During the pandemic, fares were suspended on a number of transit agencies in Washington State including Metro and Sound Transit for public health reasons. While transit was free for part of 2020, Metro and Sound Transit suspended fare enforcement until Spring 2025 and Fall 2023 respectively.
On Seattle’s buses and trains (and Snohomish’s, Spokane’s, and Vancouver’s BRTs), agencies employ a “Proof of Payment” system. Common in Northern Europe, fares are not enforced by turnstiles or bus drivers but by transit employees who randomly board transit vehicles and check that riders have proof of payment. Turnstiles prevent the possibility of unique fare media (a free bus ticket with a hotel or, as in Seattle, arena ticket) and barrier-less Youth Ride Free. They also save on capital costs associated with fare gates and operational costs by enabling shorter bus dwell times with all door boarding.
One downside of proof of payment systems is that fare enforcement is more complex. In Washington State, most agencies with off-board fare payment also have a fare enforcement program to issue fines or citations to riders who illegally boarded without paying.
Youth Ride Free
In 2022, youth began riding transit for free across Washington State. In that year’s transportation budget, Olympia began funding local transit operations for local agencies (except Sound Transit) and in return demanded agencies adopt “low-barrier, zero-fare policies for youth”. That forbids checking IDs, mandating Youth ORCA cards, or even filling out a form. WSDOT indicates that any rider who “identifies oneself as 18 years of age and under” can’t be denied service due to lack of fare media.
Youth Ride Free has been a huge win for parents and children but for transit agencies it’s added complexity to fare enforcement. Today, a large contingent of riders legally ride for free with no identification or fare media making enforcement and calculating a fare evasion rate difficult.
Outside Seattle, no tracking
Outside of Seattle, Community Transit (in Snohomish County), C-TRAN (in Vancouver), and Spokane Transit operate proof of payment BRT systems. We reached out to those agencies to understand their fare evasion rate and all three said fare evasion was not a metric they tracked. Spokane Transit does not have a fare enforcement program. Both Community Transit and C-TRAN cited Youth Ride Free as a reason why their agency is unable to track a fare evasion rate.
King County Metro
In 2019, King County Metro estimated that between 2.7% and 4.5% of riders weren’t paying on proof of payment routes (i.e RapidRides). Last month, the Urbanist broke that King County Metro issued resolved zero citations for fare evasion in 2025 despite Metro estimating a systemwide 35% “nonpayment rate”. Correction (May 28): Metro issued eight citations from May 31 to Dec. 31, 2025, but none were resolved, largely due to unreliable methods of communication.
With Youth Ride Free, “nonpayment” and “evasion” aren’t really synonyms anymore so we reached out to Metro for more clarity. Metro spokesperson Jeff Switzer clarified that “the systemwide non-payment rate of 35 percent does exclude youth ridership, based on our best estimates” (emphasis mine).
Coverage of this story in the Seattle Times also indicated that routes with fare enforcement (i.e. the 7, 36, 40, 106, and RapidRides A-F) now have just a 3% evasion rate, an almost 30 percentage point reduction since enforcement began. Metro clarified that they do not actually track fare evasion by route and the 3% figure cited by the Seattle Times is the percentage of fare checks in which riders had not paid, not the percentage of boardings in which riders had not paid.
Sound Transit
In 2019, fare evasion on Link was 2.4% of riders. After a brief hiatus for the pandemic, in Fall 2023 Sound Transit began enforcing fares again (with Fare Ambassadors instead of security).
In early May, staff gave an update to the Sound Transit Board on the Fare Engagement Program. Notably, only 63% of boardings have valid fare media (i.e. paid), a rate somewhat higher than the 56% in 2022. Youth (and those attesting to be youth) are included in the 37% of riders that do not pay. Before Youth Ride Free, youth represented roughly 6% of ridership.
In 2018, Fare Inspectors checked roughly 2.5M fares or 8.76% of riders. In 2025, Fare Ambassadors checked 986,304 fares, roughly 2.5% of riders and a far cry from Sound Transit’s goal of checking 10% of riders.
Of those checked by Fare Ambassadors in 2025, 15% did not have a valid fare. 7.5% were youth legally riding free. 7.8% were not youth and did not have a valid fare and of that number, 60% refused to show ID and were thus not issued a warning.
It is difficult to reconcile the discrepancy between only 63% of riders having paid but 85% of riders checked by Fare Ambassadors having a valid fare. Perhaps 20% of riders dodge the Fare Ambassadors? Or 20% of riders are on crushed trains Fare Ambassadors cannot check? Regardless, it is obvious that Fare Ambassadors are not checking a representative sample of riders.
In 2024, staff estimated that due to fare evasion, the agency lost $15M annually and is losing $30M annually now that ST2 is completed. Over the course of the 50 year ST3 program, that represents roughly $1.5 billion, or 10% of the cost overrun for the Ballard Link. The agency is now piloting “entrance inspections” (i.e. human fare gates), which do increase compliance but only when the inspections are active.
The Sound Transit board obviously sees fare evasion as a problem as they investigate fare gates. But BART, a fully gated system, had a 5% evasion rate in 2017 and has a 10% evasion rate now, both far higher than Sound Transit’s own fare gate-less 2.4% evasion rate from 2019 when over 2.5x more checks were happening.
Editor’s Note: Uncivil comments, especially those which make unsubstantiated claims about riders who do or do not pay fare, will be moderated in accordance with our Comment Policy.
Edit, May 28, 2026: King County Metro has clarified it issued eight citations in 2025, but none were resolved. The article has been revised to include this detail.
As a driver, it’s impossible to enforce fares to passengers. Some pay but most don’t. You’ll hear “can I have a courtesy ride” a lot throughout the day. I just board everyone and don’t say anything. The youth ride ride free deal is another headache for drivers.
I used to ask this of drivers when I was short on funds, and they wouldn’t usually leave me stranded. I always appreciated this courtesy. I can see it gets abused now, though.
My relatives from out of town have occasionally asked this when they’ve been visiting and didn’t have ready small-denomination cash on them.
I’ve heard repeatedly that it’s Metro’s policy to grant free ride requests. The issue is more people who don’t pay but don’t ask either. They’re probably more likely to misbehave.
It’s not official Metro policy to grant free ride requests. If that were the policy, failure to pay wouldn’t be a violation, and riders would legally be off the hook, because the driver granted the free ride request. Rider: Can I have a free ride? Driver: Yes. Where’s the violation?
I believe the policy is the following … legally, the fare is required, however, if asked for a free ride, the driver should state the fare once, then let it go, in order to avoid conflict.
