Fare gates with ORCA card readers at the pedestrian boarding areas at the Seattle Ferry Terminal. Washington State Ferries and the Seattle Center Monorail are the only ORCA-supported agencies which use fare gates. Photo by Michael Smith.

In its last meeting in 2025, the Sound Transit Board’s Executive Committee will officially direct agency staff to “conduct a fare gate retrofit implementation study” and “if study findings support further action, develop a fare gate retrofit pilot proposal”. In September, The Urbanist reported fare gates were one of many options under consideration as part of the agency’s Enterprise initiative. In October, King 5 reported Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine had already directed staff to begin assembling a proposal for a fare gate pilot program. The Sound Transit Board’s Motion No. M2025-64 formalizes the work, and sets a due date for the study and associated pilot program proposal of “no later than Q2 2026”.

In 2023, The Urbanist reported Sound Transit had commissioned a study of fare gates from consultant Cambridge Systematics. The consultant estimated costs for a pilot project retrofitting the five highest-ridership stations at the time would cost approximately $34 million and would pay for itself in two years with increased fare recovery. However, real costs to install fare gates are likely to be much higher.

Fare gates have long been a source of contention in the transit community. They can pose barriers to accessibility, be expensive to build and maintain, and aren’t totally effective at stopping fare evasion. On the other hand, the “Proof of Payment” system familiar to Link riders (spot-checks by fare enforcers) is typically much less expensive to implement and can be similarly effective. From the opening of Central Link in 2006 to 2019, Sound Transit reported fare compliance rates on Link were typically more than 97%. However, after fare collection was temporarily suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, fare compliance rates dropped significantly and have not recovered. Sound Transit has been ramping up its Fare Ambassador program, but as the Link system extends out into Seattle’s suburbs, the agency will need to hire more and more Ambassadors to maintain the same degree of enforcement.

Assuming the Sound Transit’s study finds fare gate could be worthwhile, the Board expects staff to be ready to begin implementing its pilot program by late 2026.

140 Replies to “Sound Transit considers fare gate pilot”

  1. What happened to the big fare enforcement effort earlier this year? There were all these heads up about increased fare inspection, then there was about a week of it then it seemed to go back to no enforcement. Only place I seem to see fares checked is on the First Hill Streetcar.

      1. Having been fare-check multiple times, and watched the stressful outcome of what happens when someone is found to not have a ticket, multiple times?

        Gates will decrease the stress on riders when non-payers become agitated, because there will be less free riders.

        The only reason why we don’t have gates, and why they have not been installed, is because of the vocal minority who from the beginning have been agitating for “free transit”.

        Which would have never been approved by voters.

        We should have just extended the monorail, that would have left more money for having a first class bus system which is what the region really needed.

      2. The reason gates haven’t been installed yet is ST found the cost if installing them would exceed the amount of mmoney ST was losing from the 3% who didn’t pay before COVID.

      3. Yeah, what Mike said. Back then the notion of gate-less “Proof-of-Payment” systems was pretty popular, for its general benefits and fit for our system.

        The general benefits include:
        – Avoiding the accessibility barrier of fare gates. Gates can be a problem for disability access, but also a challenge for people with luggage, trying to get kids through the station, etc.
        – Reduces constraints on station design. Fare gates are a bottleneck for people going in and out of the station that needs to be designed around with additional space for lines and crowds behind them. That’s particularly important for street-running light-rail, which has always been part of the Link formula (previously a bigger fraction of the total!).

        Specifically for our system, when we had trains and buses together in the DSTT, putting those platforms behind turnstiles would have required Metro to totally change payment procedures for those routes, and for Metro and ST to work out an arrangement to harmonize fares and share revenue. These were the days of PAYE and the RFA on Metro and distance-based fares on Link! There’s an argument that we should have made the required fare-policy changes, or booted buses from the tunnel right from the get-go, but… gate-less PoP let us keep those things, including the RFA.

        There were always downsides, even when we were functioning more like a high-trust society. The PoP system can be confusing. It was particularly confusing when the tunnel was running buses and trains together, with different payment/ticketing procedures. I’ve used PoP systems in other countries where I don’t speak the language and found it stressful to be on a train or bus, pretty sure I had the right ticket with the right stamps but not entirely sure. On systems with turnstiles once you’re past the turnstile you know you’re good.

    3. I see fare ambassadors almost every time I ride Link now, but I’ve rarely gotten my fare actually checked as they’re usually spend my whole ride giving warnings to folks who didn’t pay.

      1. Ah, so you know the sit-in-the-center trick to avoid getting checked.

        That’s the trick that ST used to claim their process is, therefore, racially unbiased.

      2. Are you seeing riders still showing their Metro paper transfers?

        Do you think CEO Constantine wishes he could go back in time and warn Executive Constantine to be more assertive in getting rid of paper transfers?

      3. By the time I board, the train is usually too full for me to have a say in where I sit or stand. The main thing it that it seems to always take 5-10 minutes for an Ambassador to collect ID and give a ticket.

