RTD's E Line light rail pulls up to Denver Union Station's passenger platform while a 16th Street Mall shuttle waits to depart. Inside Lane photo.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

RTD’s sales tax revenue for January retreated slightly after two months of gains, even as Colorado’s statewide sales tax collections for January retail sales went up two percent.

Figures from RTD (page 59 of this document) and from the Colorado Department of Revenue show a split between metro Denver, where RTD collects sales taxes to subsidize its bus and light trail service and it FasTracks rapid transit expansion program, and the rest of the state.

The Department of Revenue’s February report, issued on Friday and reflecting sales tax returns for retail activity in January, showed a 2-percent uptick over the same month a year earlier. Sales tax collections statewide totaled $138.35 million in February, for January sales, compared with $135.6 a year earlier.

For the same time frame, RTD showed a decline of eight-tenths of a percent. It collected $27.724 million versus $27.951 for the same month in 2009.

While that’s within spitting distance of breaking even year over year, RTD had budgeted for a projected increase in January to $29.232 million, and that’s falling 5.2 percent below the target. To the extent revenues fail to meet projections, RTD faces hard choices in trimming its spending.

Sales tax revenue is the lifeblood of RTD’s budget, supplying about 60 percent of RTD’s total revenue. RTD collects a total one-penny tax on each dollar of applicable retail sales in all or parts of eight counties – a service area that, at 2,348 square miles, is more than twice the size of Rhode Island.

Of that penny tax, six-tenths goes to RTD’s current operations and four-tenths to the FasTracks program.

On the plus-side of the ledger, RTD’s fare collections in January were 2.5 percent higher than in the same month of 2009. That was in spite of a drop in ridership for the month. RTD collected $7.772 million in fares in January compared with $7.531 million in January 2009. That was 1.8 percent higher than what the RTD budget projected.