In practice, most drivers don’t say what the fare is when asked for a free ride. They either nod their head, wave them past, or say ok. That’s simply the driver tying to get through the day without conflict, and not official policy.
Correct. It is a distinction without much of a difference.
Pierce Transit gives the drivers a number of day passes they hand out like candy.
People with no money still need to get around, after all.
On Link, the state requirements for youth seem to make it difficult to add fare gates. I wonder what the internal proposals have been when they indicated they would study fare gates. Perhaps all schools do give out Youth ORCA cards, but there is also a dedicated station attendant at each gated station whose job is to open the gates for any youth without a card (e.g. a visitor)?
Sorry if it wasn’t clear but the state only mandates Youth Ride Free as a requirement for funding the agencies that are eligible.
Because Sound Transit is ineligible for funding, they are not beholden to this requirement and likely any fare gate proposal would require youth to get a youth ORCA card.
There are already youth ORCA cards; they just don’t always use them and don’t have to. Don’t schools distribute them to all students? Fare gates would appear to require them to use the cards they have. That may conflict with a detail in the law that says they don’t have to use fare media. That’s for ST and the state to resolve. I assume ST is already working with the state on this, and the state may have said fare gates are OK even if they bar youth without a card.
A possible solution is a surge in fare enforcement or security staff to be stationed at the fare gates for a few months to help youth get an orca card and to bypass the gates in the meantime
My children (both in Bellevue School District) have not been issued Orca cards by their schools. They are issued student ID cards, which they have been told to show when boarding transit.
There are few schools near a 2 Line station, so even if we get fare gates, issuing Orca cards to every student would be an unnecessary expense. I imagine that they would be given out at schools by request. This is actually how the school bus system works here for elementary and middle schools: the students need an ID card to board the bus.
Oh, just to clarify about the ID requirement for school buses: it’s not just the student ID that all students get, bus riders need a bus-specific ID, which is issued after verifying their residence is far enough from the school, and which is scanned when you board the bus.
So, a student who lives far enough from school can ride the bus for free to non-school activities. While a student who lives too close to the school can’t.
That feels dumb to me. You could say that the kid who lives close to school doesn’t need the bus to get to school. But, you could also say the kid who lives further, but gets driven to school by their parents doesn’t need the bus either. Yet, the latter gets a free pass to use on weekends, while the former does not.
What is wrong with “require them to use the cards they have [been given and are fare-free]”? If it makes people feel that ST is being consistent and they “feel safer” on the train, only an ideological “everything should be free” nutter would object.
Why does the state require that youth can ride without tapping? Requiring tapping starting around middle or high school age seems like a reasonable requirement to me. An attendant seems like a good idea to me regardless though.
I’m not sure they anticipated this situation. Maybe call your state legislator?
It also is really annoying to get a youth orca card but I could see disbursement through schools as a reasonable compromise.
The conspiratorially minded might wonder if some of the seemingly well-meaning aspects of this legislation were backed by legislators more concerned about choking urban transit agencies than actually helping kids.
I think a youth Orca card can work.
In similar fashion as in dealing with a bank card, the ORCA card is internally registered to the student name, and replacing an ORCA card, lost, stolen, or if, student sold or given away, would simply have to have that card canceled before a new card can be issued.
I think a “Youth” ORCA card needs to have a separate , different image on card, that shows as a “Youth” ORCA card, to look different from regular adult card, and different color on card, so if need extra proof, cameras on bus can likely tell color difference.
And during a random check, if adult caught using a Youth card, have higher penalties.
Too lenient a fee will likely not be much of a deterrent.
That’s chasing a problem we don’t know exists. Commentators are speculating that adults are borrowing youth cards, but we don’t know whether it’s happening to any significant extent.
This can backfire. Kids will sell / give their cards to adults because they know they can just get another one at school, or someone will just let them in anyway. Then you have kids ride free, and a bunch of adults with misdirected youth orca cards.
You will spend far more on enforcement than you will recoup. That’s why systems work this way. Focus on the 90% of funding these fares will never cover.
That seems like a very solvable problem to me. Simply expiring the cards annually and tracking the number of replacements per student would likely give a fairly good idea of whether students are selling their ORCA cards. Cards could get tied to the student and disabled on replacement; there could be a replacement fee (waived for low-income); there are a lot of options there.
Of course some students could still abuse that, but that’s fine so long as it’s not overly widespread.
Youth cards expire on the 19th birthday of the youth receiving it and just become normal orca cards anyway, as it currently stands.
Yeah, but the point is, violations will occur with fare gates. They are seen as some sort of panacea and yet it took only a few minutes for everyone here to figure out a workaround (borrow some kids ORCA card). If anything the current system (based more on people rather than infrastructure) is more effective. This is in important factor that should be considered.
@Ross Bleakney
Of course violations will occur and of course fare gates are not a panacea, but the scale matters. Whether it’s worth it is more subjective but fare gates will very obviously reduce the rate of fare evasion.
fare gates will very obviously reduce the rate of fare evasion.
Will it reduce it more than simply having more fare enforcers? That isn’t clear at all.
This doesn’t really happen often enough in other cities that give kids in school free transit passes to be an issue. NYC does it, for example. Their student transit cards are neon green, so it’s obvious to bystanders if an adult is using them. And if a student loses one and requests a new one, the old one is automatically deactivated. Some illegal selling is inevitable but it’s largely not an issue with some modicum of enforcement.
In fact, with employer sponsored ORCA passports, I’m surprised selling isn’t more of a problem already here. Youth ORCA cards are certainly no worse.
with employer sponsored ORCA passports, I’m surprised selling isn’t more of a problem already here.
Who says it isn’t? My guess is, borrowing is more common: “Hey honey, can I borrow your [unlimited] ORCA card? I have to go downtown.”
For what it’s worth, with today’s policy, a Fare Ambassador cannot ask someone with a Youth ORCA card who appears to be an adult for an ID.
Ok, so fix that
If that’s an issue it would have been happening for years. I haven’t heard of any cases of it.
Don’t the cards say “YOUTH” on them?
The way it works in New York and Philadelphia is that when a student pass is used, it makes a distinct sound, to prevent obvious adults from using the cards. The passes are tracked, so that each student can only get one pass. I remember that in Philadelphia, students were only issued transit passes if they lived far enough away, and the passes could only be used twice a day, on school days.
I had not realized the state was not subsidizing fares for youth on Sound Transit services. I certainly support transit being free for youth, but not the state’s unfunded mandate. I also had not realized that the state was undermining ST3 finances with this unfunded mandate.