        I haven’t noticed many paper tickets being used as proof of fare. I rarely see it on the bus, either, although I think most folks who would try to be creative when dodging fares have figured out it’s a lot easier to just board in the back.

    4. I hardly ever see them on the trains anymore. And when I do see and hear them around me, they are not enforcing any fare collection at all. They just print out a little warning slip for next time. Most of the people refusing to pay also refuse to provide their real name or ID… and guess what? The fare ambassador just walks to the next person, rinse and repeat. This process is blatantly ineffective.

    5. I think most pay. Reading many replies I get the impression that many of these people don’t ride very often. They seem unaware of tapping at busy bus stops rather than on the bus, which is very convenient and speeds things up at crowded stops. But this is about ferry fares, not buses. I don’t know the difference between what we have now at the ferry terminal and what the new system at the ferry will be.

      1. At stadium station, from what I have seen coming home from sports games, most people just walk on without tapping.

  2. Tokyo, London all have gates. Sound Transit not having gates was incredibly stupid. No gates naturally no one pays. Need gates entering the stations and need gates leaving stations so everyone taps out.

      2. The point of tapping off was to get charged less than the maximum amount for a ride (and get data on trips). Tapping off will only come back if fares cease to be flat.

      1. ST operated under an assumption of power to order riders off trains and also to detain riders for apparent fare evasion.

        A weird state Supreme Court ruling undermined those presumed powers.

      2. They could still kick them off the trains (and out of the station). They just can’t arrest them or turn them over to the police. I think this is a bigger issue for buses than for Link. If I’m riding the RapidRide E Line and get kicked off the bus I’ll just wait for the next one. If I get kicked out of say, Westlake Station it takes a while to get back on the train. It is also quite likely that this takes care of the vast majority of people who don’t pay. It is simply not worth the hassle and embarrassment. The people who don’t care probably wouldn’t pay no matter what you do.

      3. It lied to itself and the public. Most urban buses don’t achieve 97%; punks just walk by the farebox and dare the driver to object.

      5. I thought fare pay compliance was like 10% from previous reports. I am sure they dont penalize the scammers. Its the Seattle way.

      6. I do not have statistics, except national examples. NYC buses, in 2024, were seeing rates in the upper forties, DC in the 70’s. Yes, these were much higher than pre-Covid, but not ten times higher. Why would Seattle be dramatically lower?

        Drivers don’t push a button on a counter to record walk-bys. There’s no counter. Nor are their ‘Fare Ambassadors” on local routes. The punks — including their girlfriends — ride free.

        How many times have you seen young guys do exactly what I described? How many folks have you seen enter by the back door on a regular bus. And, finally, how many times have you seen someone board a RapidRide and just not tag the reader?

        It’s way more than 3% and has always been so, except out in suburbia where riders are rare enough and buses infrequent enough that the drivers get to know them.

      7. Tom, you’re referencing post-2020 statistics to refute pre-2020 statistics. Fare evasion on Link is now quite high, but before fares were suspended for the pandemic, the record shows fare compliance was >97%. Further refutation of ST’s pre-2020 fare compliance statistics without real supporting evidence will not be tolerated.

      8. ST actually never suspended fares, that was only metro. That’s probably why fare evasion is so high though is that people got into the idea that transit was free and just stopped paying.

      10. ST did suspend fares in 2020, and there were reports of station conditions deteriorating as people came and left things they hadn’t done previously and there was nobody to keep them out. I thought free fares lasted longer than two months, and fare enforcement was suspended for a few years at any rate. Part of that was because in the same year (2020), all the transit agencies and levels of government turned toward equity in a way they hadn’t before, and part of that was concern about low-income riders who couldn’t afford fines or fares and concerns about racial profiling. This was also the same year fentanyl impacts exploded and homelessness increased. All that exacerbated the problems. But it seems clear that free fares caused deteriorating conditions on transit, and many people who previously paid got out of the habit of doing so, and it’s only now gradually reversing.

    3. The only legitimate use of Fare gates is to meter passenger flows at extremely busy stations (at least 20k passengers a day), no station on the system is that busy, and only a few will be once the 2 Line is done.

      Trying to shift to faregates everywhere would just be setting a ton of money on fire at a time when the agency needs to be careful with every dollar it has.

      2. I think you mean 20K entries. Westlake and Capitol Hill both have just over 10K boardings, implying that there’s 20K volume through the stations. Note that November data is posted today, and it shows a drop from October.

        Causes? Away games for Seahawks/ UW football? Service disruptions?

      3. One less day in November, no Mariners, no Sounders. The drop from October to November has been typical, but ST tends to correct numbers upward later.

      4. I think it is important to consider why people don’t pay. Here are some cases:

        1) They are under 18 and don’t bother. I’m sure this is quite common.
        2) They don’t pay and will never pay.
        3) They don’t pay because they figure they can get away without paying.

        It is only the third group that would actually lead to an increase in fare revenue. Youth would start using their ORCA cards more (like good little citizens) but that doesn’t actually generate additional revenue. Nor does eliminating the folks who think Link isn’t worth it. Now consider the alternative, which is based on fare enforcement. Assume for a second we go back to ticketing riders. If they don’t have ID they get kicked out of the train and the station. The agents could even linger around the entrance (the “fare paid area”) for a while checking others. If the guy just turns around and heads down they kick him out again (after politely asking for his ID again). Also consider the alternative — fare gates. People jump them.

