Each of these options is still rather confusing. That's a product of Metro's fare structure, which really runs counter to the idea of passes in the first place.

That's why I'd favor a series of max daily caps on total fare.

1. Simplify the peak fare structure. Keep the same range of fares, but only offer 3 gradations instead of the current 5 and 10 cent increments.

2. Treat those 3 gradations as relative zones - not fixed to a map, but based on relative distance.

3. Assign a daily max based on how many zones you travel through. So, if you have a 2-zone commute (the middle fare range), you'd pay a max fare per day that would be marginally higher than the round trip commute total - hence, any travel on Metro above and beyond that commute trip would essentially be free (or heavily discounted).

So long as Metro's fare structure is so varied, I see little benefit to passes that require such specificity in my commute. I travel to and from different stations all the time.

by Alex B. on Dec 16, 2009 11:04 am • link • report

I'm not sure this is really that complicated. It's three questions:

Do you want a bus pass?

Do you want a rail pass?

How much do you usually pay when you ride the rail?

All the figuring on how much it costs is done on the WMATA end. This could be done with a fairly simple web form with two checkboxes and a pull-down.

Bus only = $11

Rail only = (how much you wanted) * 10 (maybe subtracting a discount)

Bus and rail = $6 more than the rail only equivalent.

Requires no changes to how Metro fares are structured, which would be a serious political fight among the jurisdictions.

Most people that commute by Metro travel from their home to an office, which doesn't change day-by-day. Your situation may be different.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 16, 2009 11:28 am • link • report

I think this is kinda pushing passes for the sake of having passes.

I only want a pass if it saves me money and gives me a little more peace of mind. If I have to think about it too much, I'll just pay ala carte.

The beauty of the all-you-can-eat passes in New York and Chicago (for example) is the simplicity of the transaction. You do the rough calculation to see if it makes financial sense for you to buy, and that's it - you just ride. The point is with WMATA's variable fares (for rail especially) it's difficult to do that and ask the consumer to be the one to make the decision. If you had a daily cap on fares based on certain ridership characteristics, everything's taken care of on the back end.

This proposal just doesn't seem to add much to the rider, while adding a lot of complexity to an already complex pass system. I'd posit that the reason people don't use them isn't just because they're not a great deal, but because they're confusing as hell. Any pass system that has to deal with Metro's variable fares without subverting the fare structure completely will have that problem.

Hence, my idea is to do it all on the back end in conjunction with a simplification of the fare structure.

"Do I want a rail pass" is the wrong question, I think. I want a system that's easy to understand and easier still to use, and also encourages more ridership at off-peak hours.

by Alex B. on Dec 16, 2009 11:38 am • link • report

At the risk of making it more complicated, parking can be brought into the mix to incentivise passes. For example, people that hold Monthly passes on the MARC from BWI get a monthly pass to park in the garage for free. It's a huge incentive since parking is usually $9 a day.

In WMATA's case, perhaps restricting the the paid permit parking spaces to monthly pass holders would be enough of an incentive to get people to sign onto the pass.

by Ryan S on Dec 16, 2009 11:46 am • link • report

Price capping and a complex fare structure aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, the big benefit I see to price capping is that you can then make the fare structure as complex as you want, and riders don't have to all be math genuises to figure out which passes are best for them - the system will figure it out for them, and cap their daily or weekly fares at that amount.

London's fare system is tremendously complex. They have nine fare zones, peak and off-peak fares for every combination of fare zones, and separate peak and off-peak daily passes for every combination of fare zones. But if you have a pay-as-you-go Oyster card, you don't have to worry about figuring out in advance which pass you think you're going to want - you just put some money on your card and go, and your fare will automatically be capped as if you had chosen the most appropriate pass.

by Johanna on Dec 16, 2009 1:01 pm • link • report

This is all too complicated. I'll never buy passes; nor worth the hassle or the time to understand them. I just want my Smartcard to have monies on it and deduct from this ONE card whatever transit option I use (rail, buses or other local systems)

by Michael on Dec 16, 2009 1:08 pm • link • report

i'm with Johanna -- and I don't know if that option of a 'smart card' is even on the table, but darn it seems cool.

i used the hong kong octopus card (wiki) for a little while and it was very cool.

skip the middle ground and go right to the real deal.

by Peter Smith on Dec 16, 2009 2:20 pm • link • report

The Smart Card should certainly be on the table - as I understand it, SmarTrip is fully capable of implementing most of those features.

That's the whole point of Micheal's posts - the reason passes are feasible on SmarTrip is because the technology can handle it - but it could just as easily handle a different fare structure all together, one that would be better for the users (IMO).

by Alex B. on Dec 16, 2009 2:55 pm • link • report

@Alex B, Johanna, Peter Smith: I looked at some numbers for the London price capping scheme for comparison. Let's take a two-zone trip from Queen's Park to Paddington as an example.

