There’s an interesting discussion underway at Seattle Transit Blog about Sound Transit’s proposed fare structure for Link Light Rail, which would require people who take longer trips to pay more. The proposal is aimed at getting 52 percent “farebox recovery”— the amount of operating costs that are paid for by fares alone.
Fifty-two percent is an ambitious goal; current farebox recovery for Metro hovers around 21 percent, which is pretty typical. The base fare would be either $2.00 or $1.75, depending on whether Sound Transit participated in the downtown ride-free zone, plus five cents a mile (rounded to the nearest quarter, for fares of $2.00, $2.25, etc.) The most expensive fares would be $2.75 under the higher fare schedule, or $2.50 for the lower base rate. The only way to transfer from Metro to Sound Transit or vice versa will be to use the ORCA smart card, a long-delayed regionwide payment system that has been plagued by technological and implementation kinks. Everyone else will have to pay twice.
The comments at STB are mostly along four lines: 1) The ORCA system is incredibly confusing, and forcing people to use it seems unfair; 2) Requiring to pay more for longer trips is fair because they chose to live far from where they work; 3) Forcing people to pay more for longer trips is unfair because if they weren’t riding light rail they’d be driving on roads that cost more to maintain, and light rail is supposed to serve the working class; 4) Park-and-ride drivers should pay more; and 5) The proposed fares are too high and should be cheaper or free.
A few additional thoughts:
1) Penalizing riders for not using ORCA seems a bit premature. Drivers seem unclear on how to use the system, and initial rollout isn’t expected until later this year. In the meantime, it’s completely unfamiliar to all but a handful of riders who participated in a test run two years ago (and nearly impossible to find anything out about online).
2) Making longer trips more expensive is fair, up to a point. Transit systems do this already, through zone-based pricing. But broad-brush, by-the-mile fare increases do disproportionately impact people who live in places like Rainier Beach, Othello and Columbia City—all of which are, or are becoming, fairly dense, urban areas despite their distance from downtown.
For example, folks who live in Rainier Beach can access only one stop—the Othello station, one stop away—for the lowest fare. All other trips cost a quarter to fifty cents more. Similarly, people who live at the Othello stop can go to Columbia City or Rainier Beach for the lowest fare, but must pay more to go any further away. Those who live closer to downtown can go several more stops before their fares go up. Given that most people aren’t commuting from Rainier Beach to Othello, the vast majority of South Enders will probably end up paying more than those closer in. Is that fair? Maybe; but I would hardly call Columbia City the suburbs, and development around the Othello Station will eventually be as dense as anywhere in the city.
3) Sound Transit’s downtown conundrum could be solved once and for all if Metro would simply eliminate the Ride Free Zone. Currently, the city subsidizes Ride Free for Metro only; if Sound Transit decides to participate, it will have to increase fares elsewhere to pay for it. Getting rid of Ride Free across the board would solve that problem; and it would improve trip reliability by making fare payment consistent across the city (no more confusion, fumbling for transfers after you’ve already paid once, or waiting for passengers to fight their way to the front of the bus in “pay as you leave” zones.)
Yes, get rid of the Ride Free Zone.
I agree, dump the ride free zone.
And the ORCAS program is VERY confusing and there is nothing about the program. This is a problem for employers who use “FlexPass” since ORCAS is replacing “FlexPass” starting this year. Since when is making busing more confusing going to encourage ridership?
If I say “please,” will they then will they get rid of the free ride zone?
The ORCAS program sounds a lot like the PASMO and SUICA card systems they have over in Japan.
I remember finding this site a couple years ago after getting back from Tokyo:
http://soctech.cs.washington.edu/wiki/OR…
Without ride free, wouldn’t downtown bus traffic slow to a crawl at evening rush hour as dozens of riders queued to pay? You’d be able to walk faster than a bus going down Third.
or even the ride free zone.
Get rid of the ride free zone. I know the downtown business associate pays for it, but it mucks up the whole system. Things need to be as straight forward as possible, they’ll have higher ridership and less people skipping fares.
Make all trips within the city $1.50. Offer $45 monthly passes. Trips to the airport $5.
