RTD kept elevator doors at stations open for months: Did it lower crime?

DENVER (KDVR) — The Regional Transportation District’s 90-day pilot program to keep elevator doors open while they are not in use has concluded , and officials say it resulted in fewer criminal activity reports at those stations.

The program began on March 17 and included elevators at the Nine Mile, Colorado and Southmoor stations. All elevators were programmed for the doors to remain open unless in motion.

“RTD is extremely pleased the pilot program correlates with effectively reducing overall incidents and calls for service at the pilot locations,” said RTD Police Department Deputy Chief Steven Martingano in a release. “An overarching initiative is to create a transit environment that is a personally safe and secure, welcoming, convenient and enjoyable experience for all customers. The recommendation by our police department to extend the program instills a greater sense of security for RTD’s employees and customers.”

The open doors were intended to discourage illegal activities like drug use or assaults. It also discourages petty crime, like dirtying the environment through littering or bodily waste, vandalism and damage to the elevators.

RTD said Tuesday that there was an overall reduction in calls for service or incident reporting, which it said is a “strong indicator of program effectiveness; leaving the elevators at default open status has helped the agency improve employee and community concerns related to personal safety and security.”

The program will be extended from the Colorado, Nine Mile and Southmoor stations to Colfax, Lakewood and Wadsworth, and Sheridan stations. RTD said it has 79 public-facing elevators and RTD plans to extend this program beyond the six light rail stations.

The program is also being used as inspiration for the LA Metro, which plans to start an identical program, according to RTD.

Did the RTD pilot program help curb crime?

The elevators for the pilot were considered high-usage elevators with a history of garnering many customer complaints, security-related incidents and operation disruptions because of illegal or unwanted activities. RTD said Tuesday that the Southmoor and Colorado stations saw a 121% combined reduction in total calls for service and a “noteworthy decrease in narcotics activity inside the elevators.”

The cost of reprogramming the elevators? Negligible, according to the transportation agency. RTD said it costs only around $700 to contract an elevator technician for three hours to modify the programming, so the total cost of expanding the program to all 79 elevators was estimated to be about $61,350.

The agency also provided a breakdown of how many calls for service were received for each station included in the pilot:

• Colorado station
  • 2023: 279
  • 2024: 102
• Nine Mile station
  • 2023: 32
  • 2024: 136
• Southmoor station
  • 2023: 147
  • 2024: 74

The Colorado station had a 64% decrease in total calls, and Southmoor reported an almost 50% reduction in total calls for service.

RTD noted that Nine Mile’s calls increased from March through May of this year over last year. However, that station’s elevators were also intermittently out of service during that time in 2023. Nine Mile reported a 325% increase, mostly due to medical calls, graffiti, welfare checks and narcotics activity.

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