Home > Sport

A light failure
By Taylor Sullivan
tsulli21@mscd.edu

As the new semester starts, lines are where it’s at. Lines at the bookstore, lines in the food court, lines to get into classes and lines to get out, even lines for the bathrooms – unfortunately for me, three cups of coffee later. But the one line that can be avoided this semester? The 10-minute line to get your RTD stickers, those magical passes that gain holders admission to those other lines, light-rail lines C, D, E, F, G and H.

Maybe all of you light-rail riders out there have noticed, but if not, apparently there just isn’t anyone checking passes anymore. According to an article printed last week in The Denver Post, when the length of operational rail doubled late last year, the number of fare checkers was cut in half.

Back when there were only 16 miles of lines connecting central Denver with the Mineral station – or the edge of civilization as I see it – 10 handheld-computer-wielding sadists were employed to ride the trains all day, checking passes and writing tickets to those unlucky bastards who thought they could get away with buying the half-priced-elderly-handicapped-veteran pass.

Now that the fancy new lines have opened up the gates of suburban hell to downtown, the ridership has skyrocketed, but the number of fare checkers fell to six. Six! Six people to cover the 35 miles of rail, the hundreds of daily train rides and the tens of thousands of riders.

So now people don’t even have to try to cheat by buying the reduced fare tickets and feigning ignorance later. They just don’t buy tickets at all.

A similar rail system is in place in Salt Lake City. They also operate on the “honor code” fare system but have 25 armed officers checking fares for their 19-mile system. Lo and behold, they have about 1.7 percent of fare-evading riders. Before the new lines opened, RTD was clocking in at about 4.7 percent with a full force of fare checkers.

Now, with the new lines and an estimated ridership of 60,000, who knows how many free rides Denver is giving away? More than when Mattie Silks ran the town, that’s for sure. If that 4.7 percent has stayed stable – which is unlikely since all the people I know who live in Southeast Denver are skeezy bastards – that means there are more than 3,000 people a day riding for free.

The most disconcerting part of this equation is society’s inability to learn. If all the people from Parker and Aurora, Centennial and Lone Tree see that the ticket machines are basically optional, then eventually no one will be paying, even after new fare checkers are hired. Riots will ensue. People will be enraged. “It used to be free!” they’ll say. “I’ll tell you where you can shove that ticket!” they’ll say.

My suggestion is that those RTD cops actually start doing something productive. The Denver Post reported that RTD contracts out about 40 security guards from a private company, but because of union bitching, apparently they don’t have to do anything but tell people to take their feet off the seats – thank God they have guns for that – and keep the kids from Five Points from harassing the Pavilions crowd. I say that these guys are looking to show some authority, so let ’em. Nobody becomes a mall cop unless they get to actually use those handcuffs and wield that Regional Transportation District badge.

And as for RTD, whatever you do, do something. Denver just spent billions on this new system and you’re treating it like the moving sidewalk at DIA. How hard is it to train someone to use a hand-held computer? In fact, here’s a lead: Auraria parking has plenty of day-ruining ticket writers that you could recruit. Their blood runs cold as ice, which I think is what you’re looking for.