Colorado Springs, CO – Ironically, the Amalgamated Transit Union’s (ATU) demands are making bus drivers less safe. They were supposed to protect drivers.
The ATU demanded both RTD and Mountain Metro suspend fares and institute rear door boarding to protect drivers. RTD and Mountain Metro have since complied with the demands, but it may not be for the better.
Mountain Metro
The Director of Mountain Metro, Craig Blewitt, said he looks at their ridership numbers every day. Blewitt said when comparing last Saturday, March 28, to this Saturday, April 4, the amount of people riding a bus increased by 38%. “Before we started the rear door loading and suspension of fare, we had seen a reduction of 2/3 in our ridership on our fixed route buses. So, there was the ability to do some natural sort of social distancing within the bus…
From: KOAA News5
According to the KOAA article, busses were packed, not allowing for the social distancing guidelines to be followed. In fact, one regular passenger chose to make the two-hour walk home instead of cramming himself onto the bus with other riders.
So, not only is this policy demanded by the ATU not safe for drivers who now have packed busses, but it is not safe for riders.
Mountain Metro says they are now looking for ways to curb ridership.
Regional Transportation District (RTD)
RTD has also complied with the ATU’s demands to waive fares and implement a rear door boarding, according to Colorado Public Radio.
As we discussed last week, $232 million was funneled into RTD through the federal stimulus package, despite ridership being down 30%.
It has not been reported whether this had the same effect of causing crowding on busses. Our guess is the RTD experienced a similar increase in ridership due to suspended fares.
COVID-19 is proving that there are a number of issues with publicly funded transportation.
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Oh please. And where is the stats for how many RTD riders are suddenly dropping dead or end up in the ER?
This is an unmitigated disaster. We had a minor problem with Covid-19 (TM).
Then the government stepped in and made things far far worse.