        So now we’ve subdivided the third group:

        3A ) They still don’t pay even if they might face the time consuming and embarrassing act of being walked out of the station.
        3B) They still don’t pay despite fare gates.
        3C) They wouldn’t pay if not for the fare gates.

        That seems like a very small group.

      5. 4) They forgot to tap.
        5) they were going to tap but something distracted then on the way in, like ST’s service alert signs.
        6) they didn’t see an ORCA reader in their line of sight to remind them.

      6. You can pay at bus stops rather than on the bus. You guys seem oblivious to this convienence. It’s a big time saver and speeds up Boarding at crowded stops. That’s why many board the bus without tapping – they did that at the stop. And the idea you can sit in various places on the bus to avoid fare checks is ridiculous. Few are athletic enough to jump over gates.

      7. Only a handful of bus stops have off-board payment, primarily ORCA readers. All CT SWIFT stops have them, Only the busiest Metro RapidRide stops have them.

      1. Berlin is entirely Proof of Payment (on all modes) and lots of people pay there as well.

        It makes it really easy for major conventions to include fare payment as part of their name tags, and so on. Buy a ticket to Innotrans? Transit fare for the entire region is included for that day too.

    6. Well its largely an open system with surface platforms at street level so fare gates have a giant hole in them.

      A visit to Paris years ago opened my eyes to fare gates being climbed over at regular frequency and therefore no obvious solution.

    7. Tokyo and London are heavy rail subway systems, not light rail. What Sound Transit did by not having fare gates wasn’t incredibly stupid. It was entirely the norm for every light rail system across the nation. Look in the archives. You will see no discussion or controversy about gate free fare payment. Back then, people were more honest and well behaved than today.

    1. Presumably ST is studying that now. Previously there have have been concerns about folks going around gates by walking on the tracks. It seems like an unsolved problem.

      1. It would be ironic if ST installed faregates along MLK but ended up perpetuating the safety issues they’ve been trying to resolve.

    2. Maybe simply not. If tap out is required at stations with fare gates, very few trips occur within MLK corridor, so most trips will still be subject to a fare gate at least once. LA Metro has had this kind of mixed system (fare gates at grade separated stations only) for a long time, and is now beginning to implement tap to exit.

    4. Other light rail systems have some stations with fare gates and others without them. Boston and San Francisco come to mind because I lived in both places and used them daily in the past. Even the new Central Subway segment in San Francisco has fare gates at the subway stations but not at the surface one.

      In contrast, St Louis is adding them to every station.

    5. you don’t. Just tap to exit or you don’t get out anywhere that has gates. That alone will improve compliance significantly.

  4. Vancouver’s SkyTrain used fare inspectors since 1986 but then added gates in 2016. I’m assuming ST has looked to their experience to gauge success?

    1. I was confused about where the fair-paid section began on SkyTrain, until I saw someone being fare inspected right before I was about to go down the escalator. Oops.

  5. Absolutely needs to be faregates, this is long overdue. Every major transit system in the world has them. Any argument that faregates would make the system less accessible is a joke.

    1. Every major transit system in the world has them.

      The U-Bahn ridership is 1.5 million a day. The S-Bahn gets about 800,000 a day. Seems pretty major to me.

      1. HIGH-RIDERSHIP BUSES RUNNING AT A MULTIPLE (preferably one) OF LINK’S HEADWAY NOW!!!

        WITH ORCA READERS AT ALL DOORS, AND ALL-DOOR ENTRY AND EGRESS!!

        PRETTY PLEASE!

        Oh, and …

        FREE ORCA ACCOUNTS IN APPLE WALLET NOW! (or limiting the cost to the amount the account is allowed to go into negative value, unless auto-refill is set up, at a level that precludes going into negative value).

        AND MORE RED PAINT, WHEN PRACTICAL!

      2. Mike Orr,

        If we had a “transit user vote” where actual riders could choose a “free transit” system or a “better, more frequent transit system that costs even more money to ride” I’m completely sure “free transit” would win a landslide.

        What most middle class transit activists want is a high tech, high dollar, light rail heavy transit system…. and most of them wouldn’t care it cost 5 bucks a ride (or even more being many and upper class riders get their employers to pay for some or all of it). Never mind the working class.

        Transit activists pumped a light rail line, Seattle to Tacoma, that costs billions that’s slower than the bus currently running. There isn’t the population density in West Seattle or even Ballard to validate a subway line by the standards of basic urban planning 101.

        So take away the light rail projects and there is plenty of money for free transit. We’re talking billions for decades here! And here’s the thing that every transit activist and arm chair urban planner never seems to realize. Now is the time. Not in 2040 when that West Seattle light rail project *might* be done. No more “in the future” scams for stuff the City doesn’t need.

      3. “What most middle class transit activists want is a high tech, high dollar, light rail heavy transit system…. and most of them wouldn’t care it cost 5 bucks a ride (or even more being many and upper class riders get their employers to pay for some or all of it). Never mind the working class.”

