Contractor Mum, While RTC Responds to Public Allegations by Former Employee of Hidden Missed Bus Trips
After being asked about a public comment from September 2025 which was recently brought to our attention, alleging hidden missed bus trips by transit contractor Keolis, which could have led to required damages of about $1,000 for these, a public information officer for the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County, Josh MacEachern, wrote back to Our Town Reno ensuring “all inquiries involving the use of public funds” are taken seriously.
“RTC tracks vehicle activity continuously and reviews trip performance data monthly. There is no mechanism for missed trips to go unreported — every missed trip is automatically captured by RTC's own tracking, independent of the contractor reports,” MacEachern wrote.
“For example, in … August 2025: 68 missed trips out of 39,248 scheduled — 99.8% completion / September 2025: 44 missed trips out of 38,190 scheduled — 99.9% completion.
These are RTC's own tracked figures. Each missed trip is automatically assessed as a liquidated damage under our contract with Keolis. RTC's investment in real-time vehicle tracking exists precisely to protect taxpayer dollars and ensure full accountability for every trip we pay for.”
Daniel Golightly, a former bus dispatcher for Keolis, made his allegations public at an RTC meeting chaired by Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill on September 19th 2025.
A summary of his comment said he “described a practice in which operations managers instructed dispatch staff not to report or to minimize the number of missed trips on the Lincoln and Virginia lines, claiming this resulted in hundreds or thousands of unreported missing trips during his four years with the company. He urged RTC to investigate and hold management accountable, publish liquidated damages paid by Keolis, and ensure public transparency.”
As an example, the former employee showed Our Town Reno alleged text messages from late 2022 with a Keolis general manager indicating six VLs (Virginia lines) had to be “parked.” In the screenshot shared with us, Golightly asks if those alerts need to be posted, with the general manager telling him to post just three.
“The company is supposed to report that to RTC, and RTC is supposed to charge the company,” Golightly wrote to us in a follow up email.
Per RTC’s response, Golightly says he believes many buses aren’t tracked in the RTC’s system for different reasons, and that it didn’t address his accusations that “management instructed their employees to hide missed trips.”
“One of my responsibilities was documenting and reporting trips that were not going to operate. Missed trips were supposed to be reported and posted through RTC's public alert page,” Golightly who was previously a bus driver explained as to how he views the overall situation.
“What management began doing was shifting operators away from the Virginia Line and Lincoln Line to cover other routes. Because those missed Virginia and Lincoln Line trips were not being reported, management could prioritize other service while reducing the number of officially reported missed trips,” he alleges.
"It made sense not to charge the company during extraordinary circumstances like COVID and the strikes. But the practice continued afterward because management relied on it to reduce labor costs, maintain appearances, and ensure that more visible routes continued operating,” he added as part of his claims.
Golightly made the public comment shortly after being fired from Keolis on August 1st, 2025, with a document related to that saying his actions related to efforts to get staff to work during understaffed hours were “unacceptable and created issues for our workforce and service and invited unsafe conditions.”
The document shared with Our Town Reno indicated that his “advising drivers to file complaints about our basic and essential policy for recruiting help on days off to fill service is gross insubordination. Further at a time when we are appealing to have drivers alter their plans to ensure safe operation your negative manner only works against our efforts to fill all available service. In addition, pessimistic, complaining, and defeatist attitude you demonstrated to the workforce on these calls only adds to the stress that our drivers face.”
Concerning his firing in August 2025 and the reasons given for that, Golightly alleged to Our Town Reno that “dispatchers were also instructed to call operators on their day off as early as 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00 a.m. to fill open work. This frustrated many operators. When drivers complained, I explained that these directives came from management and encouraged them to raise their concerns with HR. I reported my concerns to Corporate HR, but no meaningful action was taken.”
He says the public deserves to know what exactly is going on.
“My goal is not personal. I believe there should be an independent audit to determine whether service interruptions were accurately reported and whether RTC received complete and accurate information regarding system performance. If the reporting was accurate, an audit would confirm that,” Golightly says.
We contacted different people at Keolis repeatedly by phone and email throughout this past month but did not hear back from them. We also contacted Commissioner Hill but did not hear back from her either.
During our back and forth messages, Golightly said he was currently looking for a lawyer and for more public records.
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