PRESS RELEASE — Tuesday, May 23, 2023
MEDIA CONTACT
Molly McKinley, Policy Director, the Denver Streets Partnership
molly@denverstreetspartnership.org | 919-588-9676
DENVER — Advocates at the Denver Streets Partnership are disappointed that RTD cannot provide bus shuttles this week during scheduled service disruptions due to maintenance on the D, H, and L Lines.
“People in the Denver region rely on public transit each day to get to work, school, the grocery store, or wherever it is they need to go,” says Molly McKinley, Policy Director for the Denver Streets Partnership. “These scheduled disruptions without bus shuttles are just another symptom of an insufficient transit workforce. Transit riders need leaders at the local, regional, and state levels working together to address this need. Until then, people who rely most on public transit will continue to pay the price when our region’s buses and trains fail to meet their needs and expectations.”
While public transit agencies around the country are experiencing workforce challenges, there are a number of strategies that local, regional, and state leaders should pursue to increase workforce recruitment and retention, including those outlined in the 2022 TransitCenter report, Bus Operators in Crisis, and the 2022 National Campaign for Transit Justice report, Invest in Transit Equity, Invest in Transit Workers.
In order to to build a stable, skilled, and experienced public transit workforce, local, regional, and state leaders must work together to:
- protect the health and safety of transit workers by adopting practices that ensure workers have adequate restroom breaks and opportunities for physical activity;
- guarantee family-sustaining wages and good working conditions for all transit workers by providing wages that ensure transit workers can live in the communities they serve and making investments in child care and housing for transit workers; and
- expand access to transit jobs and invest in workforce development by removing barriers that exclude people with past offenses; making investments in apprenticeship, pre-apprenticeship, and mentorship programs and employment pipelines developed through labor-management cooperation; and creating opportunities for current transit employees to advance in the workforce.
“It’s long past time that leaders come together to address this workforce shortage, which has been impacting RTD service since before the COVID-19 pandemic,” says McKinley. “A collaborative effort to improve transit workforce recruitment and retention is critical to being able to increase public transit service in the Denver area—which is key to so many state and local goals related to equity, climate, and health.”
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The Denver Streets Partnership is a coalition of community organizations advocating for people-friendly streets in Denver. We advocate for the cultural and systemic changes necessary to reduce our city’s unsustainable dependence on cars and to design communities that put people first.
Learn more at denverstreetspartnership.org or follow us on social media at Facebook @DenverStreetsPartnership, Twitter @BikeWalkBus, or Instagram @BikeWalkBus.