One ride:
Cash £4
W/Oyster smartcard £2.30 peak, £1.80 off-peak
Daily price cap: £7.20 peak, £5.60 off-peak

So you're capped at about 3.1 times the equivalent one-time fare, The equivalent for Metro would be capped for a $2.00 ride at $6.25. That may be simple, but it's not a terribly good deal. Considering you're not likely to take more than three peak trips per day, it's more likely that you'd have to take a lot of off-peak trips as well for it to make any financial sense. Fortunately, it works like a safety net so in that regard it saves some people some money. It just doesn't really embody the "commute and your weekends are free" idea that weekly/monthly passes typically follow.

Fortunately, London does offer weekly and monthly passes, priced at around 11.2 and 43.1 times a single ride fare. Their annual pass is priced at around 450 single fares. These are a much better deal, but you do have to buy them in advance.

If the daily price caps were set as low as the prices I discussed in my article, Metro would stand to lose a LOT of money without any benefit in the form of prior committment of money. I think the only way they'd be willing to accept such a proposal would be if the caps were set at about $15.00 for an "unlimited zone" day pass, $10.00 for a day pass equivalent to the short rail pass today, and $5.00 for a base fare day pass.

The day caps also lack the advantage of making weekend trips free.

It's not like you have to make this decision every week. Once you figure out your commute pattern, you can choose a pass and put it on autopilot, then have the system buy you a new pass every week.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 16, 2009 3:05 pm • link • report

There may be a benefit in having a "steady stream of revenue". In this case, though, there is not much difference in getting paid once a week for a pass rather than 10 individual raid payments? It seems like a stretch to call that a benefit.

by SCS on Dec 16, 2009 3:09 pm • link • report

i think of comfort, speed, quality of life, etc., first.

price per trip enters as a factor somewhere, but all we have to do is keep fares 'reasonable' in comparison to cars.

the most important concept, in my opinion, is being able to do decongestion pricing (right now, most folks are only talking 'off-peak' pricing, which is a start, but not sufficient). we should protect women from being groped, for instance. if that means peak rider/peak direction charging should apply to keep trains comfortable, then so be it.

we should talk about dropping the concept of 'downtown' so we can help alleviate all the congestion that crushes our transport networks. let's do that 'grid' stuff that people talk about. build it, and we'll have many 'mini-downtowns'.

i don't think fare discounts are necessary at all. the convenience of having a smart card is worth paying extra for.

i'd like very low fares, super-high quality service, pulling more and more people onto transit, building more political support, etc.

by Peter Smith on Dec 16, 2009 3:19 pm • link • report

Two points, Micheal:

London's passes are also based on zones, not just a set distance. The problem with Metro's widely variable fare structure is that going one extra stop might change your ride price during peak hours.

The larger issue is one of price structure. The notion that passes are supposed to give free off-peak travel is kinda funny - there's nothing inherent to passes that does that, it all depends on the price. That same logic applies to price caps as well - it all depends on where you set the cap.

For that, I see no compelling reason to add passes for the sake of having passes. I also tend to agree with SCS, as I'm not sure that giving Metro funds in advance is really all that big of a benefit to them...

by Alex B. on Dec 16, 2009 3:34 pm • link • report

How about a pass like D.C.'s SmartStudent Pass? The city subsidizes them down to JUST $26 dollars a month, and they cover all of the charge for DC Students who travel by train or bus as long as the trips are completely in DC or to border stations (IE: Silver Spring). The only problem: it must be inserted in the fare gates, and so therefore, they demagnetize frequently, which is why students commonly walk through emergency exits next to mezzanine kiosks.

by arm on Dec 16, 2009 4:27 pm • link • report

I wonder if this bus pass would be a little too good I take the bus to/from my office on average four times a week. I avoid rail because the peak fare is so expensive and my office isn't close to the station.

With the bus pass (if I'm understanding correctly), basically all my usage of rail would be free because I don't ride rush hour. And even if I don't take the bus that much, I would still get my money's worth with free nonpeak rail. Wouldn't Metro lose revenue from people like me (who used to pay for all their nonpeak trips? Do people who don't take peak-period rail just not figure that big in the revenue numbers?

by James M on Dec 16, 2009 4:47 pm • link • report

@James M: Based on data I have available to me, I estimate Metrorail ridership is 60% peak and 40% off-peak. Since off-peak fares are generally half that of peak fares, that means that peak rail passengers pay about 75% of the fare revenue and off-peak pays about 25%.*

*There are a ton of assumptions going into this calculation.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 16, 2009 6:50 pm • link • report

There is a place for and a capability to provide bus/rail passes on SmarTrip. But Smartrip as many of you already realize is a convenient power tool. The addition of autoload and web service will be big additional plus which will reduce the need for riders to visit rail tvm's or to feed money into bus fareboxes. Multimodal passes and the establishment of daily price points will greatly increase the backend accounting complexity. Remember also that most passes are period specific. WMATA today does not have expiration dates on any fare media other than passes.

by Interested on Dec 17, 2009 8:44 am • link • report

@interested: Please explain how the backend accounting becomes significantly more complicated. I agree it will take some amount of accounting but I'm not sure where it would be incredibly challenging?

Thanks.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 17, 2009 9:00 am • link • report

I'm getting a bit frustrated at seeing the technological merits of SmartTrip debated.

