Both RTD directors — she of District F, he of District A — were sworn in on January 6, part of a freshman class of seven elected in November. Chandler is a conservative, a Colorado native and a suburbanite who lives in southeast Aurora. Nicholson is a liberal, a California native and an urbanite who lives in the middle of downtown. She comes from the nonprofit world. He comes from the tech sector. She's quick. He's chill.
But this ostensibly odd couple is united by one big thing: the majority of East Colfax Avenue between Broadway in Denver and Tower Road in Aurora, which runs through their districts. They effectively share custody of Denver's most infamous bus line, the 15. And since taking office, they've been appointed to RTD's Operations Safety and Security Committee, setting aside their differences in an attempt to make their newly adopted baby as healthy as it can be.
"We're also friends," says Nicholson.
"Yes, we are," Chandler says, "even though he voted against me."
"I didn't actually vote against her," he counters with a smile. "But I did endorse her opponent."
Chandler and Nicholson have accepted Westword's offer to ride down East Colfax on the 15 one recent Saturday while chatting about the past, present and future of this notorious line. They meet us at Union Station at 9 a.m., coffee in hand and ready to roll. Well, mostly ready. She is a peppy, up-and-at-'em early bird; Nicholson had to groggily drag himself out of bed.
We head to the escalator that takes us belowground to Gate B8, the arrival and departure spot for the 15. But we've barely stepped off before Nicholson is performing transit-focused public service.
"Do you know where Winehouse Street is?" asks a passerby, bundled in numerous coats and hauling a huge pack.
"Do you mean Wynkoop Street?" responds Nicholson.
The passerby — perhaps a let-down Amy Winehouse fan — nods. Nicholson gives him directions, and he ambles off. "It's better to tell people to go through Union Station, not try to go around it," Nicholson says. "The straightforward way is easier."
Coincidentally, we're about to board one of the most straightforward buses in Denver. The twelve miles of East Colfax that comprise the 15 bend only slightly as they stretch toward the line's Aurora terminus. Running between 14th Avenue to the south and 16th Avenue to the north — spoiler alert: hence, the 15 — the regular line and its speedier sister, the 15L, carry over 20,000 passengers a day, making this Denver's most-ridden route.
As a result, it's bound to have the most, um, character. And that unsavory perception seems to cling to the 15 no matter who's in charge.
"There's this cycle, right? You don't ride the bus because it's unsafe. Well, it's unsafe because you don't ride it," Chandler says as we pay our fares and settle into our seats. (Neither she nor Nicholson have offered us complimentary passes for this morning's ride: This isn't the guest list at a rock concert, and you don't get in free just because you know the headliners.)
Aside from us and one other passenger, the bus is empty. It's Saturday morning, after all. But that goes to Chandler's point.
"When you get on a bus, and you're the only person on it, it can get a little creepy when someone else gets on it, whether they're going to harm you or not," she says. "There's safety in numbers. So if there was, like, twenty people on the bus, you wouldn't feel as weird. It's just this weird dynamic. We need to increase the ridership, really, in order to increase the ridership."
Rehabilitating the 15's reputation for filth, menace and rollercoaster-like ricketiness, however, will take more than pointing out this catch-22.
The bus lurches forward, and suddenly we're above ground. Sunlight streams in. And as the driver brings us out of downtown and past the Capitol, headed east, passengers start to fill those seats.
Colfax and Grant Street
"Unfortunately, I think what's happened is that RTD has grown too big for its britches," Chandler says, "and so we're not doing the core services well. In my mind, we need to pull back and deliver the core services to the people who need it the most. Because the core services aren't servicing anyone well right now."Those core services should seem obvious — the Colorado General Assembly formed RTD in 1969 for exactly that purpose — but they're under constant revision and redefinition. RTD's System Optimization Plan from 2022 refers to core services as the "backbone" of what it does, and that roughly equates to getting people from point A to point B as quickly, efficiently and safely as possible
But that's easier said than done, especially when you're an incoming RTD director who's jumping onto a swiftly moving vehicle, as it were...and when almost every RTD rider has their own set of needs, including para-transit passengers with disabilities.
"When you have transit-dependent and para-transit people who are not being serviced well, and you're also trying to service somebody who lives way out in Douglas County or way out in Jefferson County, they need to be focused on first," Chandler says. "That's what we should do as a compassionate society, but that's what we should do as taxpayers too, right? We're paying for a service. It's the old adage: Do one thing, and do it well."
Chandler identifies that core business as transit. It's another strategy as circular as an RTD route: Get back to the core by getting back to the core. But she digs into specifics when it comes to security, one of the major issues she ran on in 2024, when she was elected by voters in District F, a sprawl that comprises more or less all of Aurora — from Anschutz Medical Campus on the northwest to the edge of Elbert County on the southeast. Until 1980, RTD directors were appointed; since then, they've been elected by residents of their districts for four-year terms, with a maximum of two terms. It's possible that both Chandler and Nicholson will hold their seats until 2033; at that point, RTD will exist in a completely different Denver.