        This is ad hominem against middle class transit activists. There may be some people who want that kind of rail system, and don’t care if it costs $5, and have an employer pass, and don’t care about the working class — but even one of those is not necessarily even half of middle class transit activists, much less all three.

        Further comments in this vein may be moderated.

      4. Mike Orr,

        I lived on the border of East Tacoma and South End for a couple of decades. Paid a whole lot of taxes to Sound Transit and Pierce transit. Took the bus to the Tacoma Mall, downtown and Wapato Park many, many times, for decades.

        The return on investment for these neighborhoods on transit is awful. The most of people riding transit in the “Mighty Eastside” of T-Town aren’t like you. Get used to people disagreeing with you Mike.

        Believe it or not, Seattle Transit Blog, Seattle Subway, Transit Riders Union and the Urbanist are not the “last word” on transit or urban planning. Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the new mayor of NYC believes in free buses! Why is that?

      5. “Seattle Transit Blog, Seattle Subway, Transit Riders Union and the Urbanist are not the “last word” on transit or urban planning.”

        Believe it or not, these groups don’t all agree on everything. Members of each group have different attitudes. Working-class people are in STB and the TRU at least. I didn’t complain about you disagreeing, I complained about you mischaracterizing transit advocates as if most of them fit some narrow stereotype and believe everything you say they do.

      6. The Transit Riders Union is known for having a large percent of working-class organizers and members and focusing on working-class issues (fare discounts for low-income riders, transit to off-peak non-downtown jobs, increasing frequency and coverage in equity neighborhoods). That’s the same kind of needs as in your working-class Pierce County and South King County neighborhoods. It’s just that the TRU may not have members in Pierce County, which is thirty-five miles from Metro’s core, don’t forget. Maybe there needs to be a Pierce County Transit Riders Union.

        So it’s surprising the TRU endorsed the “Build the Trains Now!” campaign, especially if that means no changes to DSTT2, ST’s WS/BLE preferred alignment, and the Everett/Tacoma Dome extensions. It seems Seattle Subway-ish and out of character for the TRU. But I don’t know why the TRU endorsed it, or what it thought it meant. Maybe it just wanted progress in general, not necessarily ST’s misguided and unaffordable preferred alignment. And with the endorsement being so surprising, maybe it was also controversial among TRU members. So you can’t assume every TRU member is in 100% agreement with everything the group does.

        That’s the same kind of overgeneralization you make when you say most middle class transit advocates have employer passes, think nothing of a $5 fare, and couldn’t care less about working-class riders or Pierce County residents.

      7. Transit activists pumped a light rail line, Seattle to Tacoma, that costs billions that’s slower than the bus currently running.

        You make it sound like this was a grassroots movement. I saw nothing like that for The Spine. The Spine was simply part of the mandate of Sound Transit since its conception. It gets pushed by members of the board as if it is was written in stone tablets somewhere. Transit advocates were actually quite a bit skeptical of the thing but in the end figured more transit is better than no transit so most organizations supported it.

        The only place where there was a grassroots movement was to add the station at Pinehurst. That wouldn’t be part of ST3 if not for ordinary people pushing for it. Eventually Seattle city councilmember Juarez pushed for it but one of the reasons she won her seat (over a very good field) was the speech she gave in support of the project at a forum put together by the same group. You are from Tacoma so maybe you saw that going on down there but I saw no evidence of that. It was just a given that the train was going to go down to the Tacoma (as if it is self-evident).

      1. If they are paying sales tax, property tax, or a car tab, they are probably paying more toward the cost of the ride than their fare does.

      2. With the attitude expressed, the writer certainly pays sales tax, but not much, certainly doesn’t pay property taxes except indirectly, and probably doesn’t pay car tabs.

        Fares are a proper part of transit use. It would not be right to offload ALL responsibility to society to provide it. Six dollars a day is not much to pay to be able to travel almost anywhere between Everett and Lakewood.

      3. Several categories of riders basically get to ride without paying fare, on specific services:

        * youth, until they turn 19

        * Subsidized Annual Pass holders

        * employees who get a monthly pass or Business Passport from their employer

        Do you have a problem with that?

  7. Not only do Boston and San Francisco have fare gates at major light rail stations but not at every station, they even have station agents at those major stations. That’s how they visually check transfer slips.

    1. SF has bizarre fare gates. I just got back from visiting a couple days ago.
      1. SF Muni (transit in the city) has fare gates but you don’t actually have to tap anything to use them. If you have a day pass on your phone, for example, you can just walk through the ADA gate (it opens automatically). There is no way to tap when using a day pass like with a Compass card (their Orca card).
      2. BART is more conventional tap in and tap out, but they have a ridiculous ‘excursion’ fee that charges you if you tap into a station and tap out of the same station, even if it’s just a few seconds later. You’re supposed to find a station attendant and have them let you out of the station then do something to your compass card to undo the tap in.

      Caveat is that this was all under Compass 1.0 system. Things are probably a bit different as of yesterday (Compass 2.0 rollout). I know the ‘excursion’ fee is supposedly gone now.