SmartTrip is just a card with a small RFID strip which gives an ID number for the card. It's not technologically capable of ANYTHING other than identifying the SmartTrip card.

Anything else that SmartTrip "does" is infact done by a piece of networked software that takes the ID number and checks various WMATA databases for the amount of money and the status associated with the card. You can integrate SmartTrip into a system that measures cattle weight gain if you like - it's all a backend development problem, there are no limitations to the card itself.

---

In New York, they trade the profit-maximization of the pass system for the savings they get from not having to bulldoze half the city to construct freeways. The subway is cheap for regular users - it's designed to become a part of everyone's lives and integrate into the city rather than requiring an individual expenditure and cost-benefit comparison for every trip. In return, everyone agrees that the subway is essential to the city, and must be funded.

It's similar to the 'right of free parking' expectation that many around here have developed, but much cheaper in land and money for a dense urban area.

by Squalish on Dec 17, 2009 1:20 pm • link • report

Squalish, that's not accurate. SmarTrip has a small chip embedded in the card, and the information about account balance, station entries/exits and time (for transfers) as well as an ID code are all stored on the card itself. It's inaccurate to say there are no limitations on the card itself and that this stuff is entirely back-end.

Even so, there are plenty of limitations on the back end, too - even if they're related to the software and not the hardware.

by Alex B. on Dec 17, 2009 1:50 pm • link • report

@Squalish: I'm not aware of Smartrip's specific capabilities, but the card stores quite a bit more information than just an ID number. The card stores the current stored value, last transaction and whether there is an active bus and/or rail transfer, at the very least. All of this is encrypted using a private key using Triple DES and other cryptographic schemes.

The specific technology is discussed here:

http://www.gi-de.com/pls/portal/maia.display_custom_items.DOWNLOAD_SEEALSO_FILE?p_ID=6462&p_page_id=65188&p_pg_id=42

Computer security students at MIT were able to break MBTA's smart card system and do things like write arbitrary stored values to the card, so the cards don't just store a ID number. They did this by creating dummy cards written with every possible private key, then testing to see which card had the correct private key. This wasn't that hard because MBTA was only using a 6-bit private key with 64 possible values.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 17, 2009 1:56 pm • link • report

@Squalish: Budgets are where values are revealed. If we felt the same about Metro as you say NYC feels about its subway, we wouldn't be talking about a $170M budget deficit leading to fare increases and service cuts.

NYC Subway is looking at a $300M deficit this year, and they are talking about fare increases and service cuts, including closing whole subway lines during off-peak.

Whatever fare system changes we develop has to take into account that our funding partners' resources are finite, and cutting into WMATA's fare revenues by offering too generous a discount will likely result in service cuts rather than the funding partners suddenly deciding they love transit and are willing to increase the subsidy.

by Michael Perkins on Dec 17, 2009 2:02 pm • link • report

Well thank you, I stand corrected - and that's a bit of an insane security risk if it's used without verification... I wonder where the benefit is?

Even so, there are plenty of limitations on the back end, too - even if they're related to the software and not the hardware.

In an ID-driven system, backend software limitations can be fixed, invisible to the customer.

by Squalish on Dec 17, 2009 9:53 pm • link • report

@Michael Perkins- Today the various agency smartrip participants share value based on stored value use transactions. A ride is taken or a transfer is made for which the agency receives a value. All agencies retain the receipts they collect with the exception of WMATA which covers the payment from deferred smartrip revenues. Introducing shared passes into the equation requires a collaborative pricing followed by detailed sales reporting and the tracking of a subset of use transactions. This is all possible with smartrip but is it really necessary given the existing interoperability of smartrip. More options make more complexity and ratchet up the data crunching required. Additional functionality on the card will slow the transaction which today is very fast.

by Interested on Dec 18, 2009 8:00 am • link • report

@Interested, additional number crunching on the cards will are not likely to noticeably slow the transactions. These cards are capable of performing thousands of additions per second if not millions (string a few additions together and you get multiplication, date arithmetic, fare capping, etc.). By far the longest part of the transaction is transferring enough energy to the card for it to power its microcontroller and transmitter to return a response. The second longest piece is probably the training sequence and handshaking that need to occur between the card and the terminal so that the terminal knows a card is present.

by James on Dec 18, 2009 5:51 pm • link • report

@james , adding passes may increase the time of transaction between the card and target to as much as 300 milliseconds from the 80. This may or may not be a problem in the rail system but certainly not a big deal on bus. My issue really relates to clearing and settlement relating to millions of transactions occurring each month. My point is that this work does not come without costs.
Are these types of products really necessary?

by Interested on Dec 19, 2009 1:28 pm • link • report

Why can't we make this simple and just offer a one-price, unlimited ride pass for rail, bus, and rail+bus?! I'm all in favor of re-thinking the pass system but just about everything presented here is seriously confusing to me, and I have two degrees--how the hell do you think any of the locals are going to figure this one out?! KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!

by Matt on Dec 21, 2009 12:15 am • link • report

The locals?

Won't SOMEBODY... PLEASE... THINK OF THE TOURISTS!!

by Squalish on Dec 21, 2009 3:35 am • link • report