100 riders per train at a reasonable fare is better than 50 riders per train at a higher rate and a convoluted payment system.
All urban centers are losing population due to unworkable taxation schemes sold as “transit”.
Exurbia…Our Future!
If Columbia City isn’t in the central zone, the zones are too small.
Is ORCA like the London Oyster card? If so, it’s a good idea. Having an electronic pass that just needs to be waved at a gate or a farebox, with multiple ways to charge it up, and being valid for multiple modes, is the only way to go. The way to wall off transit systems from each other even more than they naturally are is to demand separate fare collections.
Dump the free ride zone and collect all fares at boarding (and don’t let fare jumpers on). Maybe the buses won’t be urine drenched rolling mental institutions then…
#5. No, it wouldn’t make a difference. The speed in which rush hour commuters board isn’t hindered by a fare box, it become routine for the majority of them. The loading bottlenecks occur near shopping centers or stadiums during non-rush hours, where people are less accustomed to boarding, or are unprepared or distracted.
Having different pay structures within the same city seems crazy to me, unless you’re talking about a city that’s huge in square miles, like Los Angeles.
But if people would otherwise drive in, they pay more in gas the farther they drive. What’s the problem with asking suburbanites to pay a little more?
In Kobe they have a system where you pay based on the number of stops (I think, this was over three years ago). It seemed like a good compromise between a flat rate and pay-per-mile.
The ORCA card is very similar to the London Oyster card. It’s a contact-less smart card, which means instead of swiping your card through the reader, you just have to wave a few inches away from reader. The upshot is that it’s typically much faster to use, which means faster bus load times.
I think for 90% of transit users, an ORCA card will be just like the current pass you are using now. Just instead of swiping, you’ll be waving.
God, I hate the Ride Free Zone. Get rid of it.
Park and ride users should definitely pay. Sound Transit and King County operate literally tens of thousands of free parking spaces (mostly for exurbanites) that are subsidized by taxpayers and transit riders. These spaces cost up to $30,000 each. Charge drivers — not transit riders — for parking, please. We don’t want to subsidize exurban drivers and sprawl.
Getting rid of the ride-free zone would be an absolute disaster! Downtown streets would turn into a parking lot of boarding buses if you asked people to pay their fares downtown.
They didn’t implement the rider free zone out of charity, they did it because otherwise our bus system downtown absolutely would not fucking work.
I wrote about this a month ago:
http://seattletransitblog.com/2008/11/24…
Just look at what happens after everyone boards the bus downtown. It pulls forward a little and waits at the light. So how does not paying make it go faster?
Does any other bus system reverse the order of getting on the front and off the back based on where the bus is and where it was? Somebody must be as dumb as us but I don’t know who. Belgians perhaps? I’ve heard Belgians are awful.
Sticking to a distance based formula seems wrong headed. Differential pricing of some sort is probably sensible. The alternative would be raising the price for everyone, and that would be as likely to deter ridership as differential pricing. But come on the Rainier Valley in general is already so underserved, and higher prices there would have a more marked tendency to discourage ridership than elsewhere. They can surey come up with a rational way to divide up the zones and still include the Rainier Valley in the main central zone.
They can control park-and ride usage pretty simply by charging to park or charging more to park depending on the current set up. They probably should include that in the plan once the light-rail option is a live alternative.
A single card is definitely the way to go, and penalizing those who don’t have one or don’t use one is one way to get buy-in, and maybe that in itself would provide the impetus to improve it.
@17: but now getting off the bus after the ride-free zone is a clusterfuck. Most of the time I don’t even bother showing my pass, I can’t imagine how many people must just not pay. And it’s already pretty damn slow getting on in downtown.
If you really want to hump the leg of environmental justice, maybe scale train pass prices based on income?
#19 – Andrew, that’s not why they implemented the ride free zone, but you probably know that. Seriously. people here in downtown SF are lining up 20+ deep at every stop, the majority of them will board in a timely manner, as commuters do all over the world.
Encourage monthly pass use through discounts to riders and incentives for major employers, and eliminate as much confusion as possible (the whole city needs to be one zone), and overall, boarding will go better than it does currently.
