Regional Transportation District leaders on Tuesday approved a six-month pilot program that will eliminate the regional fare on the yet-to-open N-Line to Denver’s north suburbs — a stab by the sprawling transit agency at figuring out whether a cheaper ticket will attract more passengers as ridership continues to decline across the district.

Tuesday’s 11-4 vote means that for the first half year of service on the N-Line, which is expected to launch in 2020, there will be no $5.25 fare for riders embarking from the last two regionally zoned stations on the line — Northglenn/112th and Eastlake/124th.

Instead, riders will be charged a flat, local $3 price tag regardless of where they board the train.

Dubbed the Promotional Fare Pilot Program, the initiative aims to reverse RTD’s declining ridership, which has dipped by approximately 5 million passengers over the last four years — from more than 103 million boardings in 2015 to fewer than 98 million last year.

“I think this is the kind of innovation our constituency is asking for,” said RTD Director Troy Whitmore on Tuesday night. “Hopefully, it’s a great, successful model for the future.”

Director Claudia Folska also praised the idea and pondered whether it could go systemwide eventually.

“If it’s wildly successful, maybe it’s something we can replicate in the rest of the district,” she said.

There were warning bells on the board as well. Director Shontel Lewis, whose district largely covers urban swaths of Denver and Aurora, said the program unfairly benefits suburban passengers coming from more distant points while excluding riders who live in locally zoned areas from enjoying a fare cut.

Director Peggy Catlin expressed misgivings about how the public will react when the promotional period comes to an end.

“I’m concerned after the six months of taking something away,” she said.

RTD’s current zone system is laid out so that a local $3 fare applies to trips that extend out 9.5 miles from Union Station (as the crow flies) while a regional $5.25 fare applies to trips farther than that. The agency projects that it will lose $180,000 in fare revenue by eliminating the regional rate on the N-Line for six months.

But it hopes to pick up passengers with the discount. Currently, RTD projects 9,100 people will board the train per weekday during the first year of the N-Line’s operation.

Rep. Kyle Mullica, a Democrat who represents Thornton and Northglenn in the Colorado House, said he came to RTD several months ago to pitch the idea of flattening the fare on the N-Line. The lawmaker sees it as an equity issue for his constituents, who live toward the end of the 13-mile line where the final two stations are regionally zoned.

“We’ve been waiting for years for this line to open and once it opens, we would have to pay more to use it,” he said. “I wish they could see the look in my neighbors’ eyes when they feel that they’re not as important. There’s no equity there.”

After a lengthy delay, the N-Line is expected to debut in the spring or summer of 2020. That’s a similar period of time that G-Line riders west of Denver had to endure before the April debut of that train line.

“RTD has a lot of work to do for a lot of mistakes it has made over the years,” Mullica said.

RTD Director Vince Buzek, who represents those living in the N-Line corridor, told The Denver Post prior to Tuesday’s board meeting that a flat fare is simpler to negotiate. That, he said, should yield dividends for the agency.

“If you make it easier, more people are going to ride,” he said. “If you make it cheaper, more people are going to ride.”

He pointed to a decision last year by King County Metro Transit to eliminate zones and dump peak-hour charges on its bus lines. Instead of charging various fares depending on time of day and distance of travel, the agency decided to charge a single adult fare of $2.75.

Buzek acknowledged that RTD needs to consider the impact of losing fare box revenue from eliminating the regional fare, but he noted that less than 17% of the agency’s nearly $1 billion in annual revenues — or $143 million — came from fares in 2018.

“We do have a lot of economically challenged communities (in my district),” he said. “Fare relief for them could be very helpful.”

The N-Line is not the only corridor in RTD’s eight-county footprint looking for that kind of relief. Outgoing Golden Mayor Marjorie Sloan said she would love to see a similar flattening of fares on the W-Line, where all stops are charged the local fare except for the end-of-the-line Jefferson County Government Center station.

Sloan said Golden invested thousands of dollars last year and this year to help operate the FlexRide shuttle, which provides rides from various locations in the city to the Jefferson County Government Center station. But she said having to pay an extra $2.25 to leave from or go to that final W-Line stop hurts those who need to use public services or visit government offices at the county headquarters building.

Sloan said the fare reduction pilot program is a good idea that can be replicated elsewhere.

“I think it’s creative and responsive as far as the N-Line goes, but I think it would be relevant to the W-Line too,” she said.