Posts about Fares

Under Metro's proposal, riders could choose from two differently-priced 28-day passes, good for trips up to $3.25 or unlimited. Any trip of the pass value or less would be free. If customers use a pass for a more expensive trip than the cap, they'll pay the difference.

Passes need to be on SmarTrip

Metro's pass proposal calls for using paper farecards, at least initially, for the monthly pass. But that will depress use of the passes, as it does with the two existing weekly passes.

The weekly rail fast pass and short trip pass are not popular, in part because paper farecards are inconvenient and relatively fragile. The short trip pass is especially inconvenient since it requires Metro customers to carry exact change for every ride that is more than $3.25. With a Smartrip card, this extra fare could be automatically deducted from stored value.

The risk of damaging the card combined with the need to carry a bunch of coins for more expensive trips tilts the field away from using passes. And the calculus is even worse for a pass that needs to last a full month rather than a week. If the new passes are paper-only, customers likely won't buy enough of them to make the new passes worthwhile.

Add a 3rd tier for the shortest trips

While a choose-your-own-value pass is ideal, Metro believes it's too technically complex to implement. But they could improve upon their proposal by adding a third tier for shorter trips.

The two existing passes are good for trips up to $3.25 and up to maximum fare. This offers a good deal for customers that regularly take medium and long-distance trips, but is not a very good deal for customers that live closer in and rarely take a trip that long.

The new pass should be good for trips costing up to $2.10. Any additional fare would automatically come out of the stored value in the customer's Smartrip account. Metro should encourage customers to buy higher-tier passes by adjusting their prices. The higher-tier passes should be slightly cheaper in comparison.

Price 28-day passes differently than weekly passes

Under the current proposal, the "monthly pass" would actually be a 4-week pass, and it would cost exactly 4-times the amount of the weekly pass.

Mathematically that may make sense, but it doesn't make sense from a customer service perspective. Considering the added risk of losing or damaging a farecard, or of not using it on vacation or sick days, customers would have little incentive to purchase a monthly pass instead of 4 weekly passes.

The monthly version would be a greater risk, and would offer no corresponding greater deal to compensate. So why buy it?

If WMATA wants customers to pay more up front, there will have to be some added incentive to do so. One option might be to make the 4-week pass a true monthly pass, which would essentially make the 29th, 30th, and 31st days of each month free to pass holders. Another option might be to reduce the cost of the 4-week pass, to be slightly less than 4-times the cost of a weekly pass.

Based on these ideas, Here's table showing suggested passes and prices:

WMATA deserves praise for considering more flexible payment options, but needs to more carefully consider its pricing structure. If monthly passes don't offer a stronger incentive, customers will probably not use them. That should not be taken as a sign that monthly passes aren't needed, only that the math isn't working for customers.

Previously, Metro offered a few discounts for frequent riders: a 10% bonus fare for people who bought farecards of $20 or more, a weekly bus pass that cost about 8.5 trips, and the rail fast pass.

The 10% bonus fare was eliminated in 2003. The weekly bus pass discount was eliminated in 2010. Metro now charges 10 times the Smartrip fare for a pass.

For a regular commuter taking 10 trips per week which are long enough to hit the maximum fare, the rail fast pass currently offers about a 10% discount compared to 10 individual trips, as well as free trips after that. This proposal will eliminate the 10% discount and almost certainly drive customers away from using the rail fast pass.

More to follow after the Thursday board meeting.

With a SmarTrip card, rail fares will range from $1.70 to $3.50 off-peak and from $2.10 to $5.75 during rush hours. Regular local bus fares will rise from $1.60 to $1.70 for SmarTrip customers, while customers paying in cash will have their fares rounded to the nearest dollar.

Since use of SmarTrip by visitors and non-regular riders is expected to increase, SmarTrip vending machines will be installed at more all stations.

With the elimination of the peak-of-the-peak fare, station fare tables will go back to having just two columns. But riders shouldn't expect to save a whole lot, since the "regular" fare has been increased enough to cover the difference. With the peak-of-the-peak surcharge, the current maximum fare is $5.20. It will rise to $5.75 under the proposal.