@18 – actually yes. In Kyoto you board the bus from the back door and pay as you leave. Always. I don’t know what the ratio of farejumpers is there…I presume it’s not that much, since I never saw a single person skip out on fare during my time there.
I imagine if Metro instituted a zero tolerance policy for farejumping it might help curb the problem, but I also realize that this is a city in America, so I don’t really have high hopes on that one.
ECB I got your back on this one.
First a no brainer. The free ride zone is eliminated.
Second we need to handle pricing exactly the same as Munich Germany Handles the U-Bahn.
http://www.mvv-muenchen.de/en/home/fahrg…
Here is the link. Essentially they created zones (circles) that are spaced out further from the center of the city’s Main Train Station. Fares increase approx $2 for each zone further out.
Single ticket fares (Einzelfahrkarte)
Number of zones & Price of single ticket
1 2.30
2 4.60
3 6.90
4+ 9.20
They also have a whole variety of monthly/daily packages. Note that you can travel the whole zone for a day with the same ticket. So if all of your travel was going to be within the center of town, it would cost you $2.30/day.
Lovely system. Fast, efficient, clean. I would park my car and take the U-Bahn if it existed here the same way it does there.
Imagine that.
Here’s more info on their system. They have perfected many of the “issues” being discussed here. Note that they have similar issues with several routes not being direct, when to charge (loading vs. unloading), and monthly passes:
The U-Bahn is part of the MVV (Münchner Verkehrsverbund), the tariff union for the Munich region. All stations have information panels that show the zone you’re in, although Munich city is basically identical with the inner zone (all U-Bahn stations apart from U6 Garching-Hochbrück).
1-day pass – 4.80 (9.60 for the whole MVV network)
Single ticket – 2.20 (short trip – 1.10)
Strip ticket (10 strips) – 10.50 (for the inner zone two strips have to be cancelled)
Season Tickets (IsarCards) can be bought as “rings”, the Munich city area would be 4 ring zones:
Weekly pass 15.10
Like in other German cities, the Munich U-Bahn is an open system, there are no ticket barriers, you must cancel your ticket before entering the platform area and show it in case you’re controlled. All tickets are valid on any means of transport (bus, tram, subway and local trains) with free transfer between them.
http://www.mvv-muenchen.de/web4archiv/ob…
Peace.
@16: You have to deal with the situation we have: Thousands of suburban commuters who, without park-and-ride lots, would be driving into the city.
Suburban riders are used to paying more (the two-zone system). But unless you’re offering more mass-transit options than we have now cutting park-and-ride lots is simply going to put more cars on the road.
you have to have park and rides because the isn’t adequate service to the places the parkers live.
Re: getting rid of the ride-free zone.
I’d love to see the cash fare box eliminated. You should have to have a ticket or a pass to ride the bus. That would speed up boarding as individual riders will no longer be able to hold up the line as they pay with 15 dimes or 30 nickels or whatever the fuck they’re doing that takes one person so long to board.
“wouldn’t downtown bus traffic slow to a crawl at evening rush hour as dozens of riders queued to pay?”
It’d be faster than sitting there while the crack heads and their ho’s stumble on board. Have you seen how long that takes? Jesus, an 80 year fumbling to pay in pennies is more productive then downtown Seattle’s bums.
@22,
Yeah because getting on the 38 or the 9 downtown in SF is a fucking dream, right?
What the fuck are you talking about? It’s a god damned nightmare down there, and that’s with BART and muni underground away from traffic.
That is further proof we need a ride-free zone.
Get rid of the Ride Free Zone (aka the Pro-Drunk Zone) and replace it with Vouchers that merchants can issue for a trip that’s one zone.
Problem solved.
Then let the DSA pay for the vouchers if they care about them so much.
They can give them free with any purchase at a downtown business.
So how do the random fare inspections work? It’s straightforward with tickets, how do they check those using smart cards?
Slog: San Francisco’s only blog!
#30 – You’re talking about loading downtown commuters. In the business district during rush hour, those buses load just fine. Eliminating the cash box wouldn’t improve what makes those routes so unpleasant. The 38 isn’t in competition with the MUNI underground or BART, and the 9 only overlaps with BART for a very brief part of its route.
