Posts about Unlimited Passes

Almost alone among transit agencies in the United States, you have no dedicated revenue sources, and you are subordinate to, and dependent upon, multiple jurisdictions across state lines. In recent years, the situation has been complicated further by the increased role in governance by the federal government and by the state of Virginia, neither of which contribute to the formula by which the daily operations of the system are funded.

The system is aging, its maintenance needs are growing—and still, the region looks for you to expand service. So, I appreciate the difficult choice the Board will have to make, and recognize that a fare increase may be unavoidable this year.

No one wants to raise fares. I used to say that raising fares is the next-to-the-last thing the transit agency should do. What's worse is cutting service or maintenance. That you must not do.

As one who has sat where you sit, and who will have to vote on your final budget as part of his jurisdiction's part in the approval process, here are my recommendations:

1. Don't put it all on the riders; don't let governments off the hook. Ask compact jurisdictions to accept some of the responsibility to meet the need. Press for greater support from the state: Now that they have imposed themselves on the governance of WMATA, displacing local representation, they should be expected to help Metro close its budget gap.

The same can be said for the feds. They vote on the budget. They depend heavily on the system on a daily basis for the delivery of their work force, no less than they depend on the delivery of electricity and water to their buildings. The system is substantially designed around the needs of the operations of the federal government. They should be contributing to the operating costs of the agency as a routine matter. The WMATA Board should press for inclusion of the federal government in the funding formula.

2. In structuring a fare increase, I urge you to consider the following:

1. Don't make it too big; consider possible effect on choice riders (especially in view of adverse federal benefit changes). It obviously won't help anything if we push riders back into their cars.

2. Consider effects on those least able to pay. As you well appreciate, there are many people in this county, and throughout the region, for whom transit is not a choice, but a necessity. For them, a fare increase is simply a reduction in the limited disposable income with which to pay their costs of housing, food, clothing, and medical care.

3. Don't punish the folks who take the shortest trips. Those who accept higher housing costs to live near their work, and to live a transit-oriented lifestyle, are providing a benefit to everyone in the region. Increasingly, they find it difficult to get on to trains that enter their stations already full, and they seldom get to sit down. Theirs is the least-subsidized ride. They should not bear a disproportionate share of the cost.

And finally,

4. Do something for the riders. They bear a larger portion of operating cost here than in perhaps any metropolitan area in the country. They're still going to be asked to put up with delays and service interruptions, even though they'll pay more. Press Metro management to find ways—even small things—to make life a little better for your regular customers.

   One good possibility that has been suggested is improving passes.
   

   1. We need a good monthly pass; not just a 28-day that is simply four times the 7-day pass.
      
   2. It's got to be useful for people who ride in the core of the system—that is, short-trip riders.
      
   3. It's got to be on SmarTrip.
      
   4. It should be a "flexible pass", one that lets riders choose their typical level of fare (which depends on their typical trip length) and select a pass that's works at that level. (Seattle, London and Minneapolis have done this; it is ideal for a system like Metro in which fares are distance-based.)

I thank you for considering these suggestions, and for your service to Metro and the region.

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.

Kissal also compared Metro to London's Tube, which has passes available in daily, weekly, monthly, and annual time periods. According to Kissal, the Tube gets a lot of tourists, while Metro has a larger proportion of commuters. She stated that there might be a place for passes but it might not be for the majority of riders.

As we have advocated before on Greater Greater Washington, the best "audience" for passes in the Metro fare system is front and center: daily peak commuters.

In our view, customers who pay for their regular, daily commute should get the rest of their trips included on a monthly pass. This is similar to many transit agencies around the country, including Portland's TriMet, Philadelphia's SEPTA, Chicago's CTA, and San Francisco's MUNI. Metro's time and distance based fares complicate the issue, but an innovation in Puget Sound makes monthly passes possible even with a variable fare system.

For most transit agencies, a monthly pass is typically a multiple of the single ride price. This multiple is usually around 38—40, which is the number of trips people typically take in a month to commute to a regular office job. Since most transit systems have only one adult fare, there is often only one monthly pass.

