Threat To Eco Pass Temporarily Lifted

Story by David Cook

RTD staff has temporarily withdrawn its proposal to eliminate the Eco Pass
program - to allow three months to look into the situation. There is now a
proposal from RTD to form a stakeholder group to work with RTD on the
evaluation of the Eco Pass programs. Thanks are due to RTD staff and board
members for taking this step (find your RTD Board member on the district map
- and his or her contact information at: www.rtd-denver.com under "Board of
Directors"). Given that RTD has agreed to take this step, their board
President has asked that concerned citizens stop flooding board members with
mail about the proposal to end the Eco Pass programs.

Next Steps: Establish Stakeholder Group And Conduct Evaluation

The "Save the Eco Pass" group (see: www.ecopass.org) is now requesting that
RTD:
- Affirm that the previously agreed pricing structure for the business and
neighborhood Eco Pass programs be maintained at least through 2004;
- Affirm that the stakeholders and RTD staff group have sufficient time to
examine the present programs so that accurate data and analysis can be
performed.

In addition to these two concerns, the makeup & involvement of the
stakeholder group and the quality of the program review are the next
important steps in this process. An RTD proposal for the makeup of the
stakeholder group is published on the above listed ecopass.org web site. A
recent letter to RTD was also published there (on www.ecopass.org) that has
some preliminary suggestions for the staff/stakeholder group evaluating the
Eco Pass program:

"Given RTD's twelve-year history with the Eco Pass and the massive amount of
public support for and participation in these programs, we ask that you
direct staff to establish a metro-area stakeholder group to:

- Review past pricing efforts at RTD and similar programs at peer transit
properties to find the right price.

- Find out what percentage of metro-area employers currently offering the
proposed replacement (pre-tax commuter benefit) plan actually have the
transit participation levels indicated in staff's post-Eco Pass revenue
projection (7%, 18%, 30% &35% by RTD's Service Level Areas).

- Poll current Eco Pass employers to find out how they view the proposed
replacement program; how or if they might implement it and how they expect
their employees to respond - particularly with respect to the mix of their
modal choices for their commute to work.

- Report back on the results of the adjustment to the Eco Pass program
proposed by staff and approved by the board on 09/18/01 (the 26.25%
per-capita price increase and the 39% - 696% increases in minimum annual
cost adopted at that time were projected to bring the cost recovery ratio
for the program back in line by 2005 and expected to eliminate some of the
more costly, smaller employers from the program).

- Report back to the board in a study session to allow the board to query
stakeholder representatives as well as staff, once these programs have
received an appropriate degree of review."

Keep In Touch

In addition to the above listed web sites for RTD and ecopass.org, the city
of Boulder also has a good web page on this Eco Pass issue:
http://www.ci.boulder.co.us/goboulder/html/transit/eco_pass/eco_issues.html

Thanks for your concern and your interest in this valuable partnership
between RTD and metro-area employers and neighborhoods.

For more information you can look at the Eco Pass web site on www.ecopass.org

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