      Anyway my point is we probably shouldn’t be looking to SF for how to do fare gates right. Look to much closer and better ridden Skytrain instead

    2. Vancouver excellent sky train also had officers ensuring nobody jumped gates. Amazing to see the law enforced.

      1. If you have significant ridership, you can afford to have staff doing such things.

        With Link’s ridership, having that much staff is going to be a significant financial burden.

  8. If the goal is to increase fare revenue, then the most direct approach to achieve that goal is to increase ridership..

    The focus on fare evasion rates misses that larger picture of fare revenue trends. It would be nice to show net fare revenue (which subtracts out all the costs of fare collection), especially before and after the transition to a flat fare.

    1. If the goal is to increase fare revenue, then the most direct approach to achieve that goal is to increase ridership.

      Agreed.

      1. Riders that don’t pay are riders who don’t pay. They are not all riders. If you increase ridership, the absolute numbers of riders who pay will go up, and you will have more revenue.

        I think in the long run worrying about fare evasion and trying to enforce it just wastes money.

      3. Glenn in Portland:

        That report appears to be lumping Sound Transit’s tax revenue under “directly generated”. Per ST’s own annual report for 2024, revenue from passenger fares only totaled $61.8M, of which $38.9M was collected from Link: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2024-Sound-Transit-Annual-Report.pdf

        That same ST report lists an average fare per boarding of $1.30, suggesting a fare compliance rate of ~50-55% (accounting, roughly, for riders who pay a reduced fare or ride free).

      4. The agencies split revenue from Business Passport accounts, monthly PugetPasses, Regional Day Passes, and trips with multiple boardings during the 2-hour free transfer window.

        Also, the nominal fare is only $1 for reduced-fare riders.

        $1.30 sounds about right for a high rate of fare payment.

        Tmt is reading the overall fare revenue correctly.

  9. In the fare gates vendor market, there are different kinds. Some are rotary turnstiles and others are gates. Some require proof of payment for entry only and others require both entry and exit checking. Often if not always, each gate is one-way.

    I mention these things because the design can vary widely. The number of seconds needed to clear a gate meters its throughput.

    One other issue is maintenance and failures. If there is only room for one entry gate, if it goes out of service there’s a problem. With this in mind, I would only suggest them for stations with big entrances where at least 3-4 gates can be installed. And reliability really, really matters.

    1. I think one-way or two-way fare gate is a software feature. Many products can do both by design.
      I think in the US, more rail systems with fare gates feature two-way gates and only charges flat fare rate at entrance. A lot of distance-based rail systems in the US are commuter/regional rails without fare gate.
      Because of flat fare rate, most metro-like systems don’t require validation when exiting at gate while there is at least one system I know that requires a symbolic exiting tap and the agency uses that to study travel patterns.

    2. “I think one-way or two-way fare gate is a software feature.”

      Most fare gates that I have used have been reversible in their design and software. It’s just most allow for entry in only one direction at a time when operating. Otherwise, two riders can approach the same gate simultaneously, which confuses the gate logic about which rider goes first.

      Since a rider does not have to tap off, it’s easier to have a gate quickly clear when exiting. However some sort of green/ red light indicator is still probably necessary even if it changes in real time.

  10. People should pay their fares, as it adds more revenue to the future link projects. Even though it was before covid, 97% is pretty impressive, not sure if those statistics are true

    1. Nonpayment was 3% for years and years. We wrote about it and quoted sources at the time, if you want to look through the archive.

      3. [more off-topic and ad hominem against everyone in the area]

        No transit outfit ever got close to 97% fare payment. Didn’t happen no matter who said it did.

        Revenue aside, if turnstiles make light rail safer and/or cleaner, it may well be worth it.

      4. 1. Are you familiar with the concept of “security theater”? Appearances can deceive.
        2. If there was no loss prevention system at all, losses would be 10x higher than they are now.
        3. Grocery stores are opening at a faster pace than they’re opening, at least in the last couple years.
        4. You just changed goalposts from “retail business” to “transit outfit”. I even directly quoted you when I refuted you, but you did it anyway. Shame on you.

  11. Fare evasion is a contributor to public disorder, which I think is an underappreciated part of building support for transit and general urbanist issues. This is a subjective experience to be sure, but witnessing fare evasion erodes trust in public transit, and on top of that a substantial number of the most disruptive riders (think: mental health or hygiene issues) do not pay their fare.

    A historical example might be NYC. The subways were much less safe in the 90s. Arguably a major factor in improving subway safety was aggressive fare evasion enforcement:

    https://www.city-journal.org/article/how-to-get-the-subways-under-control

    It is absolutely not lost on folks that the areas of the city with the highest level of public disorder (for example parts of 3rd Ave; 12th and Jackson) are extremely well served by transit and located in denser neighborhoods. Obviously fare gates would not solve that issue, but the issues are plain and obvious and the general public does seem to correlate density and public transit with public disorder. And on top of that I know many folks who refuse to ride the bus because they have had too many negative experiences. I don’t know what the solution is here but public order issues absolutely need to be addressed. See: Danny Westneat’s op-ed on 3rd Ave, opposition to the 3rd Ave extension

    – https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/why-is-seattles-third-avenue-not-recovering-it-just-might-be-the-buses/
    – https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/06/17/axed-downtown-seattle-transit-upgrade-would-have-benefited-80000-daily-riders/

    1. witnessing fare evasion erodes trust in public transit

      OK, but wouldn’t that be an argument against fare gates and for that matter against fare enforcement of all types? Otherwise how could you possibly know if someone was actually paying or not?