Metro's system has many possible fares. If Metro sold only one monthly pass that was valid for any trip, the price of the pass must be high enough to prevent a lot of revenue lost when people switch to passes from per-ride payment.

With Metro's proposed maximum fare of $5.75, this would make a monthly unlimited pass about $230 per month. However, most people spend far less than this per month and take much shorter trips, so a $230 pass would not be a sensible option for them. If Metro sold a monthly unlimited pass for only $150, a lot of revenue would be lost from commuters who are normally paying more than that today.

Puget Sound's innovative solution was to sell passes at varying prices via the PugetPass (Minneapolis/St. Paul's Metro Transit also has a flexible pass option). Logically, more expensive passes would be valid for more expensive trips, and less expensive passes would be valid for less expensive trips. Customers could choose a pass based on their typical trip and pay a reasonable amount for a month's worth of transit.

WMATA's finance committee has requested that the proposed public docket for board approval include a monthly pass. What kind of pass Metro offers will have a huge impact on how popular the pass is. If Metro only offers a $230 unlimited pass, few people outside of long-distance commuters will be interested. The unpopular pass will be discontinued, and the idea of monthly passes will be branded a failure.

Instead, Metro should offer a monthly pass good for unlimited short trips. For $120 a month, Metro could offer unlimited trips of $3 or less. Trips that cost more than $3 would be discounted so that you only pay the difference automatically from your SmarTrip balance.

When they requested a monthly pass option, board members cited various reasons for the request. Many pointed out that off-peak rail service has become full of delays and disruptions, and asking customers to pay more for poorer service didn't appeal to them.

Some pointed out that customers would like to chain their trips, performing errands such as shopping or picking up dry cleaning along the way. Others stated that customers might go out to eat at night or on weekends, and having a pass might entice them to take transit instead of drive. All of these uses would be met with a pass where the additional free trips are significantly cheaper than the maximum distance peak fare.

This pass would be an excellent start to a monthly pass system which offers a pass at every fare level. After a medium-value pass proves its worth to customers, Metro could start offering short trip passes for customers that live near the center of the city, and longer passes for customers that live further away and therefore take longer trips on average.

Eventually, a range of passes would be available, and all regular Metro riders could choose the pass that best suits them without being a big revenue loss for Metro.

Metro should take this opportunity to introduce a monthly pass that makes sense and prove that it's a good idea for our region.

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.

Commuters who just use the Virginia bus services would use about 42 one-way trips per month for a cost of $63.00, so this $35 pass is an excellent deal.

Customers relying on both bus and rail transit might also want to use this pass. Like the WMATA regional weekly bus pass, if you transfer from a bus ride on the pass to Metrorail, you will not get a transfer discount.  Paying per ride, you'll pay $40 for the bus segments of trips using SmarTrip (after transfer discounts are tallied), and only $35 for this monthly pass. This is still a good deal.

At first, customers will have to purchase and load their passes at transit stores, CVS and Giant stores in Alexandria. Eventually, Alexandria will add the ability to purchase and load the pass online. A subscription option is in the works.

If you are interested in participating in the pilot program, visit the website announcing the DASH pass program, fill out the application, and fax it to 703–746–5641 or email it to tristan.cunningham at alexandriava.gov.

Most federal workers taking Metro get a subsidy to take transit. They can either receive the amount of money needed to commute from their home every work day, or monthly/weekly passes that cost the same amount or less.

With few and inflexible rail passes available today, most workers who ride Metrorail choose the first option for SmartBenefits. If they don't ride, they don't spend the money on Metro, and WMATA gets none of the money. The worker either hangs on to it for other rides later on, or it goes back to the federal government.

The Smart Pass concept is designed to be the same price as a daily commute, meaning many federal workers would opt for a pass instead of fare value. If the government shuts down, or there's a major snowstorm, or anything else, WMATA would still have collected the same amount that month.

The new electronic SmarTrip bus passes are currently about half as popular as their paper equivalents. Metro reported that they are selling about 14,000 electronic bus passes per week, compared to 32,000 per week for the paper passes back in December before they were eliminated.

SmarTrip card usage has increased recently due to cash surcharges, free bus transfers and the availability of passes. On rail, 82% of trips are taken with SmarTrip, and on bus it has risen to 78%.

WMATA was expecting rail SmarTrip usage to grow to 92% after the cash surchage was added, but notes that paper farecards are still used by tourists and occasional riders.

In the questions, Tommy Wells and his staff asked about adding SmarTrip readers to the back door of buses to decrease the amount of time buses spend stopped waiting for passengers to board. WMATA stated that the challenge of installing additional readers and then policing their use meant that a rear SmarTrip machine may not the best solution.

But, the agency pointed out other ways the boarding process could be faster, such as encouraging passengers to have their cards ready when boarding, to encourage loading fare value at a retail store or rail station, and creating bus stop waiting areas that allow customers to pay to enter the waiting area, and then board without paying on the actual vehicle.

These improvements to SmarTrip are being eagerly awaited by many riders, after being repeatedly delayed when other issues pushed them down the priority list. An informal survey on Twitter showed that customers are particularly excited about being able to add value online.

The passes will have several benefits: two weeks can be loaded simultaneously, and they will be valid for 7 days from first use, rather than a strict Sunday to Saturday schedule, which was the case with the old paper passes.

The passes can also be used on most of the region's bus services, including Metrobus, Circulator, Ride On, DASH, CUE, and ART. The Circulator will continue to sell $11 Circulator-only weekly passes on the CommuterDirect online store, while DASH will continue their $35 monthly passes.

WMATA has had notices posted in buses for some weeks now, though they still list January 2nd as the end date. Holzer said WMATA has been playing audible announcements as well, though I have yet to hear one.

The extended grace period may help ease the transition for riders to switch to electronic passes voluntarily, since, as of early December, Metro was still selling 32,000 weekly paper bus passes, and only 300 SmarTrip-based passes.

Although it will be loaded on riders' SmarTrip cards, the new electronic passes do not give a bus-to-rail transfer discount, according to Holzer.

Given the December sales number, a January 2nd transition may have proved rough, resulting in a spike in unintentional fare evasion, so the extension of paper passes will probably save the transit agencies some money. In the long run, the electronic passes will ideally cut down on fraud and fare evasion using forged or expired flash passes. It will also put the onus more heavily on bus operators to enforce fare payment.

With an extra month to prepare riders for the end date, hopefully area transit agencies will step up their efforts to educate riders about the change and encourage them to switch to SmarTrip passes early.

Despite the extra grace period, the switch still presents problems. Paper bus passes were available at a multitude of local stores around the region. Because the new passes are electronic, they can only be bought at retail locations with SmarTrip machines, primarily CVS stores.

Though there are hundreds of these in the region, they are not very evenly distributed with only 7 locations each in Northeast and Southeast and only 4 in Southwest, compared to 56 in Northwest. The areas that are least served by Metro, and therefore most dependent on bus service, generally lack any meaningful density of these retail outlets.

At the same time, Metro is prioritizing this change over changes that would mitigate the inconveniences it will cause riders in areas underserved by SmarTrip retailers. Before, bus riders could "subscribe" to weekly bus passes, providing a recurring payment method and having their passes mailed to them. But WMATA has not yet implemented online purchase methods for SmarTrip passes or provided a way for riders to sign up to have their pass automatically renewed each week.

Social service organizations have also asked for the delay to find a way to distribute bus passes to needy individuals. Before, they would buy paper passes in large numbers and hand them out. With this new system, they will need a way to load passes onto another individual's SmarTrip. A Web site could also allow the functionality, but it's not yet available.

The reason WMATA has chosen to make this change first is likely because of some chafing in the regional fare partnership that currently supports the region-wide bus passes. With paper passes, there was no effective way to implement revenue sharing across the region's transit agencies, and there were rumors Arlington board member Chris Zimmerman expressed that Arlington was considering pulling out of the partnership and issuing their own passes. The new electronic passes will allow pass ridership to be tracked easily and consequently allow pass revenue to fairly distributed across the various agencies based on rides given.

This move represents a step forward in improving the regional fare system. But come January 30th, there may still be people stuck paying single ride fares because they can't get to a place that sells new SmarTrip passes.