I'll start by saying - I really love(d) RTD. I rode it nearly every day for almost ten years - sometimes combined with walking, sometimes with a bike, and often combining buses and trains.
I appreciated the convenience, how it mostly was reliable and on time, and how I could do other things while being whisked to my destination. There was a small price to pay in terms of speed (it rarely was faster than driving) and convenience (first and last mile is always a consideration) but overall, it was a good tradeoff.
The stars lined up for me today - I needed to travel across town to I-25 and Lincoln and I had a ride there but not back. Since RTD is free at the moment, I figured I would give it a go and see how they were doing. I haven't been riding much in the last three years and almost none in the last two.
First strike - the track work has totally fucked up the SE light rail lines and RTD is doing a poor job of communicating that to anyone who isn't totally on top of it. The train was late (~5 minutes, forgivable) but didn't go where I wanted (Peoria). I routed downtown and around to use the A-Line. That added a lot of time to my trip. And this shit is scheduled to go on through OCTOBER?!
Credit where it's due - the trains were clean and (mostly) void of tweakers. Lots are riding with a dog, though - at least three clearly non-service animals rode with me today. Aside from one half-tweak having a very loud conversation about his dog, it was mostly what I remember from the before days - quiet people trying to go places sprinkled with a handful of raver kids headed to Global.
**But it is SO SLOW. SO. SLOW. ** God, it is slow. The same drive would have taken me 40 minutes in the heaviest traffic imaginable. I walked in my door after an hour and 55 minutes. Almost three times longer. It's too fucking slow. And the headways are unworkable. Half an hour between trains? What? No. Even if RTD lowers the fares (yay! a good move) it desperately needs to make the system more efficient because I don't know anybody who's going to go for a commute that's three times as long, even if it's substantially cheaper.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk, happy Friday, y'all.
Honestly, no. I’ll credit three things - first, I trained my family to have the fear of god of the high-tier TOU charges. Second, I programmed my power-hungry devices to not run during on-peak. And third, we had a pretty mild summer up until this past week or so.
My last two excel bills have have $95 and $98 for a central air conditioned 1600 sq ft house.
The modifications I made to get here: ~ I put ceiling fans in every room that we spend a lot of time in. Bedrooms and living room. They’re on 24/7 and the very slight breeze is really helpful in making it feel a degree or two cooler than it actually is.
~Whole house fan. I have mine connected to my HomeAssistant and evaluating every hour if it should run for ten minutes. I leave a secured basement window open, so it exhausts the hot attic air and sucks cooler basement air upstairs. Once the sun sets and the exterior temp is lower than my upstairs temp, it will run all night until the sun rises and the exterior temp is greater than the indoor temp.
My A/C rarely runs more than an hour or so a day. There have been a few days where I ran it for hours to try and cool the house for guests and a few days where it was a little stuffy around 5PM while we waited for the sun to set, but it hasn’t been too bad.