      1. Ross, maybe I shouldn’t have included that bit, that’s not the point I’m trying to make. What I am saying is that public disorder (general “quality of life” issues) on transit and in urban areas reduces support for additional transit service and the growth of urban areas. We should not be waving away the quality of life complaints about our city. Yes, those complaints are often poorly expressed and often weaponized by anti-transit and anti-city folks, but many of them are legitimate concerns that need to be taken seriously.

        In other cities (specifically NYC but also SF), increased fare evasion enforcement has dramatically reduced issues with public disorder.

        https://manhattan.institute/article/how-brattons-nypd-saved-the-subway-system

      2. OK, but then your comment is off-topic. The discussion is about fare gates, not public disorder. If you want to discuss the broken windows theory it is best left for an open thread (or maybe even a police forum).

      3. I don’t see how that is off topic; fare gates are for safety/security as well as for fare evasion, and I don’t think fare gate success should be narrowly measured on fare evasion. That’s directly addressed in the board motion, “Documented benefits include increased fare recovery, improved safety, and a reduction in staffing and maintenance needs.”. See also: press releases for BART, WMATA, etc

        https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/ActiveDocuments/Motion%20M2025-64.pdf

        Safety/security is a top concern for riders: “People are most concerned about unpredictable behavior”

        https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2024/Presentation%20-%20Passenger%20Experience%20Survey%2006-06-24.pdf

    2. witnessing fare evasion erodes trust in public transit

      I agree with you. Being middle class is not so much one’s income, though obviously it plays a part. It is deportment that makes one middle-class (or any other).

      So when drivers let staggering guys on without paying, everyone on the bus gets a little uneasy. It’s bad enough when they glower at people, but if they’ve tapped or paid they seem more normal.

      Back when Metro had “Letter of the Day” transfers you’d see guys with a handful of old transfers flipping through the stack to get the right letter with the right cut.

      It wasn’t three percent of all riders, but easily one or two. Add them to the walkers and 3% fades in the rear view mirror.

      In the early days of Metro, the 5 often had tiny 30 foot buses from the 1940’s with narrow aisles. Everyone paid inbound because you had to to get on. (Middle class neighborhoods; no swaggerers). But in the afternoon the same people day after day would move to the back of the bus before their stop, then use the clogged aisle as cover to go out the back door.

      People as a group don’t really change. Anything to stick it to “The Man”.

      1. “in the afternoon the same people day after day would move to the back of the bus before their stop, then use the clogged aisle as cover to go out the back door.”

        Drivers didn’t open the back door when it was pay as you leave. That was one of the complaints then, that with everybody having to go both in and out the front door it slowed down the buses and led to unreliability.

  12. yes finally! include exit tap points so anyone who “forgets” get locked in the station until they pay. Then have transit police issue citations for anyone who tries to evade the system. 50, bucks first offsense. Let’s do what Paris does. No more free stuff.

  13. Can we stop with the unscientific guesswork? Fare gates significantly reduce fare evasion. Three systems across the US have all upgraded fare gates from basic ones to tall ones since COVID. The effect from no fare gates to modern fare gates will be even greater.

    LA Metro: Upgrading fare gates reduced fare evasion by over 80%, increased paying passengers by 100-250%. https://thesource.metro.net/new-faregates-off-to-a-strong-start-at-lake-and-firestone-stations/

    BART: Upgraded fare gates reduced fare evasion by more than half. https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2025/news20250926

    WMATA: Upgrading fare gates reduced fare evasions by 80%. https://www.wmata.com/about/news/Metro-finishes-more-secure-faregate-installation-at-all-98-Metrorail-stations-installation-of-1500-new-bus-fareboxes.cfm

    The amount of fare evasion today is incredible. Stand outside a station and just count how many adults tap. We can do multiple things at once. We can both have better and automated fare enforcement through gates, and work on other rider issues to increase ridership.

    2. Not everyone is supposed to tap. If they have a printed light rail ticket or day pass, they go straight through. If they are under 19, they aren’t required to have an ORCA card, except for the monorail.

      OTOH, about the only reason to get a printed ticket or pass now is to avoid the cost of getting an ORCA Card. Getting a Regional Day Pass on an ORCA card makes more sense for most adult riders.

      Not every general lesson from other systems can be applied to the specifics of ST’s system.

      And again, the goals of increasing net fare revenue and reducing fare evasion are separate measurements.

