“It’s not ideal,” said Ashley Matthews of transportation in the area. Prior to buying a car, Matthews frequently took RTD buses to commute from Boulder to Denver for her job. “It was almost like this vicious cycle of I can’t afford to get a car, but I can’t not afford to get a car.”
Matthews, like many others, believes that the waiting times for public transportation were often inaccurate or too long. “It really is stressful because, yeah, the buses can’t be on time all the time,” she continued.
Her experience reflects a broader frustration shared by many transit riders across the metro area—something RTD hopes to address with its latest round of service expansions. On May 15, RTD Denver announced that it would be adding 27,000 hours in bus and rail services for the remainder of 2025. The changes kicked in on May 25, and the number of buses and trains that ran increased with longer hours and a higher frequency.
RTD makes service changes three times a year in January, May and August. Nine different bus stops and one rail station are increasing services. Additionally, the Free MetroRide has been reinstated, and it runs every ten minutes on weekdays during peak travel hours from Civic Center Station to Union Station along 18th and 19th Streets. RTD Denver has made substantial hiring increases for drivers as a result of the added hours.
“RTD is still kind of building service back up from COVID in 2020 when we cut a lot of service,” said Sam Lewis, service planner/scheduler for RTD. “And the limitation for just being able to bring everything back is just as usual: how many operators do we have? Like, we can’t run the service if we don’t have enough people. So as we’re kind of adding people over the years, we’re able to add more service.”
As for how these extra hours have affected riders, some have already seen the results.
“The schedule change, for the most part, affects me,” said Michael Simmons, a Denver resident who regularly takes RTD to work and for errands around town. “It’s about every 30 minutes on the light rail, which, at times, makes it easier for me when I’m getting off at 10 p.m. to be able to catch a train.” Simmons has also noticed a slight increase in bus frequency since the hours were added, which was one of the main objectives.
However, not everyone has noticed much of a difference. Derek Turner, who lives on Colfax, uses public transportation to get to work and other places in Denver regularly and says the service has remained relatively consistent.
When asked if he’s seen an increase, Turner said, “Um, not necessarily. I think it’s funny, you know, when I’ll be waiting on the bus and then three buses will pull up at the same time, like, three fifteens will pull up at the same time. What happened here? But no, I haven’t really seen the frequency change too much. I will say they’re getting better; obviously, on the weekends, especially Friday and Saturday nights, the buses are going to run late. That’s just the nature of the beast. But, I mean, it’s not terrible.”
Along with these added hours, in January, RTD announced a new transportation service, the ART District Connector. The ART District Connector combines segments of routes 1 and 44 and runs through several big neighborhoods, including Baker, Five Points, Elyria-Swansea and the Santa Fe Art District, the Denver Theatre District and the RiNo Arts District. The goal was to create a route that unites the area’s disparate arts and culture scenes.
“It ends up being sort of like a straight shot through downtown,” Lewis said. “Adding this sort of cross-town, cohesive, straight shot through the city hopefully provides a good alternative or new route for people that they might find more convenient and be more likely to ride.”
While the connector is new, the stops that cover it were already in place, so the route was changed, but no new stops were added. Lewis hopes that the connector will be more convenient for riders, particularly those who live in areas with limited services.
“With the riders on the 1 and the 44, the idea is that they’ll have a more reliable, consistent service when they’re coming from the west side of town to downtown, and then for our riders on the eastern sections, it’s now the ART,” Lewis said. “We’re hoping that ART is kind of a new connection that’s more convenient for our riders.”
Ultimately, these changes should be beneficial for anyone who uses public transportation in the Denver area. Lewis is hoping that the added hours will increase accessibility.
“Right now, we are in a period where we are kind of consistently adding more service when we can,” Lewis said. “We hope that it’s better for all of our customers.”