Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) says it will have to raise fares and cut service due to higher-than-expected operating costs and lower-than-expected revenues. I am sure this has nothing to do with cost overruns for RTD’s rail lines that are under construction, right? Because operating and construction funds come from two entirely different sources, right?
Well, no, RTD sales tax collections can be spent on either operations or construction. And it is only a coincidence that RTD is thinking of proposing to raise those sales taxes in order to fund those cost overruns.
RTD has plenty of company, as the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) says that transit agencies across the country are raising fares and cutting service. Interesting how every example in this story, from New York to Salt Lake City, is of a transit agency that is struggling to build or maintain an expensive rail system. If they didn’t have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on trains, they would have plenty of money to operate their buses and wouldn’t have to raise fares and cut service. APTA sort of admits to the connection when it reports that 20 percent of transit agencies say they have not only cut service but delayed new construction due to revenue shortfalls.