"My platform was focused on security," she says. "Security is very important to me. Security has a lot of different components, so that means not only making sure that you're safe on the platform or at the bus stop, but it also means fare collection. Enforcing fare collection means you're less likely to get people who are using RTD for a purpose other than transit."
Depending on how you view it, Chandler's euphemism — "people who use RTD for a purpose other than transit" — could apply to two types of passengers: those experiencing homelessness and those wanting to commit crimes. The two don't directly correlate, of course. Homelessness and crime are never going to disappear from RTD, especially the historically gritty 15, but Chandler feels that RTD's new Impact Team program, which was launched in 2024 as a way of assisting passengers via "outreach ambassadors" stationed at major stops, can go a long way toward increasing security and comfort while riding. She's also a proponent of increasing the number of fare-collection inspectors on light rail.
Nicholson offers another type of RTD employee that may be able to help shore up service and efficiency. "We've talked about having secret shoppers on rides, people that are kind of looking and seeing and reporting," he says. "Not that we're spying, but we have a code of conduct in place."
Chandler and Nicholson agree that the benefits of raising RTD's fare-box recovery system-wide will pay dividends beyond monetary ones — not that the monetary aspect can be ignored. Fare-box recovery is the ratio between what is spent on operating costs and what is collected in passenger fares, and RTD's is terrible. It currently sits at 5 percent, which means for every dollar RTD uses toward services, only five cents comes from what passengers pay in fares (including what some employers spend on EcoPasses for their workers). Before COVID, it was 20 percent, just below the national average in 2019 that was about 30 percent.
But RTD's fare-box recovery plummeted during COVID and has yet to bounce back. The rest of RTD's funding comes from taxpayers, and Chandler and Nicholson both consider themselves fiscally conservative when it comes to that money.
"RTD has a 2,500-square-mile service area overall," Nicholson says. His own District A doesn't look that large, geographically, but it's the densest, encompassing most of central Denver south of East Colfax as well as Glendale. "We have one of the largest service areas of any transit service in the country, just in terms of if you drew it on a map. I think RTD is like any private business in that our service has to be attractive to customers. They pay for that service, and if it doesn't reach a certain level for them, they won't use it.
"The only difference between us and a private company offering that service is we get a very, very large amount of money from the taxpayers to make that service financially sustainable," he continues. "But just because we're getting a billion dollars every year from taxpayers, that does not do away with our need to be of value to our customers. If we were absolutely abysmal, no one would ride."
His math checks out. RTD collected roughly a billion dollars in 2024: $888 million in sales tax money flowed into its coffers in 2024, with the remainder coming from federal grants. And indeed, there are plenty of people filing onto the 15 this weekend morning.
But the elephant in the room — or rather, the one that's stampeding down the center of Colfax — is BRT. The Bus Rapid Transit project, which began late last year, has already turned Colfax from Grant to Williams Street into an obstacle course of heavy machinery, concrete barriers, confusing signs and drivers confused by them. The goal is to build a dedicated bus lane down the middle of Colfax, one that aims to offer faster times, safer rides and better access for those with disabilities. Over the next few years, that construction will eventually stretch all the way to Aurora, funded by $150 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act money.
Our bus gingerly picks its path through the chaos, in the process displaying one of RTD's greatest strengths: the generally high caliber of its drivers. Ours makes running a complex and stressful gauntlet look easy.
It isn't just Colfax that's being torn up by BRT, though.
"I know this is extremely hard on these businesses," Nicholson says. In fact, many small businesses along this section of Colfax have voiced concerns about their ability to stay open through a drop in available parking and customers reporting difficulty in finding the front door. "I've met with business organizations. We understand that the constant construction is forcing traffic onto neighborhoods on either side of Colfax."
He admits there is no fix, let alone a cure. A program called Business Impact Opportunity, which plans on awarding grants to small Colfax businesses hit hard by BRT, is accepting applications from now through March 18, administered by Denver Economic Development & Opportunity. Whether these grants will be significant enough, or come soon enough, to keep endangered small businesses from extinction remains to be seen.
Nicholson's taking the long view: "When you're building public transit, like with BRT, you're not building it just for today, tomorrow, the next five years or the next ten years. This is something that is designed to serve us in the region in 2050."
"Chris and I agree on a lot, and we also disagree on a lot, just because of our perspectives," Chandler notes. "And so I'm not always a fan of BRT because of the disruption, because of the squeezing of lanes, because what it's forcing people to do. You know, as a Colorado native, it doesn't feel very welcoming to me. It doesn't, in my mind, connote the Western spirit."
