensive public input. While a fare increase may be prudent, the board was not willing to short-circuit a critical public process.

The rest of the shortfall will need to be covered over the next couple of years by other options management has identified, such as reducing administrative costs, delaying projects that have not broken ground, deferring capital projects that can wait, and spending reserves to cover the shortfall. Together, they will sustain RTD until we can ask voters how much public transit they are willing to fund.

The critics are right that RTD cannot continue on its previous course. The approach the board adopted gives us a limited window to reduce costs and develop a credible long-term plan for transit in the region. In the coming years, we must demonstrate that RTD is a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars while delivering the high-quality, reliable and safe transit service the public deserves.

Chris Nicholson was elected to the RTD Board of Directors in November 2024 and represents District A, comprising the neighborhoods of Central Denver south of Colfax Ave, Capitol Hill, Upper Downtown, and the city of Glendale.

© 2026 the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.).
Visit www.dailycamera.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.