OTOH, this revelation puts the monorail’s fare system in a slightly worse light.
I think this leads to some obvious questions:
1) What do we lose by accepting reduced fare compliance rates relative to pre-pandemic rates?
2) What would we gain by putting in whatever effort might be necessary return fare compliance to pre-pandemic rates?
3) is it even feasible to regularly measure fare compliance without detailed demographics surveys deciphering who’s allowed to ride fare-free and who isn’t?
1/2) This is really hard to calculate giving shifting ridership and policies since 2019. The below assumes that the state is chipping in $31M to cover youth (source: KUOW, 2022; I don’t have updated numbers there). For reference, STM provides about $50M in additional funds annually.
A return to 25% farebox recovery (2019 rate) less $31M for youth would be an additional $124M in revenue, or 13.3% more service.
A return to $166M farebox revenue (2019 value) less $31M for youth would be an additional $56M in revenue, or 6.0% more service.
See 10-year summary: https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/about/data-and-reports/performance-reports
13.3% more service is *huge* and I think it’s underappreciated just how important fare revenue can be to providing frequent service.
You think all people who aren’t paying would just pay, if you just put in turnstiles?
That is naive.
I lived in NYC. Jumping turnstiles or other means was common-place. People who see other blatantly flouting the law without consequence is honestly worse than surreptitious non-payment, imho. It erodes the rule of law, and some simply feel like chumps for paying.
Also, a large number of people who aren’t paying, simply can’t. Yet they still need to get around.
#2: Less vandalism, drugs, sleeping on trains, people spilling things or peeing/pooping on the train, and people acting intimidating toward others. A baseline of universal fares and enforcement slashes the rate of these, and it doesn’t accumulate as much. We saw this when ST suspended fares in 2020, and security incidents at stations and trains jumped up. The same happens in reverse the more you enforce fares consistently.
> We saw this when ST suspended fares in 2020
Well, there was also another global event happening which exacerbated socioeconomic distress and decimated transit ridership.
But fare enforcement does seem to be inversely correlated with poor behavior, as maintenance hours decreased immensely following installation of new and hardened fare gates at certain SF BART stations: https://growsf.org/news/2026-02-12-bart-fare-gates-10-million/
Improved behavior has been ridership-increase-adjacent as well. And the ridership increase has done more to improve fare revenue, without increasing the costs of fare collection.
Improving on-vehicle hygiene might have gone hand-hand with the improved availability of public restrooms. Those restrooms are not cheap to keep clean, but setting some aside for women might have helped reduce costs a little.
Excellent comment, Nathan. I think the third question is most important. I address any problem by first asking: “What do we know?”.
If the answer is “Not much” then that is my focus. How can we get more detailed information. Otherwise we are just experimenting and hoping for the best. Maybe we will spend a bunch of money on fare gates and have slightly better fare recovery. Maybe not.
Maybe we try and reproduce the world as implied in question 2. Compliance was very high. Can we get back to those glory days? Who knows.
Maybe we are better off going with no fares at all. We don’t need to raise that much money. Most of the ORCA card money comes from employers. Throw in some additional taxes on hotels and car rentals and you just might cover it. Then again, I see issues. There are a lot of things this area does really well — taxes aren’t one of them. But hey, maybe it is worth a shot. There are drawbacks (e. g. slower buses) but at this point we are just shooting in the dark anyway.
It might just be my employer, but I wonder if part of the problem is commuting benefits going away during the pandemic due to WFH and not coming back. Apparently my office used to provide Orca cards and just never started again when we returned to office in some capacity.
This post actually reminds me that I need to request those be reinstated.
ORCA Business still provides the bulk of Metro farebox revenue (~60%), though it’s not clear how that compares to pre-pandemic
See Ridership > ORCA Business Programs: https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/about/data-and-reports/performance-reports
This is an important consideration. The fact that 60% of the farebox recovery comes from employers makes the case for free-fares stronger. I’ve been a skeptic of free fares but you can’t ignore the fact that you only need to come with 40% of the revenue to at least have the same level of funding.
Why would an employer purchase ORCA cards if buses were free?
Well, the funding provided by fares would have to be backfilled somehow, so Ross is assuming whatever policy enabling fare-free operations would maintain whatever motivation employers have to continue paying for ORCA business passports.
Yeah. The point I’m making is that employers pay 60% of the cost. They do so largely because of the law that requires them to do so. That would continue, albeit with obvious changes (no actual ORCA card).
I am not aware of any law requiring employers to participate in the Business Passport program. Rather, it is a benefit negotiated for by employee unions and student unions.
The Commute Trip Reduction Act requires employers with more than 100 employee in a single office to document the company’s efforts to reduce commute trips. The main way companies do this is by offering transit passes. There is also a Seattle requirement for employers to either offer ORCA cards or pre-tax deduction for transit passes. Many companies opt to offer transit passes instead.
The problem with the Youth Ride Free program isn’t kids riding free. It’s the way it was written and implemented.
Right now, youth ORCA cards can easily be passed around, kept into adulthood, or used by people who are clearly not youth. Operators can literally see the card type pop up on the reader. It says “YOUTH.” If you’re obviously 30 years old tapping a youth card, that’s fare evasion.
But operators are told not to confront it because management doesn’t want fare disputes or conflict. So once again, frontline employees are stuck in the middle dealing with the frustration while having no real authority or backing to enforce the rules.
If the system is going to have a Youth Ride Free program, then enforce it properly:
– Require youth ORCA cards
– Put photos on them like RRFP cards
– Actually support enforcement
Or stop pretending enforcement matters and just make transit fare free for everyone.
Because right now the system feels inconsistent and unfair. Honest riders pay while others game the system, and operators are expected to just smile and keep driving.
Youth ORCA cards automatically convert to adult card when the user turns 18 (or whatever the cutoff age is). Or at least, mine did. Part of the process for getting such a card involves showing the ticket agent proof of birthdate, which gets entered into the system.
Fare ambassadors can’t require people to show their ID (because the state Supreme Court said so) and so they cannot force proof of age. I think the court decision was poorly-thought-out, but we are stuck with it without further legislation.
Is this the State v. Meredith case from 2023? Seems like it was a plurality opinion that was very case-specific and allowing it to eviscerate effective fare enforcement is a serious overreaction to the opinion. If laws and policies need to be clarified to allow effective enforcement, that should be a priority. The fact that public transit is public doesn’t entitle people to be present on its busses or trains unconditionally. Roads are part of the public right of way, but if you start walking down the middle of one on the grounds that is “public property,” you can, and should, be stopped and cited.
