WMATA will try out flexible “name your own price” passes

Metro can help riders, make its revenue more predictable, and encourage people to ride transit with a system of flexible passes. The WMATA Board is expected to authorize WMATA to move ahead with a pilot program at its meeting Thursday.

Michael Perkins, one of our resident transit experts, has been advocating for such a system for a long time. There aren’t yet many public details of what WMATA leaders have in mind, but so far, it looks very close to what I like to call the “Perkins Pass.”

A resolution for Thursday’s board meeting would authorize the agency to try a pass for six months, after which the board would decide whether to make it permanent.

Below is an updated version of a recent article on passes, with new information about what WMATA has revealed so far.

What would passes do? Why are they a good idea?

The basic idea of a pass is that a rider pays for a ticket whose price is close to the cost of taking one round-trip ride each weekday. That covers basic commuting, but then riders also get additional transit trips for free.

This is great for riders because extra mid-day trips on top of basic commuting don’t cost more. But it’s also good for the transit agency. Off-peak, the trains and buses aren’t full, so it’s not really costing more to transport someone at those times. While the agency loses out on revenue from those trips, it’s likely to make up the difference through attracting riders overall.

Mary Hynes, Arlington’s representative on the WMATA Board (and who will attend her last meeting as a board member on Thursday), thinks this could help encourage riders who’ve started abandoning Metro to give it another try. “We need to find a way to give riders a way to come back,” she said. “The flex pass has that built into it, since you’re buying a certain amount of service and then can ride for free.

Another big advantage to flex passes is that they would make the revenue more predictable, as the costs of running transit wouldn’t change based on how many people are riding. This problem comes up some years and causes a sudden loss of revenue. For example, when the government shut down in 2011, Metro lost about $250,000 a day.

That would be far less if most federal workers were using a pass. The same goes for snowstorms and other unexpected disruptions. Riders might save a little money on normal months and pay a little extra (or, if they work for the government, the government might pay a little extra) in shutdowns and snowstorms, but this evens out everyone’s costs.

Mobile phones, streaming video like Netflix, and many other services work the same way. You pay for your voice and data plan, not per minute. On average, it works out, but what you pay and what the phone company receives are more predictable.

Hynes said, “It’s a win for the region because passes actually begin to maximize the use of the existing routes, and a win for the agency because it adds revenue predictability.”

How would a pass system work on Metro?

Metro has some passes today. As Michael Perkins explained in 2010, when passes first started integrating with SmarTrip cards, the bus pass is fairly popular but the rail passes are less so.

A big reason is Metro’s fares, which vary by distance. That means one pass at one price would either be a huge steal for long-distance riders or outrageously expensive for short-distance ones. Metro has two passes now, a full pass that gives unlimited rides anywhere, and a “short rail” pass that’s only good for short trips. But most people don’t use either of these.

Fortunately, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. In the Seattle area, they have many transit agencies with many fares, but one single pass, the Puget Pass.

The way this pass works is actually quite simple. Riders say what their regular commute is, and the system computes the regular fare. Then, it calculates a monthly pass based on that fare which costs 36 times the one-way fare. With that pass, the rider can then take all trips of that price or less for free for one month. If the rider takes a longer trip, he or she just pays the extra out of the cash balance on their ORCA card, the equivalent of our SmarTrip.

(If you thought to yourself, “Why not just have a flat fare?” you’re asking something many new board members also ask. Here’s a detailed explanation of why a flat fare is a bad idea. While some cities, like New York, do have a flat fare, Metro is very different; many trips on Metro would use commuter railroads in New York, which don’t have a flat fare either. And we handle transfers differently too.)

Michael Perkins computed a detailed proposal for how to implement passes on Metro based on a few simple principles. He suggested a system like Puget Pass, plus a special “Just Add Bus” rate to add a bus pass onto a flexible rail pass.

What’s next?

The board resolution doesn’t go into many details, but says:

Metro staff have been exploring a new monthly transit pass that would allow riders

to purchase an unlimited amount of transit usage at a personalized price point in exchange for transitioning from a “pay as you go” structure to a “monthly subscription” structure.

That sounds a lot like the “Perkins Pass.” Assuming the resolution passes, staff will bring more details to the board in January, start a test in the spring, and present results in the summer or fall.

Paul Wiedefeld, the new General Manager, says he wants to find ways to improve the customer experience on Metro in the short run. This program won’t solve the bigger systemic challenges Metro faces, but it would be a meaningful improvement for riders that the agency can move ahead with now.