RTD providing more advance notice of canceled light rail trips

Starting tomorrow, the Regional Transportation District (RTD) will be providing more advance notice of the light rail trips the agency expects to cancel due to its ongoing operator shortage, a change requested by the public that will help riders plan ahead.

Beginning Friday afternoon, RTD will post canceled light rail trips for the coming week – spanning Sunday through Saturday – on the Rider Alerts page of the RTD website. Patrons can sign up on that page to receive route-specific alerts by email.

Then, at 10 a.m. every Saturday, Monday and Wednesday, the agency will send rider alerts by email to subscribers for the already posted trips RTD expects to cancel over the next two or three days. Saturday’s emails will address trips on Sunday and Monday, Monday’s will cover Tuesday and Wednesday, and Wednesday’s will include trips on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Additional alerts will be sent each day in the event of additional canceled trips, for reasons that cannot be predicted in advance.

RTD last month debuted a new rider alert system that better informs the public about changes to light rail trips. Canceled trips are shown as “canceled” on Next Ride, and they are not included in same-day itineraries in Trip Planner or third-party apps (e.g., Google Maps, Transit) that rely on RTD’s real-time feed for current arrival and departure times. The new platform is tied to RTD’s data feed and allows employees to write alerts automatically and within seconds based on mode and cause.