As I recall, the Court of Appeals concluded that those who board public transit impliedly consent to the established and posted fare enforcement procedures. I suspect that with some effort this could be a viable vehicle for re-establishing effective fare enforcement. Maybe if Sound Transit went to Olympia and paired its request for more money (via 75-year bonds) with a request for legal changes to beef up enforcement/fare collection, they would be more successful.
I find it frustrating that we seem to have decided to have the worst of all possible worlds.
We’ve kept fares (legally, I’m obligated to pay). We pay for fare enforcement officers / ambassadors. We don’t actually enforce the fares (refuse to show ID? Off the hook!).
What are we doing? If we don’t want to enforce fares, then what are we paying the fare ambassadors for? If we do, then why do we trivially let people off the hook if they refuse to show ID? At the end of the day, we need to decide if we care about enforcment or not.
The ambassadors also educate, answer questions, and are around to help with customer service when service is disrupted.
The primary job of the fare ambassadors as now defined, is to advise and educate.
Frankly, I don’t think that’s a job that should exist. The fact that fares are required is not a secret. This fact is well advertised at the entrance to every station. People don’t need one-on-one “advice” or “education” about their obligation to pay for their train rides.
If we’re going to have fares we should have meaningful enforcement that makes non-payment more expensive than payment in the long run. Same with most other laws; if you’re probably not going to get caught, and the penalty for getting caught is usually just a stern reminder to do better next time, the law is little more than a polite suggestion. There are a lot of impolite people in the world.
I will note that Sound Transit’s 2026 budget includes $28.82 of dedicated tax revenue (and $2.75 of additional federal/state/local grant funding) for every $1.00 of fare revenue. I will also guess that the cost of fare collection and “ambassadors” consumes a fair fraction of this $1.00. There’s therefore plenty of room to argue that abolishing fares simply wouldn’t affect Sound Transit’s budget very much, that the public benefit to doing so would outweigh the opportunity cost in lost fare revenue.
In the meantime if we’re going to require people to pay fares, we should take steps to actually enforce (not “advise” or “educate”) this requirement.
“People don’t need one-on-one “advice” or “education” about their obligation to pay for their train rides.”
Yes, it’s infantilizing and insulting to a rider’s intelligence. In my opinion, the whole fare enforcement system as its currently set up by ST is a truly irrational fear of being seen as the asshole, despite the fact that fare enforcement is both ensuring fare compliance and upholding of the social contract.
Which in turn means a safer ride for everyone . Anyone from a transit agency outside the anglosphere would be facepalming at such a fare enforcement policy that ST currently has. As it’s designed by people who are looking thru a political lens rather than an operational one.
Fare evasion is an issue as old as transit itself. It’s not some new behavior. It’s never going to be at 0 or even 1 percent unless we have a massive number of drones that automatically fling brightly colored paint balls at violators. That of course will never happen.
That said, if there is lax enforcement and paying fares (or registering with a pass) becomes considered as a suggestion, people perceive that even to the point of forgetting to pay (or tap) because no one notices.
So that means two things:
1. It will always be an issue (unless things are completely free).
2. The more “invisible” fare enforcement becomes (barriers and enforcement techniques), the higher the rate will be. The more enforcement and barriers that are created, the lower the rate will be. Different strategies will affect compliance.
Here are some strategies that I think would lower the evasion rate that do not require any enforcement staff:
1. One thing that transit agencies almost never think of is to more regularly notify riders of the consequences of what failure to pay or tap could mean. There are few to no signs or announcements of what consequences are. What’s the highest fine? Can someone be forbidden from riding transit for a period of time? Forgiveness can be granted administratively yet generic notification should sound rather harsh or “worst case”.
2. Any pass needs an expiration date. Every other card that directly transacts money has an expiration date — like credit cards and debit cards. It’s reasonable to implement this. Expiring taps can be given a short grace period warning rather than go instantly out of date..
3. Instant audio and visual recognition (feedback) needs to be created beyond a ding at an Orca reader or farebox. Walking into a paid fare zone without paying has no visible violation recognition. Even if there is no physically locking turnstile, sensors could be installed at the paid fare zones that buzzes if someone doesn’t tap as they enter the vehicle. That would then require even pass holders or free fare riders like youth to tap each time to prevent hearing the buzz. Along with a buzz, a colored light or LED symbol could also be triggered red or green (like a miniature traffic signal).
I see these things are inexpensive ways to reduce (but of course not fully eliminate) fare evasion. They also would then also begin to create a more reliable mega data source to direct where and when fare evasion is the highest — that can then be used to inform managers on how to concentrate their enforcement staff.
“It’s never going to be at 0 or even 1 percent”
It was 3% for many years until covid hit. The disruptions of the pandemic caused a general spike in crime throughout the country that has never been fully explained. The suspension of fares, then the return of fares without enforcement, and societal changes like working from home, and changes in people’s attitudes and habits, all led to the higher non-compliance phenomenon we have now. The availability of hyper-addictive fentanyl also started in 2020 and coincided with the pandemic, so it can be difficult to disentangle what caused what. But with a consistent enforcement policy, the non-compliance rate will probably go down over several years to at least closer to 3%, even if it can’t reach it. And ST is studying fare gates and plans to do a pilot later this year if feasible, so that will be a new factor that hasn’t existed in Pugetopolis before, and we’ll have to see how much it affects the rate.
2. Passes are valid for one day, three days, a week, a month, or a year, depending on the kind of pass. I’m not sure if all these types are currently available: annual passes were probably withdrawn when ORCA started.
3. An invalid-crossing siren like at library entrances is an interesting idea. It might be worth suggesting it to ST. I’m not sure if it’s technically feasible: can the sensor verify a card in a split second? There may be multiple people passing simultaneously. In the library arrangement, it’s a one-person doorway, whereas Link fare-paid lines are multi-person corridors.
I have a year pass, given to me thru DSHS. Many of the homeless and poor (I was both) qualify for the free pass, if they get food stamps or other help from the government. (Fare ambassador could be spreading THAT information, which they don’t seem to currently.) I’m not sure that helps with income, as the state clearly isn’t paying the $900 for that yearly pass, but at least it helps eliminate this current 2-tier system, when a third of the train empties out the second you see fare enforcement enter.
“a third of the train empties out the second you see fare enforcement enter”
I haven’t seen that.
When I was a fare ambassador I, and my colleagues, did tell people when, where and how to get the subsidized annual pass. Some people simply do not want to pay even if they could theoretically go and get a pass.
Also a third of the train does not empty when fare ambassadors get on, maybe one or two people would get off, but that’s it. Hardly as bad or pernicious as you claim. Also, the fare compliance rate for the checks I conducted (PM shift), showed a high 80s to low 90s rate consistently. The lowest I got was in the high 70s during the winter when it was around christmas, where relatively few people are riding for work, etc.
Where are all the “just make it all free” folks today?? Eerily quiet since this this is that crowd’s signature issue..
Happy to chime in!
Come on, folks. Lots of splitting hairs over percentage points going on in the article and the comments. Feels like an obvious solution to our woes could be a suspiciously commie-flavored suggestion. Of course the reason why other countries enjoy robust transit is because they are heavily subsidized by taxation, not to mention they have stronger public safety nets when it comes to healthcare and social services. Why not kill two birds with one stone and fund transit and the causes of “bad behavior” (mental health, homelessness, etc) by unashamedly taxing the rich?
That’s the real fare evasion, comrades. Businesses in Seattle are already opting into employee programs to partially fund ridership for workers so when you think about it, they’re already footing the bill for a fraction of the public. Push ’em further. When our gut instinct is to hunt down the free-riders, we’re left wringing our hands wondering how fare ambassadors are recouping the losses to funding while knowing well that… they aren’t. Their own salaries are becoming another black hole that could offset this funding.
We should have the social willpower to demand that billionaires and corporations pay their fair share proportionate to the average citizen. I don’t want $3 from the gig, office, or trade worker hoofing it across town… I want millions every year from multiple tech and retail giants who keep accounting lawyers on retainer to hide profits or write off taxes through their own “charity” programs.
Cue the “Seattle is hostile to business!” rhetoric. Why AREN’T you hostile to these entities making it less and less affordable to live here? They come here, use our talent pool to generate profits for themselves and themselves alone, and then whine and threaten to leave when we start asking why living in this country is a humiliation ritual of giving all our meager wages to landlords and insurance companies. They’re simply to blame and we could have it so much better.
Sometimes you gotta think like a business bro to answer these tough questions. If a funding vehicle is insufficient (the working class), then it’s time to diversify your portfolio with safer bets (the corporate class).
You’re right that we should soak the rich to fund a robust social safety net, as countries that invest in their citizens have already figured out. But we can’t make the federal and state government do it. It will only happen when a majority of voters elect politicians who will do it. That’s being hindered by structural flaws in the system that give disproportional influence to rural/exurban areas that are against it, and some stare governments that are suppressing votes, redistricting, and closing polling places in nonwhite areas and the remaining ones aren’t transit/walk accessible — to prevent it from happening.
Sound Transit and Metro exist in this political environment. So there’s only so much they can do or that we can do locally.
Mr. Sattele,
I am kind of disappointed in this article because of two things.
First, you failed to include the cost of fare enforcement. How much does the fare ambassador and other collection services cost? How much would it cost to install turnstiles and gated systems? How much would that impede handicapped riders? What about riders with bikes or strollers or luggage?
Next, this line stood out to me “Over the course of the 50 year ST3 program, that represents roughly $1.5 billion”. Fifty years! Is there any other program that we look at costs on the century scale? Did you factor in anticipated inflation? Maintenance and replacement costs? Land use costs? This was clearly designed as a scare quote to come up with a big number no matter how ridiculous it was.
I believe you can do better.
Mr. Litchfield,
Fare enforcement costs are a complicated subject, and the scope of this article focused on fare evasion rates and whether it’s possible to disentangle fare non-payment due to various policies allowing certain riders to ride freely from non-payment due to non-compliance.
If bus operators are asked to resume enforcing fare as they (generally) were pre-pandemic, does their pay count as fare enforcement cost? What about costs (fixed and/or incremental) to collect fares at all? The blog is all-volunteer; we’d be happy to consider a story reviewing fare enforcement strategies and costs.
Sound Transit has cited reduced fare revenue as a contributing factor to its current financial difficulties. Nick’s $1.5 billion estimate ($30M for 50 years) is a rough estimate that likely significantly underestimates the total. In 2021, Sound Transit’s Long Range Financial Plan estimated $8.3B in fare revenue from 2017-2046 (https://www.soundtransit.org/st_sharepoint/download/sites/PRDA/FinalRecords/2021/2022%20Financial%20Plan%20Proposed%20Budget%20Book.pdf). Last fall (2025), ST’s updated fare revenue estimate from 2017-2046 dropped to $5.2B. That’s a difference of $3.1B.
We are in violent agreement here. I am not convinced the fare enforcement/farebox recovery system in place does much more than cover the costs of design and implementation at the cost of needless complexity and additional friction. My understanding is that the fares don’t cover the cost of the trip anyway, so we are chasing people for the fractional cost of a service that they likely need to get to work or school. There are legitimate safety reasons for some kind of security presence on trains but fare enforcement isn’t it. If ST’s planners were that concerned, why no fare gates in the first place? Has no one there ridden a big city rail network? Paris’s Métro? The myriad of lines in Tokyo, all interoperable and largely profitable at fares that are dwarfed by what we pay?
“First, you failed to include the cost of fare enforcement. How much does the fare ambassador and other collection services cost? How much would it cost to install turnstiles and gated systems? How much would that impede handicapped riders? What about riders with bikes or strollers or luggage?”
Government audits are technically non-essential like fare enforcement. Their cost is incurred to assure that things are legal and fair more so than it is to recover lost revenue. Fare enforcement has a similar objective.
We have a virtual “gated” system now. ST put in yellow rubber tiles with domes to define where the virtual gates are. Installing other obstacles to encourage higher fare compliance is a tradeoff — but the tradeoff is more related to fairness and awareness as opposed to revenue.
Any gate or turnstile approach is required by law to accommodate wheelchair users and other things. That’s not debatable. Most rail systems have made satisfactory adjustments since the rules were codified over 30 years ago following ADA becoming law. Vendors also know it’s the law and will not even offer systems that can’t comply. Fare collection equipment is a mature marketplace that meets Federal accessibility rules..
There are lots of design options between mere yellow tiles at Orca readers and a full blown locking turnstiles. There’s a wide variety of equipment that can be introduced to address fare compliance.
I’m not sure it’s valid to look at fare enforcement solely through the lens of cost. Traffic enforcement or parking enforcement for example do not exist only for the purpose of generating revenue.
Traffic enforcement or parking enforcement for example do not exist only for the purpose of generating revenue.
No, but fares by their very nature are designed to raise revenue. There is no other purpose. You would never have a fare system that loses money. In contrast it is quite reasonable to have traffic or parking enforcement lose money.
I agree that adopting a fare system that actually loses money would be a non-starter, but I also agree that there are other purposes than pure revenue generation. For example, I think that an effective fare collection system builds political support for transit in general. In contrast, the situation we have now—where fares are, in practice, nothing more than voluntary donations—undermines public support because both taxpayers and those who do pay fares believe that others aren’t paying their fair share and they resent it.
@Ross Bleakney
From my perspective the primary of purpose of raising revenue through fares is to cover a portion of operating costs and thus run more service. In any case though, the reality is that we have fares and in a world where we require fares we should enforce fare payment to a reasonable extent. Fare enforcement doesn’t have to be overly punitive but it should absolutely be the norm to pay the fare.
There are quite a lot of social norms that are individually tiny but collectively make public life more functional and trustworthy. A classic example would be returning your shopping cart. Others might be standing in line, or on the right side of the escalator. The transit system isn’t going to collapse if there is no fare enforcement, but public trust and the perception of fairness (while squishier than fare revenue) are also important considerations
In my opinion, fares are not necessary except for the purpose of gatekeeping transit from criminals and freeloaders… Who tend to not pay and not respect the ground rules of a public space.
For low income, we have options for them. I also think more employers should sponsor annual passes.
But, I think everyone should care about the safety and order in our public spaces. They’re not private spaces. People should be held to a standard in these shared spaces funded by taxpayer dollars.
Fare ambassadors are out in force at Westlake now. 4+ agents are in the space in front of the readers at the top if the platform escalators on the west side. I glimpsed one from afar at the east side.
Three King County sheriff’s got on the 2 Line. At Pioneer Square they got off and tow security guards got on (yellow vests “Transit Safety”. They explored the car, then one of them radioed something in, then they came together and got to talking. It sounded like they were looking for a particular person but they weren’t in the car.
Now ar South Bellevue station, another security guard is roving around.
This is my third time going to Bellevue since Crosslake started.
Four security guards now seen at South Bellevue.
Yeah, I’ve frequently seen security guards on the 2 Line as well. But they’ve never bothered checking my fare.
Guards don’t check fare. Only Fare Ambassadors do.
Any particular reason or are these just your observations?
I’m only reporting my experiences. I’ve seen fare ambassadors at the Roosevelt Station entrance several times. Today I saw them at Westlake. Somebody said it’s a program of “human fare gates”. It seems to be ramping up.
In the past, fare ambassadors mainly roved the trains and buses, getting in at one stop and getting off a couple stops later to wait for the next one. Then we started seeing them on platforms inside the fare-paid area. Now we’re seeing them at station entrances before the ORCA readers, and they’re a force if three people surrounding the open space. So this is a third tactic
Besides the missed fares, this also allows certain elements of our society to ride for free when they wouldn’t be able to enter the station otherwise. The people defecating in the stairwells, urinating in the elevators, littering all over the stations, spitting on the platforms, smoking god knows what in the corners, etc… those people are not paying the fares. Everyone who pays feels like a sucker. This is why we can’t have nice things.
But they identify as youth! Don’t you dare ID them either.
I made a conscious decision to stop paying my fare.
Ever since the report came out last month that 30 officers issued only 8 citations last year, I gave up on being a responsible payer. That was not only a slap in the face to law-abiding riders but clear evidence there’s very little accountability & effective leadership at Metro and the county level. It can be clearly seen on Metro buses.
Did you know Metro, officially, prohibited all-door fare payment? Metro never said was okay. But since COVID, bad behavior has gotten so out of control, rider patterns are now acceptable to Metro drivers.
I was paying $108 a month, out-of-pocket for a pass only to see that Metro clearly does not care. Nor should I.
So you’re an anti social jerk, got it. Just because people do things that are bad doesn’t give you justification to also do those bad things. You are the problem.
I do not think the problem is people who treat fare payment as more of a suggestion than a rule. I think the problem is people who have created a system that functions in exactly that way. The unwillingness to enforce rules can have pernicious and toxic effects that go well beyond individual instances of rule breaking. It eats away the ties that bind.
@D M …I’m not the problem. The true problem is in leadership that doesn’t remove people who assault others or defecate on transit property. I’m a fed up l, tax-paying citizen who has grown up in this city only to see irresponsibility and non-leadership invade the very systems I rely on daily. You blaming me as being “part of the problem” shows how shortsighted some Seatlelittes are.
If you want people to pay fares, you have a responsibility to do so yourself. You are part of the irresponsibility and non-leadership you are attempting to critique, and open flaunting paying your fare because enforcement policy isn’t sufficiently punitive for your tastes is wack.
There were people who wouldn’t pay taxes because of Vietnam. That deprives the government of money for infrastructure, food inspections, support for the poor, etc.
@blumdrew… The responsibility of leadership at Metro & KC to actually give a f##k is greater than my $108 a month. When leaders start actually doing something about our obviously broken system, then I’ll reciprocate my “responsibility”. I have paid the full fare out-of-pocket all of my life and without complaint until that report came out. If you think I – someone who rides quietly, doesn’t litter or defecate on buses, deface property, gives up seats for other riders – am a part of the problem, you have a backwards mindset.
Nice going, absolving yourself of any societal responsibility and placing blame elsewhere. You are the problem and this attitude genuinely disgusts me. How selfish.
I can make no judgement about who you are other than what you are saying in these comments. I don’t doubt that you are a quiet, respectful, and generally thoughtful rider. But that doesn’t mean it’s not wack to stop paying your fare because you read a report that no one else is either. If the report said 50% of riders refuse to give their seats up for elderly, would that have changed your stance on that?
My mindset is simply that if you want the world to be a better place, you have a responsibility to live your life in accordance with that vision. You are implying that paying a fare is something people should do, but you are not doing this to send some sort of message of frustration to Metro/Sound Transit management. I’d nudge you to say that isn’t really the most effective way to send that message, and I personally find your stance to be morally confusing. I’m not saying you’re the part of any specific problem, just that openly declaring you won’t pay your fare because other people aren’t doing it isn’t a particularly compelling thing to say.
The actions of others does not absolve oneself of civic duty. STB does not support this form of civil disobedience. Consider this reply thread closed.
We recently had visitors in from the DC area who are daily Metro commuters (as I was when I lived there myself).
They couldn’t believe that we have an optional, openly-flouted fare system here. They even reported that someone official at U District station (not clear if security, ambassador or what) responded to them asking how to pay with “don’t bother, no one else does.”
Go to a Mariners game on a Friday and count how many people pay to enter Stadium station after the game. 5%?
I don’t have any issue with someone choosing not to pay at this point, because the system as currently implemented just makes you a sucker for doing so. Fix the system and make everyone pay, or make it all free. Better to have the dedicated miscreants forced to visibly jump over the turnstile, or just give up the revenue, than to build this widespread culture of “only suckers pay for their ride”.
“this widespread culture of “only suckers pay for their ride”.”
That culture is less widespread than you claim.
@Mike Orr…. but wider than it has ever been before. And that’s the problem… and it’s being perpetuated by Metro istself
All-door entry officially started a month or two ago. Metro finished installing rear ORCA readers on most buses a year or two before that, and if the driver opened the rear door for you, you could tap there. On practice it was half and half whether they would open the door for you. Or if somebody was exiting you could enter there. There was never any prohibition against entering and tapping in the rear that I heard of.
I ride the same bus from the train everyday, and yet on one of the bigger stops the bus makes the same people run to the back door and get on not paying. They know what they are doing, its aggravating to watch it happen 5 days a week, i have to pay to ride and they should too
This is kind of beside the point, but I hate that the sign on the front of the bus takes a few seconds to say “Fares required”. I would like to be able to tell what route a bus is at a glance, instead of half the time having to stare at the sign for a few seconds until it does show the route.
The sign should show the route number or letter, and the destination. Nothing else.
It made sense as a temporary measure to make people aware that the policy had changed. But it has worn out its welcome.
These non-destination messages seem to have started during covid. First “Essential Trips Only”, then “Masks Required”, then “Fares Required”, then “Go Seahawks”, and now back to “Fares Required”.
A discussion on fare evasion isn’t complete without a discussion of the penalties involved.
It apparently just a $20 fine and no permanent record if you get caught and pay within 90 days. And you can appeal that!
Compare that to $65 if your parking meter expires and you get caught.
If that’s the worst thing that can happen, why even pay a fare?
The Metro info is here:
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/fares-and-payment/violations#toc-within-90-days
Previously it was $124, because that’s the lowest the courts would enforce. It was such a huge jump from 2nd warning to $124 that people felt it was unfair. You could get it lowered if you went to the court when the case came up and argue in your defense, but in practice many people couldn’t do that because the court was in Shoreline and the time was during the workday. This caught up people who usually tap but forgot this time, and even if they had a monthly pass, including people on this blog and a famous pro-transit news reporter. Then there were concerns the fare inspectors were racially profiling even if they didn’t intend to. So the agencies scrapped that system and came up with this new one.
A poll of local transit users, especially Link and RapidRide riders. How many times in the last, oh, ten years, have you had your fare checked by Fare Ambassadors/Fare Enforcement Officers?
I believe I have been checked just once, about 8 to 10 years ago on the B Line.
I’ve been riding the 2 line most weekdays since it opened. Call it 50 trips between Bellevue and Westlake. I’ve seen ‘fare ambassadors’ once or twice and never seen anyone have their fare checked, let alone been checked myself. Meanwhile, I’ve seen people stream past the card readers without tapping.
I don’t know what percentage of rides needs to be checked to make proof of payment effective, but I’m quite sure it isn’t 0%.
I’ve been checked a few times this year.
I’ve had about 5, maybe 6 fare checks since moving to Seattle in October 2025, all of which came during the fall (including 3 fare checks in the span of a week riding the 36 on S Jackson late at night – in November I think). I had one fare check on Link, between SODO and Beacon Hill in December.
Lately, I’ve seen fare ambassadors on Link but they haven’t actually checked anyone’s fare. Which even as someone who isn’t too keen on punitive fare policies seems weird and stupid – what’s the point of hiring people to vaguely say that fares are probably required? If you’re going to have a fare checker, have them check fares. On the bus, I’ve seen the same people (or same uniforms at least) get on for a few stops and make some notes in the notebooks but haven’t seen any actually fare enforcement since late last year.
A few weeks ago, I linked to a video (LA Metro is a Front Row Seat to LA’s Biggest Problems, by Nimesh in Los Angeles), and he noted that in early 2018, Metro security officers checked about 300K cards every month to ensure riders were paying the fare. During covid, fares were suspended. After the pandemic, they brought the fares back, but didn’t bring back the fare checks. According to the video, today, LA Metro only does about 164 fare checks per day system wide. About half of riders don’t pay the fare. Nimesh then asked his guest, “Do they not have enough staff?” The guest said, “This is the crazy part. Metro actually has more staff than before the pandemic, but they now do only 2% as many fare checks.”
His guest was YouTuber Alex Davis, who has two videos I want to share in the future, unless a STB blogger wants to include it as a future post video. One video is called How LA Metro Accidentally Made Itself Free. And the other video is Three Urbanist Lessons from the Netherlands.
Added to the list to review.
I’ve seen that video floating around my homepage, but haven’t given it a watch yet. I’ve liked some of Alex Davis’ stuff in the past though.
And I have issues with fare policy, and would prefer fare-free transit for a lot of reasons. But it seems like the worst of all possible worlds to have fare inspectors, to put them on transit, but then for them to not check fares. If we are going to have fares, and we are going to enforce those fares, we should do that. If we aren’t going to have fares, we should do that. But yeah this sort of half-way half-measure is bad for riders and makes the agencies look inept.
A decade ago, I got checked about 10-15 percent of the time on Link.
It’s been months since I’ve been checked this year. I’m not riding Link nearly as much as I used to so I can’t reasonably compare. But it does feel like fare checking has become almost non-existent.
I don’t get all these people claiming no one is checking.
Am I just unlucky? I’ve been checked several times and I don’t even ride Link often.
Now, on the bus, nope. Hardly anyone checks.
I think it’s more that they’re fare checking on longer stretches of the line, especially south of CID. I think I’ve only been checked inside the DSTT twice in my life.
The DSTT is difficult to check in for a variety of reasons. The first is just that it’s really short, so you only have 5 minutes to check. You can get through maybe one pretty lightly loaded car but odds are you’re switching LRVs at Capitol Hill. The second is that signal is really bad in the DSTT/Capitol Hill segment. I’m sure if you’ve used your phone you’ll have noticed that too. The fare inspectors are no less immune than everyone else in that scenario, so checks can take longer per person. Your odds of being checked in DSTT are pretty low unless you’re in the first car. When I was working that job I always tried to switch it up so that it was more random/even for what car I would start with.
DSTT is exactly where we need most of the checking… Lol
All this fare checking and security is doing is going after the low crime areas. Not at all helpful. Their job isn’t supposed to be easy.
