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RTD given kudos by riders

Bus service gets very high marks on latest survey

Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 11, 2006 at midnight

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Denver bus riders are a happy lot.

Results of a survey by the Regional Transportation District indicated 84 percent of riders on the seven-county system rated the service as good or excellent.

That's the same number as in the last survey four years earlier, but with more saying "excellent" this time rather than merely "good."

The best part of the ride? The bus drivers.

The report was released Wednesday and is based on information gathered last year.

Susanne Henry, senior market research analyst at RTD, presented the findings to a committee of the agency's governing board. She also had surveys of riders from the smaller call-n-Ride on-demand service that RTD uses in areas underserved by scheduled bus routes, and another of riders on the popular skyRide service to Denver International Airport.

Asked to rate various categories of bus service, riders named their drivers the highest, with a 4.3 rating on a scale of five - five being excellent and four being good.

If bus riders were happy, call-n-Ride customers were ecstatic. Sixty-eight percent rated the service excellent and 27 percent good, a combined satisfaction rate of 95 percent.

SkyRide customers, most of whom are employees at DIA, rate that service high as well. Ninety-two percent of the users said it was good or excellent.

RTD periodically polls riders to assist the agency in fashioning its services. The results of surveys of light-rail riders are still being compiled.

The surveys were handed out by drivers to random riders on a representative sampling of all routes. The response rate for completed surveys was surprisingly high, Henry said. Forty-eight percent of bus riders filled out the lengthy survey form and returned them, while the response was 43 percent from call-n-Ride customers and 36 percent from skyRide users.

One finding that was not surprising was a huge increase in use of the transit agency's Web site. The site offers automated itineraries. Riders type in their addresses and times they need to travel, and the site calculates several ways to get them to their destinations.

In 1998, the first survey indicated only 10 percent of bus riders used RTD's Web site. That grew to 35 percent in 2001 and 55 percent last year.