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Home / Albums / Tags RTD + funding 2
- ADAPT (131)
Denver Post Thursday October 11, 1984 Photo by Damian Strohmeyer/Denver Post: In a wide open plaza with almost no one in it, a lone person sits in a motorized wheelchair, back to the camera. In the distance at the other side of the plaza is a city bus, and behind it a group of people stand in a cluster. On the back of the wheelchair there are several bumper stickers, including "Disabled but able to vote", "Bill Armstrong", something with diagonal stripes that is unreadable, and "Build ramps not steps" with a picture of person in a wheelchair doing a wheelie. Caption reads: Lee Jensen at the scene of the ribbon cutting that opened new RTD Broadway station. Eight disabled Denverites protested the opening. Official contends transit funds scarce by Judith Brimberg If metropolitan Denver wants federal help for something like light rail, it must come up with a combined highway-transit plan for improving transportation in the region, the head of the federal Urban Mass Transportation Administration said Wednesday. Even then, administrator Ralph Stanley acknowledged, officials would be better off to rely on local money and public/private partnerships to finance light rail or some other system of mass transit. In Denver for the opening of the turnaround facility at the Civic center shuttle station, Stanley said in the interview that the days of big federal money for such projects are past. Because of tight federal budgets, cities must rely on the income from the 1982 gasoline tax increase for new projects. The 1 cent dedicated to public transit amounts to 1.2 billion a year, only 400 million is for new transit projects nationwide. Noting that cities asking for $36 billion worth of projects are ahead of Denver, RTD board chairman Bryon Johnson said in a separate interview, “it’s clear we will have to do it with our own money. Waiting for federal money is like queuing up in a store that is running out of merchandise.” Stanley said if gasoline tax were raised again, more money would be available for new projects. But noting that the 5 cent a gallon tax barely got through Congress two years ago, he said he thought waiting for another increase in the near future would be a waste of time. There still is federal money available for construction projects, and Stanley announced Wednesday that RTD will get more than $6 million to plan and construct a new central shops facility. Buses now are repaired and painted in shops at the Alameda and Platte garages. RTD General Manager Ed Colby said the new centralized facility would have more sophisticated repair equipment. - ADAPT (101)
RTD bobbles budget, buys rejected lifts By: Burt Hubbard News Staff The Regional Transportation District board of directors rejected to move to equip its new buses with wheelchair lifts but unknowingly included $1.2 million in its budget to buy them. The revelation came one day after the RTD board approved a $185.8 million budget that includes $21.4 million to buy 89 articulated buses for 1983. But the buses will cost the district only $20.2 million. The remaining $1.2 million is slated for wheelchair lifts that won’t be put on the buses. RTD Executive Director L.A Kimball has said that handicap ridership on the more than 300 buses that now have lifts do not justify the cost for the new buses. “WE HAVE CARRIED as many as 50 (handicapped) individuals on any particular day using 331 vehicles,” he told the board Thursday. RTD board member Charlotte Houston said Friday she didn’t realize that fact when she made a motion Thursday to add $1.3 million to the 1983 budget to outfit all 89 buses with lifts. The board defeated the motion 10-5. Those voting against the lifts said current low-frequency ridership by handicapped people doesn’t justify equipping more buses and cited increased maintenance costs of the lifts. Asked about the snafu, Houston said, “I guess I should have known.” Nor did RTD board member Tom Bastien know the lift money had been kept in the budget when he moved to equip half of the new buses with lifts. The board rejected the move 8-6. “THAT’S INTERESTING,” said Bastien Friday. “Why didn’t the (RTD) staff tell us?” Even Kimball said he wasn’t aware that the lift money was still in the budget. Kimball blamed the error on a staff member who, he said, apparently had failed to delete the money for the lifts from the budget. The confusion dates back to July 1981 when the district signed a contract with M.A.N. Truck and Bus Corp. to buy the 89 buses for $21.4 million with the lifts included. The buses were to be delivered between June and September 1983. But in December 1981, the RTD board voted to take the lifts off the buses and reduce the total price by $1.2 million. The 1983 budget, however, failed to reflect the reduced price. Kimball said the omission won’t alter the budget. “THERE’S NO NEED to change it,” he said. “We won’t spend it.” About 80 percent of the cost of the lifts would have been paid by a federal grant. And Houston and Bastien said the fact that they wouldn’t have had to increase the budget to get the lifts didn’t affect the vote. “I don’t think it would have made much difference,” said Houston. “We needed 11 votes to pass it.” The votes on the lifts came after about a dozen people, including several politicians, urged the board to make the buses accessible to the handicapped. The handicapped community has vowed to try again for the lifts after a newly elected RTD board takes office in January to replace the appointed 21-member board.