Senior RRFPMartin recently asked if King County Metro’s senior fares ought to be raised to the legal maximum of half the regular adult peak fare. I believe that the senior/disabilities fare should go up more than is currently planned in March 2015, but not when paying with ORCA product (e-purse or pass loaded on an ORCA card).

There has been some misconception that the various agencies participating in the Regional Reduced Fare Permit program cannot charge a higher senior/disabilities cash fare than the senior/disabilities ORCA fare, partially because the inter-local agreement that created the Regional Reduced Fare Permit in 1982 was written before ORCA was conceived, and partially because four parties to the RRFP agreement (Thurston Intercity, Mason, Jefferson, and Skagit Transit) are not participants in the ORCA project.

First, lets look at the actual language of the agreement

    Section 10: Regional Reduced Fare Permit Privileges:

Each of the parties shall honor valid Regional Reduced Fare Permits issued by any of the parties. This agreement does not attempt to standardize privileges among the parties. [author’s emphasis] Time of day restrictions, transfer privileges, and cost of daily fares and monthly passes shall be set by the respective parties.

Now, about that edge case, where RRFP holders from non-ORCA counties take a trip to King County, and expect their RRFP to be honored. It would be, but at the slightly-higher cash rate. Or, they could load up ORCA product on-line or when they get to an ORCA vending machine, and get free inter-agency transfers for two hours, at least within the ORCA-ized agencies. Citing these very occasional trips when someone may get charged an extra quarter because they have a non-ORCA-ized RRFP (when, really, the rider is taking a much larger hit due to paying cash fares three or more times each way if they don’t use ORCA product) as a reason to not incentivize all RRFP holders to pay with ORCA product is just goofy. If anyone has a legitimate beef here, it is the RRFP-holders from the ORCA-ized counties whose loaded ORCA product is not being honored by the non-ORCA-ized agencies.

Lest anyone think STB likes to pick on seniors, let me point out that various posters here have called consistently for cash surcharges on *every* category of fare payer, especially those paying the regular adult fare. I just don’t want legally-unfounded arguments about the supposed inability to charge higher RRFP cash fares to become a roadblock to tacking a cash surcharge onto the regular adult fares. One of the benefits of the low-income fare program ought to be to free up the county council to follow up with an additional cash fare increase for regular adult riders.

This is not a call for anyone to pay higher fares every time they ride the bus. This is a gentle request that those who make the effort to load ORCA product, and board several times faster than those fumbling change, get rewarded for their effort.

Indeed, the county council could drop the RRFP ORCA fare to, say, 95 cents, while raising the RRFP cash fare to $1.25. Even if the cash fare were left right at $1, while lowering the RRFP ORCA fare, it would be worth it just for the impact it would have on boarding time, total trip time, and service hours saved.

Why would it be worth it for RRFP-holders to push for this differential? Because then future fare increases could be based on percentages rather than a flat amount.

31 Replies to “RRFP Cash Fares Can Be Higher”

  1. Remember the old idiom “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

    This needs to be sold as a “discount” for using ORCA, not as a “surcharge” for paying cash.

    The reasons for incentivizing ORCA use are well known to anybody who frequents this board, but I think it doesn’t help the cause if anyone feels like they’re being punished for paying the way they want.

    1. This needs to be sold as a “discount” for using ORCA, not as a “surcharge” for paying cash.

      Agreed – the goal in the end is to expand ORCA usage.

      The reasons for incentivizing ORCA use are well known to anybody who frequents this board, but I think it doesn’t help the cause if anyone feels like they’re being punished for paying the way they want.

      But “paying the way they want” I, e with cash may delay the bus as people fumble for change. In this case, Metro being a bit heavy handed maybe the best way in converting cash users into ORCA users as everyone benefits.

    2. This needs to be sold as a “discount” for using ORCA, not as a “surcharge” for paying cash.

      I don’t really think it matters that much one way or the other. It’s a pretty simple concept to grasp; people who want to be angry about won’t be dissuaded by messaging. “It costs X with orca, Y with cash, where Y>X” is pretty straightfoward.

      1. It also depends on timing and amounts of what Metro does.

        If you raise the all day cash fare to $2.50, but raise the ORCA fare to $2.30 then people will see it as a discount for those paying with ORCA.

        If you raise the all day cash fare to $2.50, but leave the ORCA fare at $2.25 then people will see it as a war on cash.

        If you leave the all day cash fare at $2.25, but lower the ORCA fare to $2.00 then people will see it as a war on cash and a war on cars.

  2. Hmmm, an interesting argument. I would go one step further & suggest that all cash fares be substantially higher than ORCA fares, not just for RRFP holders. This should expand ORCA usage & speed up boarding. However I do believe that seniors & people with disabilities should be spared the brunt of fare increases if they have AN RRFP.

    In DC, Metro transit gives a slight discount for SmarTrip users & allows for transfers. No transfers are issued for cash fares. Perhaps that’s another option to expand the use of ORCA?

    1. I agree incentivizing ORCA payments.

      I oppose introducing yet another class of reduced fares at a time when we are cutting useful services because of revenue shortfalls, it seems that we are stuck with the reduced fare, which was original sold (apparently disingenuously) as a mitigation for the regressive nature of the proposed tax increases. That said, as long as we are stuck with it, seniors (and others) who genuinely need a lower fare have one. Ideally, everyone else should just pay their fair share. Unfortunately, Federal law requires that we discount senior fares, and I don’t advocate civil disobedience here, but we should limit our discount to the minimum allowable under the law

      1. The poor are still paying sales tax, and still paying a larger percentage of their income in sales tax than everyone else, and Seattle is about to vote on increasing it.

        Part of the funding from Seattle transit proposition 1 is expected to help fund administering the low-income fare program.

        The point of the program isn’t mitigation. That’s just a side effect, and one that (as it happened) would have removed the regressiveness of King County Proposition 1 last spring. The point is to get the fare system out of the way of poor riders, and to get poor riders’ change fumbling out of the way of the buses.

      2. BTW, Should 2-year-olds be paying their fare share?

        Children ages 0-5 get to freeload, so long as they are accompanied by an adult for each four children.

      3. The poor are still paying sales tax, and still paying a larger percentage of their income in sales tax than everyone else, and Seattle is about to vote on increasing it.

        Exactly. Poor people pay a greater portion of their income in taxes in Washington than anywhere else in the country. The notion that this fare means “they’re not paying their fair share” is reactionary nonsense.

      4. The purpose of the low-income fare was to make it politically acceptable to raise other fares; i.e., to avoid accusations of “You’re taking transit away from the poor!” Fares have risen faster than incomes or other prices for a multitude of reasons, and are now taking a bite in affordability, so they can’t go up much further on the poor without causing a revolt.

        So the low-income fare was not mitigation for the sales-tax rate, and I don’t think there was any mitigation for that. In any case, the low-income fare doesn’t benefit non-riders who are paying sales tax. The mitigation was something different: it was on the car-tab fee, a discount for low-income drivers. People who felt they couldn’t get to work on transit (i.e., scattered suburban jobs), and that the $60 flat fee was unaffordable. (Never mind that it’s the same as a tank of gas, and they buy twelve or more of those per year among their other car expenses.)

      5. Re free rides for children: I don’t know. It seems like a reasonable concession to supporting families, and recognizing that parents have more expenses than singles or DINKs. Metro used to raise the free age to 18 on Sundays (again, when travelling with a fare-paying adult). That doesn’t bother me much either.

    2. I definitely agree that Metro should do away with paper transfers and transfers for cash fares. Metro is the only transit agency in the region that still uses paper transfers and it adds hassle and confusion to the boarding process. (I think we should also have rear-door boarding via ORCA to further incentivize ORCA usage, but that’s an argument for another day)

      As for raising all cash fares while not raising ORCA fares, this would be a hard argument to sell to the public. Taking into consideration Ricky’s fly/honey adage, it would be quite difficult to spin a cash fare increase as a discount for ORCA. You’d have to do some crazy wording like: “We’re raising all fares by 25% but ORCA card holders get a 25% discount.” No one would get that, and any media reporting of the change would see straight through it and report it as a 25% cash fare increase.

      1. Of course nobody would get it, since it would actually be a 20% discount off of a 25% increase.

        So, when is the right time to sell an ORCA-product discount? When fares get raised, it is because Metro needs the revenue.

      2. I definitely agree that Metro should do away with paper transfers and transfers for cash fares.

        I’d be happy to see paper transfers eliminated, but how would proof-of-purchase work on RapidRide for people paying with cash? It would be great to get rid of on-bus cash payments entirely and have everyone use Orca, but that seems indefinitely far in the future.

      3. (Replying to myself…)

        Though Metro could just keep using the paper “transfers” as POP on RapidRide, but stop accepting them as actual transfers, so RapidRide POP shouldn’t block eliminating paper transfers.

      4. Ideally you would lower ORCA fares 25c so it really would be a discount (and help riders’ bottom line), but Metro can’t afford that, so it would have to do it by raising cash fares only, or raising cash fares more than ORCA fares. That’s not an “ORCA discount” initially because absolute ORCA fares are going up, but it is an ORCA discount the long run.

        “I think we should also have rear-door boarding via ORCA to further incentivize ORCA usage, but that’s an argument for another day”

        Still, let’s not forget that those rear-door ORCA readers cost millions of dollars that Metro doesn’t have. And San Francisco, which does have them, has a much smaller service area (akin to north Seattle), so fewer readers to buy and fewer miles to drive, and more revenue per bus (because San Francisco’s density is akin to 45th-to-Columbia-City).

      5. How about just providing the discount when loading the ORCA card? For instance, the user pays something like $16 or $17 to load $20 on their card. That way, everyone is paying the same “fare,” while still giving ORCA users a discount. I suppose the difficulty would be to get all of the ORCA-participating agencies to agree on it.

      6. Honestly, folks, who cares if cash riders dislike an increase? They are a small percentage of the total ridership, and if they decide to walk or take a taxi, too bad so sad.

        Yes, that’s “heartless”, but they are the major cause of boarding congestion and should pay for the privilege.

      7. They’re a small percentage of certain routes. Commuter routes have high ORCA usage, as do those in aflluent high-ridership areas and near train stations. But routes in poorer areas not near TVMs have almost all cash riders.

      9. Metro is the only transit agency in the region that still uses paper transfers and it adds hassle and confusion to the boarding process.

        Kitsap Transit put paper transfers back into service some time back, after having eliminated them when Orca appeared on the scene. The rules are a bit different, such as you are only allowed to use them in transit centers.

      10. I wonder how much Kitsap likes ORCA now that it has had it for several years. It seems to be an enormous benefit to a big city, but perhaps a smaller benefit and larger expense to a small semi-rural agency.

    3. To minimize change fumbling, cash fares should be even dollar amounts, even if Orca fares aren’t. For example, if the Orca fare is $2.25, the cash fare should be $3.00.

      1. This is definitely something that I have come to appreciate about transit in the Seattle area: nice even $0.25 increments in fare. None of the $1.85 and similar nonsense TriMet and other agencies were doing.

      2. When I lived in Rochester, NY, I remember thinking how abysmal the bus routes were, but how great and simple it was that the fare was always $1. The slogan “Bus for a Buck” made it super easy to know exactly how much to pay. Obviously, Metro can’t afford $1 fares, but the even dollar increments seems feasible.

    4. I would go one step further & suggest that all cash fares be substantially higher than ORCA fares, not just for RRFP holders.

      It might not be politically easy to do the substantial discount part of that – though I think you could partly justify this with the $5 purchase price of the card.

      I would also point out that with the ORCA card you don’t necessarily have to have a $0.25 fare division. The discount for ORCA use could be $0.15 or something that will add up over time.

  3. 1. I apologize if I’ve missed this information, but can anyone tell me what the senior pass I pay $54 for will cost after the fare increase? I really don’t mind whatever the increase is, but always annoys me when I have to do any calculation for my own on the one piece of information most important to me.

    2. Does any other system in this country charge people anything at all for their electronic fare card? I agree with those why say people using the cards should get a break in the fare- provided that the system remove any and all obstacles to getting and using one of these cards with no effort at all.

    3. Based on my own passenger experience, cards I’ve always preferred are monthly passes for my own use, and day passes for visitors, or when I’m visiting other systems. The decades it’s taken us to get the day passes that are standard in thousands of other systems says so many bad things about Seattle it’d blow a whole server to count them.

    4. The fare-collection system should do absolutely nothing to slow down transit operations- and any agency which allows this to happen should lose its Federal funding, as befits any recipient wilfully wasting taxpayer’s money. Or replaced by the taxpayers that fund it. Not to mention any agency names or Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnels…

    Mark Dublin

    1. Re #2, the last two transit agencies I rode on (WMATA in DC/Baltimore and MARTA in Atlanta) did charge for fare cards, but were much less egregious than ORCA. WMATA SmarTrip cards cost $10, but come with $8 of fare so the net cost is $2. MARTA BreezeCards cost $1 but come with no fare preloaded.

      Re #4, you have no argument for me there, but I have no idea how we get there from here.

      1. They’re free in Panamá City (and mandatory!). Of course the Metro and buses are only $0.35/ride….

        (They actually have turnstiles on the bus, just as you pass the driver, and some sort of gate at the rear door which always seemed to be deactivated unless there was a serious crush load. Never figured that one out as it is a flat fare. Also have never seen turnstiles on an actual bus, and was pretty much impaled on one during a crushloaded run that even d.p. might have found full.)

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