Poor December holiday sales drove down RTD's sales tax revenue 9.7 percent, not as severe as some had feared but another body blow to the agency's battered revenues.

What it means is that the transit agency had nearly $4.1 million less to provide bus and rail service, and build the FasTracks program, in December than it had the same month a year earlier.

On the year, RTD took in nearly $5.6 million less in 2008 than in 2007, a 1.3 percent drop.

Statewide sales tax figures haven't yet been released, but the RTD figures reflect what happened in eight metro Denver counties and foreshadow a significant decline for the state as a whole.

Sales tax collections are an indicator of the state's retail activity. Last month, when figures for November were issued, RTD's sales taxes had declined 9.6 percent, while the statewide decline was 7.5 percent.

Based on that, there was concern that the December figures might show a double-digit drop for the metro area. Sales tax revenue is RTD's lifeblood, making up about 60 percent of its resources.

The total collected was $37.6 million, as compared with the December 2007 figure of $41.7 million.

Robert Merriman of RTD's budget office said the agency recently had forecast that 2008 would be 1.2 percent below 2007 sales tax totals, which was only slightly off the final figure. On the year, RTD collected $412.8 million in sales taxes, compared with $418.4 in 2007.

While the recession has hit the budgets of RTD and other government agencies hard, the transit agency saw positive results elsewhere.

Ridership for 2008 was up 8 percent to a record total of 104.1 million riders. That's an almost 60 percent more than RTD had estimated at the beginning of the year.

And with it, fare revenue was up substantially, 14.5 percent, to $88.3 million, from a combination of the ridership jump and a fare increase a year ago.

Fares also increased last month and now run $2 for a local cash fare.

flynnk@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5247