Parking at Metro lots and garages will increase by 25¢ per day, about a 5% increase. Bike locker fees will be cut from $200 per year to $120 per year, something we argued for based on low demand for lockers.

Most disappointing to me is that discussion of implementing some sort of flexible monthly pass has stopped for this budget cycle, meaning that Metro customers will likely have to wait at least two more years to have the flexibility of paying for their commute and getting their off-peak trips for free. The topic of monthly passes was briefly discussed during an October meeting of the finance committee, but by November had disappeared from the discussion.

The fare increases are expected to raise about half of Metro's $120 million shortfall for the coming fiscal year, with local jurisdictions expected to chip in the other half of the shortfall in order to balance the budget. Metro's finance committee will discuss the fare increase along with the rest of the budget on Thursday morning.

Our current Breakfast Link editors are looking to move on from curating the links each day. Meanwhile, many of our contributors now use Twitter, and can submit or curate items through that service.

We decided to try creating a links post collaboratively, by building the post from tweets contributors and readers sent in to a new Twitter account, @GGWashTips, plus some from our regular tip queue. This is the result.

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Raising rail fares

There were two fairly standard increases proposed for Metrorail fares. The first is a fairly familiar increase where peak fares increase by the rate of inflation, which would be about 10 cents for the base fare and increases in the distance-based fares. The new maximum fare for peak of the peak with a paper farecard would be $6, up from $5.45 today.

As part of this option, Metro is proposing increasing off-peak fares by about 50%, setting them to 75% of the equivalent peak fare instead of the current three-tier system. This option would raise about $57 million and might reduce ridership by about 3 million trips per year, about 1.3%.

Another option for adjusting rail fares would be to increase only the off-peak fares. In this option, the off-peak fare would increase to 90% of the peak rail fare, and the peak fares would be kept the same.

Some board members expressed some concern that by reducing the difference in fares, customers would no longer be driven by price to avoid the busiest peak times. One board member pointed out that the revenue increases might be reduced by the cost increase of increased congestion during peak times.

Another drawback with this option is that it eliminates the long-standing Metro policy of selling less crowded off-peak service at a discount in an effort to spur ridership and promote transit use even when the roads are not as crowded. This option would raise about $48 million and might reduce ridership by 1.6 million trips per year.

Parking fees

Metro addressed parking fees by proposing an across-the-board $0.25 increase, as well as demand-based adjustments to reserved parking permit fees. For lots that have low usage, Metro would reduce the reserved permit fee. For high usage lots, Metro would be allowed to increase the number of reserved permits from about 15% of spaces to about 30% of spaces. Part of this option would be to reduce the fee for bicycle lockers to $120 based on low demand for lockers. This option estimates $3.4 million in revenue and 100,000 lost riders.

Two-zone farecard system

The last option is the most interesting, and is the largest change from existing policy. The peak of the peak fare would be eliminated, though it's not clear whether this means a 20 cent reduction in peak of peak fares, or a 20 cent increase in peak fares.

For paper farecards, the existing time-based and three-tier distance based fare would be replaced with a simplified and expensive two zone system, where riders would pay $3 for trips within a central zone and all other trips would be $6. It's not clear whether trips completely outside the zone would also be $6, which would be strange for some short trips like East Falls Church to Clarendon.

Board Members Jeff McKay of Fairfax County and Mary Hynes of Arlington voiced some apprehension about this plan, pointing out that many visitors to the area stay in hotels just outside of the central zone boundary, and especially that Arlington would likely oppose a plan where almost all Arlington riders would pay $6 with a paper farecard for trips that are about $2 today.

The fare ideas kick off a process that will see an official proposal by the General Manager in January. The next step will be the board's decision to send fare increase proposals to public hearings in the Spring. Final approval of a fare increase would probably come in late June.

As WMATA staff explained in their presentation on fare proposals, there's a tradeoff between simplicity and fairness in all fare proposals, and generally the region has chosen fairness in the past.

Metro could have a single, flat fare, but it would have to be about $2.70 per trip. This would mean that everyone who rides very long distances every day would save a bundle, while all the commuters who live just a couple stops from work and ride off-peak could see their commute costs double.

A zone system is similarly a problem, since people riding one station across a zone boundary would end up paying as much as someone crossing almost 2 whole zones. We can reduce the unfairness by creating more zones, but then the fares get more complicated. Fewer zones are simpler, but much less fair.

