Denver RTD establishes guiding principles for providing future service

April 30, 2021
The district is now seeking feedback on next steps.

Reimagine RTD was launched in 2019 by the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) to evaluate and forecast the changing transportation needs and to engage with customers and stakeholders.

Over the past year and a half, the Reimagine RTD project team received thousands of comments about RTD through the project website, targeted outreach meetings and a formal community survey. These comments provide a range of feedback about RTD’s current services as well as suggestions and recommendations for improvements.

Based on this feedback, the following guiding principles were developed and approved by the RTD Board of Directors on April 6:

  • Mobility: Provide safe, reliable transportation service to improve the quality of life of residents, customers and visitors.
  • Equity: Remove barriers to accessing transportation services that enable customers to have the freedom to get where they want to go.
  • Financial: Leverage resources and maximize cost efficiencies, serving as a good steward of taxpayer dollars.
  • Partnerships: Pursue partnerships with both public and private organizations that can help identify innovative opportunities to enhance mobility throughout the region.
  • Workforce: Foster a dynamic, diverse workforce that promotes engagement and innovation, recognizing team members as RTD’s greatest asset.
  • Sustainability: Provide sustainable mobility options while continually seeking to reduce RTD’s environmental impact.

These guiding principles establish the foundation for how RTD will provide service in the future, but they are only the first step. As part of Reimagine RTD, the agency is seeking feedback from customers and the public to identify a roadmap for how to achieve the vision set out by these principles. Ideas about how to improve the experience of RTD’s customers, how to increase ridership or whom RTD should look to partner with are requested.

RTD says it is currently facing many challenges, including dramatic reductions in ridership and funding resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Reimagine RTD provides an objective, data-driven process to engage its customers, regional partners, employees and community members in a discussion about how to address these current challenges and to create a plan that will determine RTD’s role in meeting the long-term transit needs of the region.