RTD Directors serve the entire RTD region, but they’re elected from geographic districts like District O in Boulder County – the lighter-shaded parts of this image are District O.

Regional Transportation District (RTD) directors oversee operations and budgets for the entire 2,345 square mile RTD transit system, but individual directors are elected from geographic districts. District O spans much of western Boulder County, including the City of Boulder, Jamestown, Louisville, Lyons, Nederland, Ward, parts of Longmont and Superior, and a large portion of unincorporated Boulder County (see map).

This year’s candidates are running to replace the current District O Director Lynn Guissinger, who is just finishing her second four-year term and can’t run again due to term limits.

In a pretty big change, this year’s District O winner will earn a two-year term. Until this year, RTD terms were for four years, but the Colorado General Assembly passed a bill this year (SB 26-150) that will make significant changes. Right now, there are 15 members on the Board and they’re all directly elected from each of the 15 RTD districts. Under SB 26-150, the size of the Board will be reduced to 9 members beginning in January 2029, and 4 of these members would be appointed. The remaining 5 members would then be elected as Directors from 5 much larger districts than we have today.

Whoever is elected from District O could then run again in two years, but they would be running in a much larger district, both geographically and in population. Under SB 26-150, this two-year term would count as a term to determine term limits. Until the bill passed, term limits were two four-year terms, and whoever wins this year’s District O race will still get two terms, but because of the new two-year term this year’s winners will be limited to six years.

RTD elections are non-partisan, so you won’t see the candidate’s political party affiliation on the ballot – though they certainly could be registered as individuals as members of a party. Both candidates listed below have qualified for the 2026 ballot as a result of gathering more than the required 250 valid petition signatures from District O registered voters. One candidate will win if they receive a simple majority of 50% (plus one) of the votes.

Audrey DeBarros

Audrey DeBarros

Audrey DeBarros, a long-time Louisville resident, comes to the RTD race with extensive experience in local transportation issues. For a condensed version of her transportation-related resume:

  • Currently the Executive Director for Commuting Solutions, one of the Transportation Management Organizations (TMO) in Colorado. In very brief, TMOs work to advocate for multimodal transportation and to reduce reliance on single-occupancy vehicles. She has been with Commuting Solutions since 2004.
  • Staff administrator for Northwest Mayors and Commissioners Coalition, which advocates for transportation solutions in District O and nearby areas.
  • Former Marketing Manager with Denver Metro Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG), an organization that in part allocates federal transportation funding to our area. With DRCOG, she worked to help expand the regional Bike to Work Day events, and launched a carpool matching service.
  • Former Outreach Specialist with GO Boulder, a multimodal transportation branch of the City of Boulder government, where she worked to publicize and brand local bus lines like the DASH and STAMPEDE, and helped educate the public about multimodal transportation options.

While working with Commuting Solutions, DeBarros has participated in efforts including:

  • The Northwest Area Mobility Study (NAMS) guideline for transportation planning in the northwest metro region
  • The US 36 (Boulder Turnpike) multimodal redevelopment project
  • The CO-119 (Diagonal Highway) multimodal redevelopment project
  • The Joint Service collaboration between RTD, the State of Colorado, Front Range Passenger Rail District, and other entities to bring a commuter rail line between Ft. Collins and Denver.
  • Organizing local transportation-related events like the annual Commuting Solutions Legislative Breakfast, where elected officials discuss policy and current events just before the state legislative session convenes
  • Advocating for state and local ballot measures designed to better fund transportation
  • Lobbying for state and federal transportation policy and funding

For a sample of DeBarros’ policy positions:

