We’re Number One! Occasionally!

The public transportation system in the Boulder, Colorado area is the Regional Transportation District or RTD.

As in most cities, there is no competing public transit network.  Boston has the T, San Francisco has BART, and even New York has its subways and buses cooperating nicely as the MTA.  In Boulder, it’s RTD.

I therefore raised some obvious questions when I saw this banner on a visit to Colorado last year:

We're Number One... of One!

We're Number One... of One!

Chief among those questions: considering the complete lack of opposition, what exactly happened in  1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007?

In their defense, I lived in Colorado for quite a few years, including most of those in question, and I took the bus virtually everywhere.  (My parents would rightly challenge me if I said “everywhere,” having driven me and my friends to every conceivable neighboring city on more than a few occasions — thanks, Mom and Dad — but on balance I used RTD most often.)

I did endure Dick (his real name, as far as I ever learned) for my entire middle school career — the white-haired man who, despite an undying hatred for children and everything they stood for, picked up both the morning and evening runs most likely to have middle school children aboard every day.

But to compensate, I had a driver for much of high school who was fantastic, and whose name I have now completely forgotten.  The proper bus stop I used was about a block from the end of my street, but every single morning this driver would pull slowly up to my intersection and open the door, knowing in advance that I’d be sprinting breathlessly down the street to meet him.  (I always felt guilty about that, but less so when another kid did exactly the same thing at the next stop every morning.)

People like that should get medals.

Or, failing that, they should just hang a big banner on the side of the highway proclaiming that in three out of 13 years referenced, the agency beat itself to become number one.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *