Sound Transit is one step away from ditching light rail fares that vary by distance, in favor of charging passengers $3 for all destinations.
The regional agency’s Ridership Experience & Operations Committee voted 5-1 Thursday to endorse flat fares, a major shift in strategy affecting the pocketbooks of thousands of travelers, for better or worse.
Passengers traveling a short distance would pay more than they do now, while passengers going a long ways would pay less. A person riding 22 miles from Northgate Station to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, would spend the same amount as a rider going 1 mile, from Capitol Hill Station to Westlake Station. Today’s fares range from $2.25 to $3.50.
The full 18-member board will take a final vote Dec. 15. Flat fares would take effect sometime in fall 2024, when a four-station extension opens from Northgate to Lynnwood.
In reexamining the price to ride, simplicity for customers was the top priority, Kristina Walker, a Tacoma City Council member who chairs the committee, has said. Members are also vigilant about social equity, expressed Thursday by preferring a lower $3 fare instead of a $3.25 alternative.
Transit officials worried that when the network stretches an additional 8 miles to Lynnwood, followed by Redmond and Federal Way service, that such a system will become too complex and for some intolerably expensive, as high as $4.25.
Sound Transit says it’s following in the footsteps of peer agencies in Portland, San Diego and Salt Lake City that charge one rate for all. Dallas, Minneapolis and Denver also use flat rates, with either a peak-time or airport surcharge, according to Sound Transit. But other ways are common, too, including the Washington, D.C., area, where the subway charges by distance, and Vancouver, B.C., SkyTrain where fares increase if travelers cross into more than one of the three geographic zones.
Walker emphasized that with a flat fare, riders would only need to tap their farecards once, instead of tapping a second time at the end of a trip to determine the distance.
New 2024 fares would be the first change since 2015, a staff report said.
The fare overhaul won’t affect older and disabled riders who hold passes for $1 per ride, nor low-income households holding ORCA LIFT farecards for $1 rides. Youth age 18 and under ride for free.
And about half the riders, who currently number around 80,000 per day, might not notice a difference. That’s because about 54% are using employer subsidized, or discounted ORCA cards, a staff report said.
Thursday’s public comment period found some objections by avid Link riders who don’t want to be punished for riding light rail — conceived as a regional express in the 1990s — as an all-purpose urban train.
“I live car-free by choice on Capitol Hill and most of my Link trips are one-stop hops either south to Westlake or north” to the UW, said rider Cameron Fraser. “Those lines should not cost as much as commutes over much longer distances to lower ridership stops,” he said. “That does not make sense.”
Sound Transit will study “fare capping” in 2024 to benefit very frequent riders, but can’t implement that by the time Lynnwood Link opens, said Alex Krieg, a Sound Transit division manager. Fare capping would set a maximum amount for unlimited trips per day.
The staff didn’t analyze or recommend fares based on geographic zones, Krieg said, because board members mainly were interested in flat fares.
King County Metro Transit formerly charged bus riders more if their trip crossed the Seattle city limits, before the county simplified to a flat $2.75 in mid-2018.
Another argument against zone fares is the historic shift of poor and working-class people toward the suburbs, including Tukwila, SeaTac and much of Lynnwood. A zone line could punish somebody who lives in an apartment near International Boulevard South, and works in a Seattle hospital, for instance.
In a federally mandated equity study, transit staff determined that flat fares would increase costs to minority and low-income travelers slightly less than other customers, based on rider surveys and where people live.
Sound Transit says a fare boost is necessary to narrow a growing loss in its operating funds. Fare income covered 40% of operating costs, the agency’s own target, or nearly that amount only in 2016, 2017 and 2018, when new Capitol Hill and University of Washington stations filled the trains.
Revenues plummeted in the pandemic and even with customers returning this year, fare income in 2023 is forecast at only $52 million, to recoup only 15% of operating cost over 24 miles. One factor is that as few as 55% of riders have been paying lately, staff have said.
Taxpayers currently pay 80% or more of the operating expense, and if construction costs for new lines are counted, local and federal taxpayers are projected to underwrite 96% of the agency’s full $148 billion financial plan from 2017-2046.
Among other options, the committee chose not to simply add 25 cents to the existing distance-based rates, while the staff ruled out a $3.50 flat fare as too steep an increase next year. Officials do envision a 25-cent boost every four years.
That left the $3 version, which would raise only $95 million as of 2027 compared to $103 million at $3.25, a staff report said. Numbers like these rest on many assumptions, such as three-fourths of riders pay fares, and either price still covers less than 20% of operating costs as the network grows longer. The difference between $3 and $3.25 is thought to be $300 million between now and 2046.
Transit-board member Dave Upthegrove, a Metropolitan King County Councilmember from Des Moines, said he sought equity by choosing the cheaper $3. “We have tools we can adjust financially in the future,” he asserted.
Lynnwood Mayor Christine Frizzell backed $3.25. “I’m more in favor of more financial security for the organization.”
Voting yes Thursday were Walker, Upthegrove, Kenmore Councilmember David Baker, Renton Councilmember Ed Prince, and Fife Mayor Kim Roscoe, while Frizzell voted against the motion specifying $3 fares.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway to boost revenues by deploying more of the educational fare ambassadors, who request proof of payment but exert little enforcement authority. Fare gates are not on the agenda.