      2. You can’t use paper transfer tickets on the train regardless. A metro paper transfer is not valid light rail fare

    3. A 250% increase in fare paying passengers is an absurd number. It assumes almost nobody pays the fare.

      The article from Los Angeles metro isn’t exactly a scientific study. They counted a certain number of passengers during 3 days in March using the old faregates, and a certain number of passengers during 3 days in April using the new faregates.

      So, you could also infer the old faregates were a significant barrier to passengers, or you could also infer April Fools Day is a popular holiday in Los Angeles.

      1. Fare evasion when down by 80% and fare payers went up by 250%. It’s just algebra from there: 65% of riders were not paying a fare under the old fare gaps. That’s high, but not unreasonable if most regular riders were in the habit of not paying.

        A+B=1,X+Y=1,X/A​=0.2,Y/B​=2.5
        Before times: 35/65 paid/no pay split
        After times: 13/86 pay split

      2. The WMATA and BART data seem plausible but not the LA Metro data. 65-70% of riders aren’t paying in the before scenario? If it’s just an 80 percent reduction (not 100 percent), that’s making the before percentage even less!

        Plus, Firestone station has a reported average boardings of over 2 K in other Metro sources.

        And Lake Ave is Pasadena is a fairly nice area. That large non-compliance also seems implausible. Still the sample totals from the fare gate study make more sense there.

        I have to wonder if there’s another issue, like malfunctioning equipment or software.

        PS. I found a cool diagram with average weekday station boardings that LA Metro posted on Reddit here:
        https://www.reddit.com/r/LAMetro/comments/1nkkxnx/la_metro_2025_ridership_by_station/

        The diagram even calls out ridership by line at transfer stations. With transfer station volumes so much higher, it really demonstrates how transfer stations are deserving of a greater level of importance for good design than other stations are.

      3. That is a really cool diagram, Al. I agree, transfer points are really important. Same with bus/rail transfer points.

      4. I’m loving that diagram. Maybe we could do something like that for Link. Although it would probably be a lot of work.

    4. Upgrading gates is different than installing them from scratch. BART’s old gates were not hard to hurdle over — and the new gates are taller, for example. That new design reduces fare evasion significantly, even though most riders were always paying fares.

      I’ve also seen people who have unlimited ride passes on them appear to evade paying a fare — yet they aren’t. It’s just that a passerby doesn’t know their circumstances. If those riders did not tap, I think a fare checker chastises them but doesn’t fine them.

      1. They will get a fine if they don’t tap serially. ST doesn’t get paid unless they do tap so it’s fare evasion either way.

      2. ST doesn’t get paid only because of the silly way they setup the system. Rather then coordinate with the various agencies and figure out how to split the proceeds from the unlimited-ride passes they expect people to tap at every place. Then they go through the tapping records and split up the money. A simple bureaucratic change and the unlimited-pass riders (like the youth riders) wouldn’t have to tap.

      3. Not sure where the “ST doesn’t get paid without tapping” for monthly pass riders is coming from. 100% of the ORCA fare revenue (after ORCA operating expenses) gets distributed to the member agencies. If Link has a higher “ride but don’t tap” rate than buses, then yes ST is likely getting a lower share than it “deserves” under ORCA policy, but that’s just shifting money between agencies and I doubt is meaningful.

        If a thousand people signed up for monthly passes and never used them, that fare revenue still gets shared between ORCA members based on ridership across the system.

      4. “If a thousand people signed up for monthly passes and never used them, that fare revenue still gets shared between ORCA members based on ridership across the system.”

        Thanks, I’ve been wondering that a long time. I assumed the ORCA unit would just keep the money rather than distributing it to agencies, but basing it on total aggregate ridership makes sense. That’s how employer passes are priced when the company is so new its own employees’ usage isn’t known yet: the price is based on existing companies’ employees’ usage.

      5. I thought ST got a proportion based on the usage. If not then there is no good reason for unlimited-use card holders to tap.

  14. If we do get fare gates, I hope they are of a modern style: fast and touchless. I hope to never again touch a turnstile coated in some unknown substance.

  15. What it should really do first is to update Orca system to accept credit card tap and pay so that tourists who are super willing to pay can pay. Transit Go app is fun to use by local commuters, but it is super inconvenient to those who are just visiting and unfamiliar with the system.

    A lot of stations have tap station at entrance but ticket station inside the station, that’s also confusing for those who are unfamiliar with Link light rail. Easiest solution is to do exactly what Portland does.

    Fare gate is something they should only consider after that

    1. Tap to pay is coming soon, as per one of the recent KT board minutes meetings (I think the date was in February for implementation?) It’s actually active in some capacity on the first hill streetcar right now, or at least was, as I accidentally found out by tapping the wrong card the other day.

      1. That’s great news!

        I know digital Orca card is made available to Android phone which sort of make things more confusing. I’ve seen people trying to tap with their iPhone because they saw someone else did so successfully with their Android phone.

    2. Yeah agreed. The fact I was able to tap to pay my credit card last second to catch a departing DART train in Dallas of all places – but could not do the same here – is pretty confusing at this point.

