One of the lucky ones: I’ve got my Ecopass. Where’s yours?

I’ve been chatting with Boulderites about energy, transportation, and CO2 emissions issues, and I keep hearing a recurring plea: “I’d love to get an Ecopass. I’d use it. Why can’t I get one?”

The attraction of an RTD Ecopass, which provides a lower-cost annual pass good for unlimited rides on all regular RTD transit services, is obvious. The cost savings are enormous.

How cheap is it? My neighborhood (Greenbelt Meadows, in the SE corner of Boulder), participates in the Neighborhood Ecopass (NECO) program. This year I contributed $120 for my pass, since I’m car-free so my RTD usage is high. My neighbors contributed an average of about $75-85/household. If I was to buy 12 one-month RTD passes (at $144/each, to cover the same transit options as Ecopasses), I’d pay a whopping $1728 per year!

The catch: Currently, Ecopasses are available only to employees of participating companies, or to neighborhoods that can generate sufficient participation among residents. Unfortunately, most Boulderites are not eligible for Ecopasses — which has led to significant levels of “Ecopass Envy” in some quarters.

This program appears to have succeeded in generating significant interest in using public transit more. However, if so many of the people whose interest has been piqued by Ecopasses cannot get them, the question becomes: Is this program undercutting RTD’s mission by creating more frustration than ridership?

Conflicting priorities at RTD may be hobbling the Ecopass program — thus preventing it from achieving its full potential to cut carbon emissions, relieve traffic congestion, and other benefits.

Here’s what I’ve learned about this problem so far, and what some Boulderites are doing to try to expand access to Ecopasses…

Conflicting RTD priorities:

• RTD needs revenue, so it benefits from having as many riders pay full fare either per ride or for regular passes.
• Like all transit agencies, RTD is supposed to be increasing its ridership. To do this, it must find effective ways to encourage as many people as possible to not just try public transit occasionally, but rely on it regularly.

This conflict is reflected in the surprising business model of the Ecopass program. Andrea Kaufman Robbins, transportation planner for GO Boulder (the city agency that promotes alternative transportation) explained to me yesterday how the Ecopass program works:

“It operates kind of like an insurance policy. Basically, RTD can offer relatively inexpensive Ecopasses because they’re betting that most people who get them won’t really use public transit that much,” she said.

This means that RTD is not really sacrificing as much fare revenue through this program as one might assume. (Which makes sense: In my case, I would never pay $1728/year for those comprehensive bus passes. But if I did not have my Ecopass, I would definitely ride RTD less, and I might not remain car-free.)

Still, trying to promote ridership through a program that, in effect, bets against ridership seems rather counterintuitive.

GO Boulder, which coordinates RTD’s Ecopass program for Boulder, regularly fields requests from citizens who want Ecopasses but aren’t eligible. At a Boulder East / GO Boulder ETC breakfast meeting this morning, Martha Roskowski of GO Boulder announced that RTD “has put together a committee to expand the Ecopass program.”

Roskowski is engaged with this new effort, and encourages Boulderites who have experienced administrative problems with the program to call her at GO Boulder: 303-441-3266. (Or post a comment below with your experience, and we’ll make sure she gets your information.)

She noted that they hope to find ways to expand Ecopass access to more Boulderites, such as Ecopasses for residents in subsidized (Section 8 ) housing. “We’re also looking for a more reasonable way to price [Ecopasses],” she said.

What have your experiences with the Ecopass program been? If you could get one, would you? And would you use it? How much would you pay for it? Please comment below or discuss this in our forum.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under Government, Public transit, Transportation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.