If RTD Can't Keep the Trains Running on Time, How About Timely Service Alerts?

The one good thing that history traditionally says about Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is that he made the trains run on time. So to counter all arguments that the United States is descending into authoritarianism, there's this: We still can't get mass transportation to stick to a schedule.

I recently ran into this very problem not once, but two weeks in a row, and on the same train — an important set of tracks for Denver residents, the A Line to Denver International Airport, a useful alternative to having your friends and family make the trek out to almost-Nebraska to get you to a flight. Service Alerts are supposed to keep RTD passengers up-to-date on delays and cancellations on various routes...including the A Line.

Emphasis on the "supposed to."

The first time, I was catching a flight to a signing for my new book, Escaping Denver (irony alert). A train was supposed to leave the 38th and Blake streets station at 10:34 a.m. I got there at 10:28, only to see the train pulling away. Was that a very late 10:19 train? Or had the 10:34 train left more than five minutes early? Whichever, the schedule was clearly off; I waited for the next one, which did not come at 10:49 as scheduled, but a couple of minutes shy of 11 a.m. No Service Alert at all by the time I boarded. Small hitch, right?

The next week, I was heading to Tucson for a funeral and planning to catch the 5:34 a.m. train from the same station. The digital display at the stop claimed the train was arriving on time, and then blithely slipped to the next scheduled time as though the 5:34 a.m. train had come and gone as it should have, which it most definitely had not.

The guy next to me with four suitcases and two kids in tow was not happy. "Every damn time," he said, along with some expletives, before sighing out his anger and telling his kids with false confidence that it was no problem, and that another train would be along soon.

I kept an eye on the Service Alerts page on RTD, expecting some kind of explanation about the missing train. Nothing. I kept refreshing the screen, thinking if there was an issue, surely something would be posted so we could all call someone — friends, family, Uber — to help us make the flight that was now, suddenly and unexpectedly, in jeopardy.

Because this wouldn't have been my first encounter with the A Line breaking down completely. About a year ago, some issue prevented the trains from going east past the Peoria station, and everyone had to disembark and wait for RTD buses to come get us. That day, I barely made my flight; others weren't as lucky.

And it's not just the A Line that has problems. Two summers ago, my son and I got trapped in an RTD fucktangle waiting for nearly an hour at the Fiddler's Green stop for a train, which finally appeared and then took a full two hours of stopping and starting to make it back to Union Station. 

So back to that early-morning wait in August...the train finally came at 5:58 a.m., almost exactly when the Service Alert finally hit the RTD website, informing us far too late that the train that was supposed to leave Union Station at 5:30 a.m. was "canceled today due to excessive delay."

I got more information when I contacted RTD directly.

"Overall, for 2024, 98.1 percent of RTD’s A Line trips operated at regularly planned service. For May 2025, commuter rail lines A, B and G operated with service availability of 95.22 percent and on-time performance at 95.59 percent," said Tara Broghammer, RTD public relations specialist.

Turns out that at 2:30 a.m. that particular August day, "the crossing gates at northbound and southbound Quebec were not working as intended," according to Broghammer. These are some of the crossings that RTD had such issues with back in 2017, resulting in the agency having to station human flaggers 24/7 at each one to ensure safety. "In the interim of the repair, travel time was added to multiple A Line trips that had to go through the crossings," Broghammer added. "Some trips may have been canceled for other A Line trips to depart at their scheduled departure times."

But why was the Service Alert so late in coming? And if RTD has digital signage at every stop, why does it not reflect real-world arrival times?

"During the RTD Board of Directors' Operations, Safety, and Security Committee meeting on May 14, 2025, staff gave an overview presentation about real-time information, service alerts, digital signage, mobile applications, and other customer-facing communications," Broghammer replied in an email. "The presentation materials start on packet page 1,166." To save me from almost 1,200 pages, she did note that RTD had recently expanded the hours when employees would set up alerts, which would alleviate the communication issues.

But Marta Sipeki, RTD's senior manager of Public Relations and Engagement, subsequently contradicted that (inspiring us to pull down the original piece based on Broghammer's misleading info). Sipeki insists that RTD has people monitoring the tracks at all times, issuing Service Alerts as needed. "What happened that morning," Sipeki insists, "was that the staff in the control room was scrambling with the gates down. They were trying to get the trains running, and unfortunately, the Service Alert just fell through the cracks."

Are accurate alerts prioritized? "Rail operations are taking a look at that," says Sipeki, "and they're going to be presenting to the board, because they know something has got to be done. So we are looking at how things are going on now, and how we can improve upon them."

One improvement would be to effectively utilize the real-time capability of the digital signage already on the commuter rail platforms — which wasn't working either time I was waiting, and waiting, for a train last month. "It's supposed to be automatic," Sipeki admits. "But obviously, something didn't happen....Technology is great when it works, right?"