  16. Could do what metro in Phoenix has been doing have security check fares not just fare ambassadors and maybe more cops riding the buses would help that’s what Phoenix does and seems to be less fare skipping

  17. The fare ambassadors are a joke. The majority of those not paying do so knowingly. They know how to game the system too. Been not having to show ID to an ambassador to the number of warnings and minor penalty handed out they know that evasion is easy to get away with.

    Fare gates are needed.

    1. One thing I don’t get is why the ambassadors can’t take pictures of those receiving warnings. It would at least create the appearance that warnings against those passengers add up, and that shrugging when asked for ID does not keep them anonymous and untrackable.

      1. How would ST actually use photos? Would Fare Ambassadors take a photo, upload it to a central server, and wait for some sort of facial recognition system to assess whether or not that person’s gotten a warning before? Would there be some sort of retroactive ticketing system?

      2. Primarily, it might dissuade a chunk of fare evaders from being willing to find out the answer to your question.

        I don’t know how good the facial recognition software is, but if someone comes up a certain number of times, the Metro Sheriff’s Dept can be waiting a few stations away to board and issue a trespass warning if the evader doesn’t show ID. I’m not sure what else they are allowed to do, but issuing the trespass warning, from a police officer, should get all but the unembarassable to comply and show ID.

        Escorting off the train is a last resort, due to its violent nature, should only happen at the terminus, and should hopefully be a bluff that never gets called.

        But I am down for publicly embarrassing some repeat offenders if it gets fare compliance up without risk of harm or losing other passengers.

        .

        All that said, I hope ambassadors are still handing out brochures with info for reduced fare options, in several languages.

      3. Also, warn the facially-recognized fare evaders that police will be waiting for them at the station after next (likely also a bluff), The evader will probably get off at the next station, and then come to the conclusion that their being slowed down getting where they needed to go cost them a lot more than the fare.

  18. There is this type of people who have an ok job to afford paying for transit and they are relative model citizens who are not comfortable breaking law, but they don’t pay for transit because they believe transit should be free and they’ve paid enough tax. Because nowadays fare evasion doesn’t even feel like a misdemeanor, they are comfortable doing that again and again.

    I am pretty sure if there are fare gates, those people will reluctantly pay, but honestly I don’t know if it is worth it. Maybe it is.

    Just personal opinion and please don’t dive into the topics such as whether transit should be free or whether we’ve paid enough tax to not to pay for transit because they are irrelevant to this thread.
    Not paying only hurts your local transit system not IRS.

    1. “they don’t pay for transit because they believe transit should be free and they’ve paid enough tax”

      That’s very few people probably. Not many people are that ideological. Just like the people who deliberately challenge the bus driver and walk right past them aren’t that many, but they get overblown in the comments, and some even suggest that most people don’t pay or nobody pays, which is false.

  19. I haven’t seen fares checked anywhere in many years, if they did that more regularly and gave people grace if they are not high repeat offenders then it seems fine and would give a general impression that people could be caught not paying. But really there just needs to be card readers on the actual transport you are taking, not just at the entrances. In all of the busses at each entrance, at every platform and car entrance on the Light Rail, etc.

    1. I do think there should be ORCA readers on platforms and on trains. ST doesn’t do it because it wants people to have tapped before then, but when your train is in one minute or the doors are already open, there’s not time to tap without missing the train. Platform or onboard readers would allow those people to tap rather than getting into the dilemma of just running on or missing the train.

      1. Link would be so goddamn slow if there were readers on the trains. Ridership is simply too high for such a system to be any modicum of efficient. People crowding tappers on the platforms is a safety issue. It is easy to tap at the entrance, and safer and less ambiguous for fare inspections.

      2. “Link would be so goddamn slow if there were readers on the trains.”

        Just because there are readers on the trains doesn’t mean everybody would stop using the station readers and switch to the train readers. The train readers would be just a few people who didn’t have time to use the other ones or forgot to.

  20. “Fare evasion” being the stated goal for fare gates is, IMO, a red herring. View the question from a political angle, not a system-operations one: adding gates would be a mostly-transparent attempt to add a physical security measure to combat the idea that the system is “unsafe”. “Fare evasion reduction” just happens to be a more-convenient political message, and could indeed be a benefit on the side but it doesn’t seem like it could ever be more than that.

    This would be expensive to do, but seems pretty likely to build political capital with high-propensity voters who are important when transit questions show up on non-general election ballots (to say nothing of the general election fortunes of the board members themselves). It’s a PR move that spends a lot of money to attack the perception that “Link is unsafe and Sound Transit is unserious” and to attract the riders who feel that way. Politically speaking it may not be not wrong, but it puts ST in the limelight to answer to “whom are fare gates really for?”.

    Whether or not any of the underlying conditions are true (or are more imagined than real), or if fare gates would actually achieve any of the stated-or-unstated goals, is outside the scope of existing evidence. There’s plenty of anecdotes to go around: gates in this city didn’t reduce fare evasion, that city doesn’t have gates and there’s no evasion, gates didn’t help security over there, and so on. See what you want worldwide, but look closer at the question on the ground here, in our town.

    1. Calling it a red herring is honestly disrespectful and disingenuous to valid concerns people have about transit safety.

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