Should the Regional Transportation District aim to maximize ridership or system coverage?

That question sat at the heart of the RTD Board of Directors’ first Comprehensive Operations Analysis briefing on Thursday afternoon.

With the Denver transit agency facing a budget deficit of over $200 million next year, the analysis aims to re-evaluate the RTD’s entire network assuming a 20% service reduction — a mark the agency is modeling but has not yet finalized.

“Pretty much everything is on the table,” said RTD planner Kiernan Maletsky. “The point here is to start basically from a blank map.”

Thursday’s initial briefing, led by transit design firm Jarrett Walker and Associates — the lead consultant on the project — focused on the dichotomy between two main priorities for transit: ridership and coverage.

Prioritizing ridership would mean focusing agency resources on providing a high service volume and frequency in a densely populated area, said Walker, the firm’s founder and principal associate, in the briefing. It would also be the solution to maximize transit revenue and usefulness for the “average” rider.

Prioritizing coverage, on the other hand, would ensure everyone, even those relatively far from the city center, would have some level of accessible transit service.

“The percent of population near any transit is always lower in the ridership concept and higher in the coverage concept; the percent of population near frequent transit is always higher in the ridership concept and lower in the coverage concept,” Walker said.

Currently, about 60% of the district’s services are ridership-oriented and 35% are coverage-oriented, Walker said. The remaining 5% are services such as FlexRide and Free MetroRide that are superimposed over other routes.

Agency directors on the call largely stated their preference for prioritizing ridership during the analysis, with some noting external pressures to reverse what has been stagnant growth since the COVID-19 pandemic.

District E Director Matt Larsen noted that the state, local advocates and the board itself have identified increasing ridership as a top priority for the agency, but acknowledged the potential for pushback against a high-ridership, low-service area concept map.

“What I really want to know is: will those preferences be sustained after somebody sees a map that doesn’t include their community in it?” Larsen asked.

While the analysis is still in its initial assessment phase, draft concepts will be made publicly available later in the year to gather feedback on the proposed changes.