#33 – Hey, until we get a weekly paper worth a shit, I’m haunting you guys. Most commenting on those pages would make Issur look downright pragmatic.
I don’t want to pay twice: once for my Metro ride to light rail, and again for the light rail ride to downtown. Metro is going to seriously reduce bus service in Southeast Seattle, herding people onto light rail. Metro passes and transfers out to work seamlessly with light rail. I’m not sure an ORCA pass is a suitable option, particularly since there is zero info on it online, even though it’s supposed to be implemented later this year. Casual users shouldn’t be penalized by not having a monthly pass – they can get from SE Seattle to downtown now on one trip/fare, and they should still be able to do so after light rail starts. Charging two fares for what is essentially one trip into downtown is going to confuse people and discourage casual users.
Either keep the ride free zone, or move to a saner system, as in keshmeshi’s suggestion. No fare boxes. All rides ticket or pass. Discount for using ORCA (as they do in London with Oyster) will help move people to ORCA. Huge fines for riding without a valid pass or ticket, and like in Munich, no ticket barriers — inspectors periodically make you show your pass/ticket.
This is how they should do the light rail, for sure — buses, though, are tougher because it’s not possible to put ticket machines at all the stops. (Put them on the buses, maybe?)
Slowing down the loading of the buses within the tunnel is a problem, particularly when you realize that is going to slow down the trains down there as well while they wait for buses to get out of their way.
Oh, and I was going to say — make 2 zones for the light rail, with the dividing line at the city limits. There is a 4 mile gap, roughly, between the Rainier Beach station and the Tukwila station, so it’s a natural place to put a zone boundary. The main flaw with zones is that people going only one stop that happens to cross a zone line get overcharged, but in this case it is both a very long distance, and probably not a trip that will be taken by many people.
Also, with smart card fares, they could probably program in an exception to the 2 zone fare for people going only 1 stop, if they want… though it doesn’t seem necessary in this case.
Anyway, with 2 zones, all of SE Seattle is in the same zone as downtown, which seems fair. When the University Link opens, it should be in that zone as well.
The per-mile charge is ridiculous.
@7, people who ride the buses for years still don’t get the concept of pay when you leave going away from downtown.
There is no reason that light rail should have a different fare structure than buses – and frankly neither should Metro buses have different fares than ST buses. There can be zones, and the fare between any two zones should be the same whatever vehicle you use – light rail, Metro bus, ST bus.
Why does ST cost $3 from Tacoma to Seattle (30+ miles) or even Tacoma to Everett, but $2.50 from Bellevue to Seattle (6 miles), while Metro is $1.50 off-peak from Kirkland or Issaquah to Seattle. Makes no sense. Just have zones and charge the same for all the service between the zones.
Anyone who’s used any other decent transit system knows our fare system in the Puget Sound is insane. You need a degree to figure it out. (1 zone or 2? Peak or Off-Peak? Do I pay when I get on or can I just climb in any open door? What hour is it? Is the ride free area in affect or do I need to pay?) I dare anyone to create a simple diagram for this decision tree.
Andrew @17: “…everyone can just walk on and off and the buses can get through downtown in a reasonable amount of time” The problem with this logic is that currently, most current fare collections are happening outside the ride free area. That zippy trip you currently enjoy downtown wouldn’t be so speedy but stops outside the ride free area would be much shorter.
DUMP THE RIDE FREE AREA!! It not only complicates when and how you pay, but makes boarding and un-boarding a nightmare. Nothing like waiting for some moron to dig for 3 minutes for change while 10+ people wait to board. Better yet – someone in the back decides they aren’t going to even get up until the bus stops. Then everyone waiting to board has to watch as moron makes his/her way to the front THEN new passengers can get on. Boarding would be much smoother and faster if people paid as they got on through one door and other people could exit out the back door.
Yes. Please get rid of the RFA. If businesses want a free ride shuttle around town, pay metro to add a free ride shuttle that makes a loop around town!
The RFA will make riding light rail hell. Among the problems: What if you are in the RFA, don’t scan in because you at first think you’re going to get off in the RFA, but enroute decide to change destinations and get off at a station that happens to be outside the RFA? You didn’t scan in, so now what?