Colfax and Krameria Street
Our bus finally clears BRT construction as it heads further from downtown. An elderly man boards at Krameria Street; he's carrying two stuffed paper bags from Safeway, just down the street on East 14th Avenue. At this point, the 15 is running at roughly 50 percent capacity. It's quiet, even sleepy. One passenger is listening to rap on his phone, speaker on, but he's holding it up to his face and keeping the volume down. There is no filth, no menace. Nothing threatening is afoot. The bus is clean and smells fine. The distinct tang of pot clings to at least one passenger, but that's about it.The rollercoaster vibe is definitely here, however.
"Have you noticed that? Our teeth are shaking," Chandler says as our bus hits a particularly rocky series of potholes; the Wild Chipmunk at Lakeside might be smoother. "The roads are so bad in Colorado that you can't even ride the bus very comfortably."
Still, she says the working relationship between RTD and the Colorado Department of Transportation is "pretty good," before pivoting to what she feels is a bigger governmental roadblock. "I think our relationship with the legislators is the one that's a little more tenuous. Every once in a while, if they don't think that we're doing our job well, they threaten us with budget cuts. I think the reality is that we're more likely to have friction with the state legislators than CDOT."
With such vast sums of public money in play, legislators would be remiss not to keep RTD under a microscope. But RTD directors also face pressure closer to home: their own voters.
"Bottom line, we represent the constituents of our districts," Chandler says. "That's it. That's why we're elected. That, to me, is the biggest thing. I'm not responsible for anybody but those who elected me. Now, that also means that the people who elected me are holding me accountable for the fact that they pay a tax, and they're not getting back the service they're paying for."
One of the RTD services that taxpayers are funding isn't being provided by RTD at all. In 2020, the pilot program Access-on-Demand was introduced — and it allows RTD to subsidize Uber, Lyft and taxi rides for those with disabilities at no cost to the passenger. Sinking millions of dollars into outsourcing para-transit service to private vendors, rather than using that money to make RTD itself more accessible, has been controversial.
"At our next board meeting, we're going to be asked to vote on a reauthorization of Access-on-Demand," Nicholson says. "We're being asked to authorize an additional $2 million for 2025, but without any information why. Kathleen and I are both very supportive of accessibility, but as financial people, it's our job to ask questions.
"If there's a great equalizer in this world, it's the ability to move," he continues. "It opens up job opportunities, it opens up educational opportunities, it opens up relationships, it opens up commerce. But we can't be a phenomenal transit agency, and also a phenomenal mental health agency, and also a phenomenal criminal enforcement agency, and also a phenomenal drug treatment agency. It is not possible. We need to focus, like any other business, on what we're really, really good at. If you look at any other business — American Airlines, UPS, the Cherry Creek Mall — we don't ask of them, 'Please solve every societal issue in the world.' And yet there are some people who think that it's the responsibility of a public transit company, which is really just a transit company, to solve all of those problems."
Colfax and Tower Road
The 15 doesn't run exclusively through Chandler's and Nicholson's districts. A few blocks of the route, from Quebec Street to Yosemite Street, belong to District B, and the span of Colfax from Yosemite to I-225 is part of District E. So our bus doesn't enter Chandler's District F until we pass the interstate, which is the point where Colfax begins to open up into prairie — and where the 15 comes to its final stop.We're the only remaining passengers. In just over an hour, we've traveled from the heart of Denver's urban center to the outer reaches of its frontier. The bus pulls over onto Colfax's muddy shoulder, just a few dozen yards past the Tower intersection. The wind is blowing hard and cold, unbroken by anything made by humans. Except, that is, for the large, art deco brick building that sits immediately south of where the bus has slowed to a halt.
We disembark and stand in the frozen mud, looking at the majestic structure sitting in a barren field. Ironically, the building — once the home of KOA, the first commercial radio station in Colorado — is owned by RTD's close partner, the Colorado Department of Transportation. This is not a bus stop of any kind. There are no benches, shelters or signs. But who knows?
Decades from now, after BRT has reached or even surpassed this desolate outpost, the rapidly developing suburbia of Aurora may reach all the way out here. And with it will come the need for more transit, faster transit, safer transit, easier transit.
Even now, Nicholson says, RTD is developing a way to tap your phone on the fare box to pay when you board, eliminating the current technological innovation of purchasing a scannable ticket on the RTD app.
RTD isn't exactly moving at the speed of the future, but it's coming.
"There are actually a lot of people in Aurora who commute into Denver on the 15," Chandler notes, "but there are not that many people in Denver who come out to Aurora to go to the restaurants, to go to the malls. It's not a destination stop. We're kind of a bedroom-ish community. But the more you have people being like, 'Oh, there's that cool restaurant in Aurora, and it's not $40 a plate like it is in downtown Denver,' I think the connectivity of RTD might bring people out. Aurora is where you are going to see more growth than you are in Denver. And I think the 15 will have a lot to do with that."
That's something to consider for the future. Right now, the wind is picking up, and we can't stand out here forever.
Someone's phone comes out. An app is opened.
Looks like there's an Uber driver just two minutes away.
