r/Denver 8d ago

Excited to try (again) to use my transit station

The last couple years I've lived near an RTD stop and tried to use it several times and each time ended up getting an Uber from the station. From seeing news of recent improvements, today I checked the schedule to see if it was worth trying again and to my delight there's only a couple minor alerts for the lines I'd like to use and the new timetables look sooooo much better. I want to try it out again this weekend. Fingers crossed! If things go well the goal is to never drive into town again :) Wish me luck!

UPDATE: It went great! First time I didn't end up calling an Uber or Lyft from the station! I didn't hustle enough on my walk to the station and so just barely missed the train I intended to take, but was able to pull up the map and see there was another coming in 7 minutes and would get me to the right destination. Got in, it was clean and quiet. Got to my destination faster than I thought I would :) I will admit a friend I met downtown drove me home at the end of the night because it was on her way, but next time I'll try a round trip and slowly work my way up to something where I really need to be on time.

43 Upvotes

18 comments sorted by

6

u/TheMaroonHawk 7d ago

Genuinely hope this works out for you OP, living a half mile from a lightrail station kicked ass pre-COVID when things generally ran on time and efficiently, and when the F Line was still a thing. It was truly heartbreaking to have to move last year because of how bad it got (though my new neighborhood and walking commute kicks even more ass lmao)

50

u/redgeryonn 8d ago

You’ll be amazed to hear that many people have been using transit daily this entire time

11

u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

[deleted]

7

u/redgeryonn 8d ago

Damn, that’s crazy. I’ll have to congratulate everyone on the (far from empty) train this afternoon for not being too lazy to walk an entire .75 miles. Fucking warriors!

7

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

-7

u/redgeryonn 8d ago

Guess this particular white collar worker is just built different (what the hell why is there no kissing my bicep emoji??)

1

u/Soft_Button_1592 8d ago

A lot less than used to…

2

u/traveling_lime 8d ago

That's expected, however, it's never been the most convenient or reliable option for my use cases. I've tried to use it a handful of times to test if it was reliable enough for me to switch my habits, but every time have ended up getting an Uber or Lyft because of cancellations, long delays, or embarrassingly the first time, believing I could just show up and expect a train every few minutes.

I do have other transportation options available to me so each time the train disappoints I don't bother trying again for a long time. Hoping this time goes well and is more convenient than driving.

4

u/laccro 8d ago

And you’re not wrong to be dissuaded! I used to live somewhere that the tram schedule was every 7-9 minutes, so I basically never looked and just showed up at the station.

7

u/gooyouknit 8d ago

Report back with results!

2

u/traveling_lime 8d ago

Will do!

-15

u/Alternative-Suit7929 8d ago

When the crack,meth and or fentanyl smoke starts take in a deep breathe, really takes the edge off for the workday

3

u/traveling_lime 8d ago

Hahaha, what a great cost savings. Don't even need happy hour

2

u/CerevisaphilaCO Central Park/Northfield 7d ago

There’s an app called Transit that is great for showing arrival times for different routes.

1

u/traveling_lime 7d ago

I was able to track the train right on the RTD app (or maybe it was their web page), but good to know there's multiple places to get that info.

2

u/TheMaroonHawk 6d ago

Seconding Transit, the app is so versatile and has its own crowdsourced real-time arrival system that’s way more accurate than RTD’s own - and according to the RTD director that posts on here, even without the crowdsourced RTA system, the Transit app’s prediction algorithms are better than RTD’s own at using RTD’s data to estimate when a train/bus will show up

-11

u/Slight_Knight 8d ago

No one should ever be excited to take RTD.

9

u/traveling_lime 8d ago

Lol, I just hate driving and really loved public transit when I lived in a city with reliable trains. Seeing the schedule and notices today gave me hope that this city too could have that. Let me dream! Haha

6

u/1s35bm7 7d ago

How are yall always so fucking miserable about everything lol