DENVER — In an effort to make people feel safer, the Regional Transportation District (RTD) has been pushing people to contact RTD police — but a typo by the transit agency has led people to call a retiree in Denver instead of dispatch.
Since the beginning of the year, Fred Wolf’s home phone has been ringing day and night.
“We’d get about half a dozen calls a day,” he said. “And then the most disturbing ones is that we’d get calls in the middle of the night… 12 o’clock, two in the morning, four in the morning … that kind of thing.”
People on the other end of the line were asking strange questions. Where’s the bus? What time does the train arrive? What can you do about the group of people doing drugs in the elevator?
“We started asking questions like, 'Where are you getting this number?' Because we’ve had this phone number since 1972, and they said, 'It’s right here on the board,'” Wolf said. “'I’m reading it right off the posterboard at the station or the bus stop.'”
Fred realized people thought they were calling RTD Transit Police Department dispatch. Then, he realized his number must be posted at RTD's bus and rail stations.
He later found out the number for RTD police was only one digit different than his phone number, so he called RTD.
“They were really, at first, kind of indifferent about it,” Wolf said “They were like, 'Is this for real?'”
“A few weeks later, I called them back and said, 'What’s going on?' and they said, 'Well, guess what? We found out you were right.'”
He asked what RTD was going to do about it. And that’s when he says things got non-responsive.
“It ended up in somebody’s inbox, and it just sat there,” he said.
Weeks later, RTD now admits his complaints went unheard.
“It got incorrectly routed at RTD to the wrong department, and they didn’t know what it was about, and they basically just shelved it,” said Stuart Summers, RTD’s chief communications and engagement officer. “And that’s not to make an excuse, but it didn’t get the attention it needed, and it didn’t get addressed.”
Summers, who is now spearheading the effort to take care of the issue, says the misprint ended up on 750 station maps and schedules across RTD’s eight-county system. A team of 12 is now working overtime to put stickers with the correct number over Wolf’s number at all of those stations. Summers expects to have them all re-stickered by the end of the week.
He says RTD is now implementing a “more robust” quality control system for station signage, including a process where people call the phone number on the printout to ensure it is correct before sending it out to the public.
“This has taken way too long to get resolved, and it’s not acceptable in the timeline it’s taken," Summers said. "So we’re going to try to make it right."
Wolf said he’s been happy with RTD’s response this week – but still wonders why it took all these weeks to get their attention to this in the first place.
He said he had considered changing his phone number but decided he’d probably be safe after this blows over.
“I think most of the people that have called the number are just going to forget it,” Wolf said. “They’re not going to bank the incorrect RTD Transit Police number in their phone. And they certainly don’t want to call me again because I’m not that much fun at four in the morning.”
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