"U Wash Quad cherry blossoms 04" (wikimedia)
The Daily is reporting that the University of Washington is introducing a $40-a-year version of the U-PASS targeted at people that mainly walk or bike.
We recognize that even if you walk or bike to campus most of the time, it is helpful to have the occasional back-up option. Your membership entitles you to 12 free round-trips on King County Metro and 5 days of parking for $3 a day per year. This is 24 free bus rides and 5 discounted parking days for your $40 annual membership fee.
This is presumably a response to backlash against the recent steep increase in conventional U-PASS prices to $99/quarter, which is still a tremendous discount over passes available to the general public.
You can sign up at uwcommute.com/upowered.
WTF, I thought Orca was going to replace all the current passes and transfers starting next year, as current passes expire. Now UW is rolling out a new one?
I would venture to guess that it is an ORCA card that has 24 maximum fare trips loaded onto it?
Come this summer the UW will begin to transitioning over to ORCA with all student and staff cards printed on the Ocra card.
The website says that they are Metro “ride free” tickets, which are only good on Metro (and Metro-operated ST Express) and are presumably the same ones you can get in Chinook books.
I had just emailed parking services, and you’re exactly right. Specifically,
“The bus tickets are good for either 1-zone or 2-zone Metro trips. They aren’t valid for Sound Transit bus trips, except for the limited number of Sound Transit routes that are actually operated by Metro: routes 522, 540, 545, 550, 554, 555, 556, 560, 564, 577. They aren’t valid for light rail.”
Too bad, it’s not worth my while unless I can use them on sound transit.
Not valid on Central Link? Stupid!
Since Link is Metro operated (just as is Metro-operated ST routes)
My brother says not worth it (the $99 U-PASS is just fine for him)
They are good on light rail until the end of the year, as long as you ride a Metro bus first and get a transfer.
The U-Powered “pass” is a paper card that I’m supposed to write my name on. I’m betting that any vendors that offer U-PASS discounts would laugh at it, but I never used my U-PASS discount anyway.
When they first proposed the idea this spring it was 8 round trips on metro and 8 days parking. It is good to see they they made it more transit friendly.
The real problem with it was that they were going to give you the metro/parking passes in October and then you had to physically keep track of them until you used them. With a smart card it would be much more convenient.
Why is the UW Tacoma U-Pass still just $45 a quarter?
The UW Tacoma and UW Bothell/Cascadia CC U-Passes are fiscally separate programs from the Seattle campus U-Pass program.
Yeah, but a U-Pass is still a U-Pass is still a U-Pass.
I have no problem paying $99 / quarter, particularly given what it provides. I loooooooove my UPASS.
Same here, even though I hardly use it (I’m “U-Powered”). The U-Powered pass though, didn’t seem like a great deal without sound transit privileges, so I stuck with the U-Pass.
U-Pass is indeed very convenient for UW students. Still, many don’t realize what a steal it is, and the fact that a comparable PugetPass is three times more expensive.
Yeah. Just the fact that you don’t have to worry about having cash and quarters on you all the time makes it worth it.
I’m University staff, so my U-Pass is $120 per quarter. While I love the convenience, given that I bike *most* of the time, I calculated (spreadsheet; yes, I’m a geek) that I’d have to make five weekly bus trips to make the ’standard’ U-Pass worth it. Over a year, I just don’t even get anywhere near that amount of transit usage! I’m switching to the U-Powered one tomorrow, and getting myself an ORCA. Estimated $200+ savings per year!
I just switched to the U-Powered U-PASS yesterday, but for sort of opposite reasons. UW pays transit agencies a lump sum for each U-PASS holder based on average usage, so I think Metro will actually get more money out of my ORCA usage than they did from my U-PASS. (By the way, Commuter Services said you can have both a U-PASS sticker and U-Powered.)
Signing up for U-Powered also makes a statement to UW about how many people walk/bike to campus (or in my case, SLU).
If anyone wants to sell me a subsidized transit pass, please, please, please. I work for a huge employer (Seattle Public Schools), and the transit pass offering is dissapointing to say the least.
Eh, still not worth it. I mean 24 bus trips (assuming no transfers) is only 44 dollars. So thats a grand savings of 4 bucks a year and I have to deal with two cards. ORCA has rendered the Upass obsolete for me as the convince factor is gone. Regular bus passes are way out.
I kind of think ORCA will hurt Metro as it makes it easy to be a casual bus rider without buying a pass. I just put 30 or so bucks on it every now and then and it works great. Before that I was buying a Upass or regular pass.
I agree. This is hardly a worthwhile savings. To promote wider ORCA adoption it would be great if Metro discounted fares purchased via ORCA.
24 bus trips at peak commuting hours is $48. And aren’t fares going up for the new year by $0.25? That would make it an even better deal if you do most of your traveling next year.