  • Growing Transit Ridership: Per her website, DeBarros would like to focus on strategies including affordable fare options, increasing availability of Business EcoPasses, and RTD’s existing Zero Fares for Youth program.
  • Fiscal Sustainability: She expressed concern about RTD’s current long-term funding outlook, debt obligation, and budget volatility; calling for stronger oversight and more careful monitoring of fiscal issues.
  • Front Range Passenger Rail: Since this year’s campaign began, focus shifted from the strictly-RTD Northwest Rail from Longmont to Denver to the Front Range Passenger Rail District that could bring commuter rail from Ft. Collins to Denver by 2029. DeBarros noted that the “Joint Service” agreement combined RTD resources with other entities, including State of Colorado funding, to bring the long-awaited passenger rail through Boulder County closer to its first real boardings.
  • Collaboration in General: Among other collaborative efforts she’s worked on, she supports expanding the use of RTD’s Subregional Service Councils, as a means to bring more local input to RTD processes.

Follow The Money: As of Oct. 9, the DeBarros campaign had reported $32,820.75 in monetary contributions, and $7,032 in non-monetary contributions.

Campaign website: https://audreyforrtd.com/

Jack Rosenthal

Jack Rosenthal

Jack Rosenthal was and raised in Steamboat Springs, and has lived in the Denver-Boulder region since 2014, per Rosenthal’s website. He has both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Computer Science from Colorado School of Mines. He spent five years as a software engineer at Google Boulder before transitioning to high-frequency trading, which per Investopedia is “the use of advanced algorithms and powerful computers to execute a large volume of trades at extremely fast speeds, impacting market liquidity and efficiency.”

For a couple of his top attributes from his website:

  • He says he is an “authentic transit user.” He has statistics on his website showing how many times he has boarded RTD, both for the past 30 days and for the past year. As of Sept. 21, he was at 76 boardings for the past 30 days, and 806 boardings for the year. He said this ridership is giving him perspective on RTD’s “daily reality,” including successes and failures.
  • Rosenthal says he collects and analyzes “RTD’s real-time data every 30 seconds, tracking patterns in schedule adherence, service reliability, and system performance.” (NOTE – RTD has a real-time data information webpage at https://www.rtd-denver.com/open-records/open-spatial-information/mobile-apps )

For a selection of his top platform positions:

  • Front Range Passenger Rail: While this will no longer be a strictly RTD service, Rosenthal supports moving forward with FRPR and getting beyond the initial projection of three round-trips of service daily.
  • System Improvements: He wants to work toward more frequent service, better first/last mile connections, dedicated bus lanes, and improved reliability through real-time tracking and performance standards.
  • Policy Reform: Without a lot of detail, his website says he supports expanding EcoPass programs, strengthening regional coordination, and shifting incentives away from driving toward transit use.
  • Transit Signal Priority (TSP): He supports greater use of TSP, which “enables buses to change traffic lights green as they approach, making routes faster for passengers while reducing the service hours required for each trip.”
  • Special Event Transit: Rosenthal supports improving transit frequency and stop locations for special events like Bolder Boulder, Creek Festival, or the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, so more people will find it practical to use transit and avoid driving.

Follow The Money: As of Oct. 9, the Rosenthal campaign had reported $63,859.14 in monetary contributions, and $2,648.08 in non-monetary contributions.

Campaign website: https://jackforrtd.com/

Richard’s Take

Vote DeBarros. She has vastly more relevant experience in transportation than does Rosenthal. In fact, Rosenthal has never held a job or official position specifically in the transportation field. DeBarros literally runs a Transportation Management Organization in Commuting Solutions, and between her other transportation jobs over the course of decades, she’s participated directly in discussions regarding many parts of our local and regional transportation network.

For full disclosure, I have done a small amount of work on DeBarros’ campaign, so readers might wish to seek out additional or different information. I’ve also done a much larger amount of work in the past for Commuting Solutions on tasks like event planning and communications.

But I believe it’s fair, and I know it’s accurate, for me to say that the Commuting Solutions work really let me see the many components of transportation that DeBarros has had to consider as part of her job, and what I saw happened years before she decided to run for office. This includes transit of course, but also bike paths, carpooling, electric vehicles, meeting with elected officials here and in Washington D.C., micromobility, and major regional projects like CO-119 and US 36.