That's bad for regular Metro riders, but what about doing something similar for tourists? While the regular commuter probably has a SmarTrip which handles computing fares, it's a lot of work for the tourist trying to buy a paper farecard for the first time.

Since tourists are already paying for hotels, meals and more, an extra dollar or two on the fare might be less important than making the system easy to understand.

We can't make every paper farecard fare $2.70, since then everyone with a $5 commute would just buy these tourist fares instead. We could sell a single farecard for $5.20 (the current maximum Metrorail fare including peak-of-the-peak), but it's a little much to charge each tourist that much per trip even if they're taking the train from Smithsonian to McPherson Square.

But few tourists ride to Franconia-Springfield, anyway. What about a single tourist farecard which goes all the places tourists typically go? Metro could make it really easy to buy, with big, simple signs listing the cost, and a straightforward process on the fare machines. This "tourist fare" would take a rider anywhere in a certain zone, which Metro could prominently show on the maps.

At the last Riders' Advisory Council meeting, Michael Eichler briefed the RAC on a number of fare proposals WMATA's planning and budget offices are evaluating. Assistant General Manager Nat Bottigheimer showed the WMATA Board the same information in October. One of the ideas listed on the presentation is a flat fare for paper farecards. I suggested this "tourist zone" as a tweak to that idea.

Here's one possible zone. A lot of tourists go to the airport, and a lot to Woodley Park (a major destination for convention-goers and animal-seekers). The fare between these 2 spots maxes out at $2.90 (peak of the peak) with SmarTrip, or $3.15 with a paper farecard.

Any trip inside this zone costs no more than $3 (with SmarTrip), anytime. Metro could sell a "tourist card" for $3 a ride and make things a lot easier for the very high proportion of tourists who never leave this zone.

There's no incentive for SmarTrip users to buy one of these instead, since no trip costs more with SmarTrip. A few of the longer trips currently cost more with paper farecards, but that extra cost is basically the "tourist tax" today. If Metro replaced that with this system, they'd probably make more money off the tourists riding short distances and make it worthwhile to keep the "tourist fare" at a flat and easy $3 instead of a more cumbersome $3.25.

Or, perhaps there could be more zones, or different zones. For example, the zone would also work a little farther east, encompassing Potomac Ave and Stadium-Armory and not Court House and Clarendon. If we had data on how many fares are paid with paper farecards versus SmarTrip at each station, it'd be easy to determine which is a more appropriate "tourist zone."

As the planning department evaluates many different fare proposals (including some we've brought here on Greater Greater Washington just to recommend against), perhaps Eichler and the team can consider something like this. Can you come up with a better "tourist zone" system for them to evaluate?

Below are brief descriptions of each idea, and our take on them.

Integrated monthly passes: Michael Perkins has long been advocating for this, which he calls Smart Passes. They resemble Sound Transit's ORCA system. Basically, it could be good to get most regular riders habitually buying monthly (or weekly) passes. But how much should a pass cost? There many different fares.

The idea is to let you buy a pass of any size. It will cost 40 times the regular one-way fare of your regular commute. You get to take that trip, or any other trip of equal or lesser cost, for free with the pass. For more expensive trips, you pay the difference.

Benefits of this option include encouraging more off-peak ridership ("free nights and weekends"). Mobile networks are least busy nights and weekends, which is why many now offer these times free. Metro and buses are similarly less crowded, which is why off-peak ridership should be encouraged.

Many riders will save some money, so it might cost Metro, but on the other hand it will stabilize the revenue. If there's a major snowstorm or government shutdown, Metro won't lose as much because people will still have bought their passes.

Zone fares: This is another Greater Greater Washington suggestion; the presentation notes that their evaluation is "based on blogger proposal." Though, actually, Matt and Michael proposed this specifically to explain that it might not be the best approach.

Zones make it a little easier to calculate your fare, since you just have to count zones. But you would still look up your fare in a table unless you opt to study the map and add. A zone system would still be complex, and some riders whose stations lie right near a zone boundary could end up paying a lot more.

Metro is studying different zone alternatives besides just the one Matt and Michael analyzed. One possibility would be to study a system where if you cross from, say, Zone 3 to the core (Zone 1) and back out to Zone 3 on the other side, you pay for 6 zones instead of 3. But that would still save some a lot of money and cost others greatly.

Flat fares: The simplest option is to just charge one fare. It gets suggested frequently, especially by people familiar with other subways like New York's.

However, that comparison actually isn't right. Metro is a hybrid of commuter rail and urban subway. In New York, Boston, Chicago and many other cities, the subway stays inside city limits, and a separate commuter rail system serves more outlying suburbs. Those commuter railroads all charge based on distance or zones.

Metro, and BART, combine the two. Someone commuting downtown from Shady Grove is more equivalent from coming in from White Plains on Metro-North. If DC's transit were like older cities, Metro would not go outside DC, Arlington, and Alexandria, and most people in Montgomery, Prince George's and Fairfax would take a larger MARC or VRE.

Anyway, a flat fare would mean everyone pays $2.70 per trip, much more than in other cities with urban subways that don't go to the suburbs. Now, a lot of short Metro trips cost only $1.60, much less than, say, New York's $2.25 regular fare.

And there's the question of equity. A flat fare would mean people taking shorter trips would pay more to subsidize people taking longer trips. Is it fair to charge someone traveling from Union Station to Rhode Island Avenue the same as someone traveling from Shady Grove to Metro Center?

Flat fares for paper farecards: One way to simplify things for tourists would be to charge a flat fare for using a paper farecard, either everywhere or just inside a core zone. That fare could be the highest fare you'd pay for any trip in that zone. That costs tourists (and those without SmarTrips) more, but is very simple.

Free bus-rail transfers: During every fare debate, some suggest raising bus fares substantially. They point out that bus fares are much lower than rail fares and the farebox recovery rate on bus is much lower than on rail. Many other cities, including New York, charge the same flat fare for bus as for subway trips.

The typical counterarguments note that bus riders are generally lower income, meaning the difference serves a social equity purpose, and that buses are slower than the trains. There's one more important point to remember: in New York, for instance, while one pays the flat fare for a bus ride, they can then transfer for free to rail, and vice versa.

Metro, instead, charges the full bus fare minus a 50¢ transfer "discount" when riding both modes. Metro could instead make the transfers fully free, letting anyone get on a bus who's just gotten off rail without paying, and deducting a bus trip from the rail fare if someone rides bus and then rail afterward.

Higher fare for faster buses: If part of the reason for lower bus fares is that buses are slower, what about the faster limited-stop buses? Maybe those should cost more?

This makes some sense. One potential drawback is that riders who don't understand the more confusing system could end up in altercations with bus drivers. The limited-stop buses are supposed to be blue while the local buses are red, but the bus garages don't always follow the rules properly. It would be much more important to get them right if one type of bus costs more.

Get rid of "peak of the peak": We pushed for instituting peak of the peak last year, but it hasn't worked as hoped. The idea was to charge more at the busiest times, to either encourage people to shift when they commute or shift to bus.

However, very little behavior shifting happened. Metro made the peak-of-the-peak period longer than advocates had suggested, and decided to apply it to all trips instead of ones in the congested core, peak direction. Also, it was just more confusing. Few people will change their behavior if it's not easily evident to them when they're paying more versus less. And many people can't change their travel times.

Therefore, it's probably wise to eliminate this. That will, though, mean that regular peak fares or all fares have to rise more than they would otherwise.

The list of ideas includes a brief reference to "Rail reverse-commute discounts," which seems to mean the possibility of charging less for the trips against the rush which just use mostly-empty capacity instead of adding to the crush.

Minimum on-board SmarTrip reloads: One of the biggest sources of bus delay is people loading SmarTrips on the bus, which takes a long time. The best solution is to find more stores that can offer SmarTrip loading, or install kiosks. Meanwhile, Metro could require riders load a certain amount on their SmarTrips.

Some riders might not have that much money at one time, so it would be very important to couple any minimum with other alternatives for those riders who need to load small amounts of money.

Others: A slide lists other options without much explanation, such as rounding all rail fares to the nearest quarter, setting rail fares based on number of stations traversed (unfair; would the Orange Line between Metro Center and Farragut Square cost twice as much as the Red Line?), a bonus for storing more value on a SmarTrip, more passes, and others.

Staff expect to make a recommendation in January. Hopefully they will also be able to release details of the analysis of all of these options, to help the public better understand why they made the choice they did and advocate for or against the choice.

Currently, the paper rail passes are not very popular because they are inconvenient to purchase and cannot be used to pay for parking or bus trips. The paper rail passes are about 1-2% of Metrorail transactions. By making the passes more convenient, more customers may take advantage of this discount.

The passes will only work for rail trips, and do not allow customers to receive a discount on transfers to or from the region's bus systems, including Metrobus. The Smart Pass proposal would change the pass to monthly, allow customers to choose how much to pay for their pass, and would work on bus or rail flexibly. The amount the customer pays for a Smart Pass would determine what kinds of trips the pass will cover.

Metro recently rolled out to all riders the ability to add value to a SmarTrip card online. Another upgrade still in the works is "autoload," where a rider can put a credit card into the system and have it automatically charged each time the SmarTrip value gets low, like you can with E-ZPass.

Besides, if Amtrak is selling almost every seat at its current fare points, there's little economic incentive to lower the fare. Lowering the fare wouldn't sell any more seats since they're selling out already. And it would bring in less revenue.

Capacity: Amtrak simply does not have enough coaches in its fleet to handle the amount of passengers who would want to ride the train if Amtrak fares were comparable to those of curbside buses. Furthermore, there is very little room on the existing railroad to add new trains, particularly at peak hours when tracks leading into New York Penn Station (from New Jersey) are already at capacity with both Amtrak and commuter train traffic.

Giving Amtrak the ability to handle the passenger volume that it could if it were price-competitive with buses would require sustained higher levels of capital investment from the federal government, or from private sector partners, which are absent a strong federal commitment. Unlike highways and aviation, Amtrak lacks a dedicated source of reliable annual funding.

Amenities: Aside from being generally faster (even Northeast Regionals hit top speeds of 125 mph between Washington and New York, while buses never top 80 mph), train travel is generally considered more pleasant than bus travel. Trains offer a smoother ride, more legroom, the ability to get up and walk around while in motion, and on-board food and beverage service. These amenities provide many passengers a justification for paying more than they would to take a bus.

Unlike buses, which operate over highways built and maintained by federal gas tax dollars (along with some general federal and state tax revenue), Amtrak owns its own tracks in the Northeast Corridor and has to bear the full cost of maintaining them, with limited federal assistance. If the bus companies had to pay their full share of highway maintenance, they could not get away with charging the fares they do.

Railroading, by nature, is characterized by high fixed costs. Fixed costs are those that do not vary based on how many people use a good or service (in this case, buy an Amtrak ticket). It will cost Amtrak roughly the same to maintain the tracks, signals and stations on the Northeast Corridor regardless of how many trains run and how many riders use them. Railroad labor costs are also largely fixed. Remarkably, Amtrak nevertheless covers over 80% of its total costs through revenue from passengers, whereas most of the world's passenger train operators fall in the 50% to 60% range.

Despite this, Amtrak trains in the Northeast Corridor actually make an "above-the-rail" profit. Fares bring in enough revenue to pay for operating costs on the Northeast Corridor, though not enough to pay for the maintenance backlog of the corridor.

The need to promote energy efficient travel, lessen highway congestion, and spur the development of walkable, livable communities around train stations are good reasons to encourage greater numbers to use the train instead of flying, driving or taking a bus. Increased federal investment in Amtrak infrastructure and equipment—in the Northeast Corridor and elsewhere—would allow the railroad to increase the frequency, speed and capacity of its trains. This would allow more riders to be carried over the line, thus spreading the fixed costs over more paying passengers, leading to lower fares.

Some form of ongoing public capital investment will be needed to keep the infrastructure and equipment in good shape. Federal funding should come from a dedicated "trust fund" with its own revenue source rather than from a Congressional appropriation, which would make the amount of funding reliable year after year.

If you support higher and more reliable funding for passenger trains as a viable leading choice for intercity travel, join us in the National Association of Railroad Passengers in calling on Congress to fully fund Amtrak and the High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail grant program.