For most of us, transportation has to be a system. We start at home, take a local road or path to our next point – perhaps another road or a transit stop – and these things might take us to a major highway or an airport or another type of final destination. DeBarros’ deep experience in not just transit but also roads, paths, interchanges, local and regional perspective, and relationships means she understands what it takes to make a transportation system work best for as many users as possible.

I really wanted this endorsement to be little more than “tons of relevant experience vs. not much.” I don’t know Rosenthal but I’ve seen him at many locations during this campaign. He shouldn’t know this but I stood almost right next to him on stage at the Democratic State Assembly.

He announced his intent to run very early in this election cycle, and picked up certain local endorsements long before anyone knew who else might run. I personally don’t think it’s a great practice for prominent local figures to endorse so soon (and I’ve told plenty of people just that long before this RTD race), but it made me wonder if some of these endorsements had more to do with personal or factional connections than qualifications for an important job.

Writers and people involved with political scenes can’t help noticing stuff. I saw one of Rosenthal’s early messages that he’s a frequent transit user, and after seeing this over and over on other supporters’ social media feeds, I remembered that it was also one of current RTD District A director Chris Nicholson’s messages during his first campaign. That’s all legal and it’s a relevant thing to emphasize, even though DeBarros also uses transit and her work goes back at least 25 years to a stint with GO Boulder in which she helped with launches for local RTD bus lines. While we’re on the topic, I’m also a former RTD Citizens Advisory Committee member, and I’ve easily logged tens of thousands of miles on RTD, along with thousands of miles on transit in other cities and countries, going back decades.

But I got a little bit curious about Nicholson and checked out his Facebook account. On May 13, he posted that “five of my friends are running to join me on the board next year!” One of them was Rosenthal. Again, this is all legal and it’s nice to have friends, I think, but it made me wonder if I really want a power bloc centering on a Denver board member influencing decisions for my transit district (and I mean RTD, not just District O). If Nicholson stayed on the board and all five of his friends won in 2026, that would be equal to 40% of the board. Not my choice.

Later, I learned of a website called “transformrtd.com,” which had pictures and posts about four of the five candidates, including Rosenthal, mentioned in Nicholson’s Facebook post from May. Again, it’s legal to support however many candidates anyone wants if all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed, but if the four candidates win and Nicholson stays on, it’s equal to 33% of the board. Not my choice either! (I learned about Transform RTD in late September, and as of Oct. 10, I still don’t know who’s behind the website mentioned here, and there were no identifying statements on the only page.)

Back to Rosenthal – his tracking of real-time data is also a nice attribute, but then a better question becomes “what can RTD practically do with the data?” In the world of high-frequency trading, digital systems can make decisions nearly instantly and dispassionately. Not so with transit lines that have served cities or regions for decades.

RTD already does periodic service changes based on ridership and economics, but you don’t change these things like they’re Bitcoin prices. RTD needs to consider human issues like regional transit coverage, where to employ drivers, community or local government input, how service changes affect special-needs users, or even how cutting services will affect residents who might then decide whether to support RTD or transit in general. And in times of very finite resources, boosting services in one place will almost certainly require cuts or tradeoffs elsewhere.

Frankly, I don’t envy the job the next batch of RTD directors will need to tackle. The district is in a precarious financial situation, it probably can’t count on a lot of new help from the feds or the state for the time being, and to use a technical term the public vibes are not so good right now. RTD is almost certainly going to have to make tough yet well-reasoned choices to try saving as much transit as possible while making the books balance.

And I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get to this point, but we need to remember that RTD can’t only be about personalities or factions or political identities – it’s a very physical entity that must spend much of its time and focus on the boring practical things like purchasing and maintaining big vehicles, paying drivers, hiring security, buying fuel (checked diesel prices lately?), and managing infrastructure.

That’s why I favor a seasoned manager with deep experience in transportation systems, and that’s Audrey DeBarros for me in this race.