Stupid question: If fare ambassadors can’t require anyone to show an ID card, why can bouncers? Bouncers aren’t even public employees.
Or store clerk to buy alcohol for that matter
Bouncers restrict access to private property. Public transit is public property, and they can’t assume all members of the public always have government ID.
I mean, it’s not difficult to obtain an ID card in WA state and not expensive to obtain one either. So this argument is pretty shaky in my opinion.
What about non-residents? There are a lot of issues with a hard requirement to carry ID: https://papersplease.org/wp/the-issue/
Not expensive? In every other state I’ve been to, an ID is $16. Now think about if you’re homeless and have to find money to get a $50 id. It’s almost impossible and when I moved here I was homeless. There’s only one charity that pays for IDs and it’s actually really hard to get hold of cuz they’re only open once a week.
Bouncers are required by state law to check IDs to ensure nobody under 21 enters a club that serves alcohol. Otherwise they wouldn’t do it.
It’s such a waste of money and resources to do fare enforcement. They can’t force people to ID, don’t have arresting powers, and are easily evaded- you see them get on, you just get off and catch the next train or bus. They can’t stop you- so what is the point of paying people to do this? And worse, even if you do issue a citation, they’re unlikely to pay it. The admin costs alone for citations likely exceed the value of the citation, if it even gets paid- and if it’s a person too poor to afford $3 to ride, they are unlikely to be able to pay any fine you give.
Just make transit free to all riders and invest the money you would have wasted on trying to chase down $3 into better security so that you don’t have as many violent incidents.
Fare gates + security at each station and near each fare gate sounds better.
Why aren’t fares enforced at stadium Station?
I think the bus system needs to remember that it’s a business. Businesses need to make money. I don’t understand why they can’t check IDs of youth- at least a school id. It doesn’t make sense to me. However, if they can’t check IDs then they should make the cards look noticably different from adult cards. That way there’s no confusion. My son is on ssi and when he was underage, they gave him both an SSI card(it’s free bc disability) and a youth card. The guy that signed us up for our cards told me straight out what’s stopping me from using the SSI card until he turned 19. So I did, bc I’m also disabled and just waiting on social security to make a decision. But no one ever checked that it wasn’t my card. I’ve never gotten in the bus without tapping a card or paying with cash or using a ticket from a charity. But also, no one ever checks anyone. I could ride free every day and no one would say anything, but I was raised not to steal. I have never seen a transit system this lax in fare enforcement, and I’ve lived in a lot of places.
“the bus system needs to remember that it’s a business. Businesses need to make money.”
It’s not a business; it’s a public service. Its purpose is to provide transit because a city needs non-car mobility. The reason transit is public is the private companies that provided it in the early 20th century couldn’t make it profitable long-term, and over time they would just put transit in the most lucrative corridors peak hours instead of where all it’s needed.
So Metro should do something to keep the public service fully functional, and safe for the other riders on the bus, and to reach the arbitrary farebox-recovery target the County Council has set it at. But it should not be mistaken for a business or expected to make a profit. The reason it exists is transit is essential in a city, not to line investors’ pockets as the only factor.
Yes that’s right. Transit is a public service — like streets and parks are.
I think there has been revisionist history promoted by anti-transit people about why transit was originally private.
The history of urban rail transit was directly linked to promoting development of new neighborhoods. Building a streetcar to your new development increased the market value of those homes. However, once the homes were fully sold, that developer no longer cared much about its operation. Many systems deteriorated. It’s just that electric vehicles and the rails they operate on have really long life spans. So unlike street pavement which can last 20-30 years without major rehab, rails can last several more decades.
While there are niche examples around the world of how transit can be completely for-profit, most of the systems around the world today have an additional dedicated funding source besides just fares.
Even US freight railroads would be hard to stay for-profit if it wasn’t for the financial incentives that let them acquire property and build rails that have such long life spans. You don’t hear about these companies expanding their systems by adding hundreds of miles of new tracks across new land, partly because land today is more privately owned than it was 150 years ago.
Similarly, for-profit airlines and bus companies benefit from government investments in facility construction and maintenance so that these modes rely on public money for each system to be financially viable.
Gates work when employees do not. cheaper. don’t ask for benefits. don’t go on strike. build the damn fare gates
I am a #7 rider. This is one of the worse lines in the city. People get on , don’t pay, do drugs( hard core stuff) crowd the front cause they’re afraid to farther than the second door, relieve them selves ( sometimes with “help”)
I’ve seen multitude of drivers let on those from their home country on for free but harass others for not paying. Fighting, either and without weapons. And yes, all in front of little kids.
The southern routes need more support of all kinds.
Great article – thanks for bringing attention to what I think is an important topic.
I find the fare evasion data that Metro and ST provide hard to believe based off what I see in real time. I’ve been a regular E Line rider for about five years, and I’ve never seen any kind of fare enforcement on the bus. From my observation, less than half the people riding pay (excluding people that look younger than 18). Notably, I find it to be different on local routes where most passengers board at the front – the large majority of people are paying.
I ride light rail a little less frequently, but have only had my fare checked by a fare ambassador two times in the last 5+ years. One time, I was riding with a friend who makes a point to not pay, since there’s no enforcement. Even though he had his Orca card on him, the FA could not accept payment on board. My friend refused to show his ID, so no fare was collected. This is an absurd scenario that shouldn’t happen.
Overall, while the number of people paying, from my observation, looks to have improved on Link – it still looks to be less than 50%. During large crowds (big concerts, UW graduation), I hardly see anyone pay.
Why are fares not checked at the station/platform – why do FAs not stand next to the Orca card readers to demonstrate there’s a consequence for not paying? Why does Metro not check fares at busy RR stations?
It also seems absurd that youth Orca cards can’t be distributed – this is a common practice in other transit agencies across the US. I had a youth card where I grew up on the east coast – obtained it easily from a guidance counselor at school – and was able to ride the train and bus affordably.
As someone who rides transit everyday the fares required sign is just for public relations. I would say half the people don’t pay which is wild cause where I’m from everyone pays.
I don’t blame the drivers for not enforcing the fare though not worth getting killed over a 3 dollar fare plus If an argument happens they would fall behind schedule they got a schedule to keep also.
The amount of entitled people in this city is just hilarious. The fare helps pay for the diesel fuel. If people are not paying transit ends up with a budget shortfall then guess what happens? Taxes are raised to cover the shortfall and the cost of living goes up even more. The reason why it is expensive to live here is you have half the city supporting a large number of people that refuse to work. If people are low income you can apply for free or reduced fare depending on your situation but there are a large number of people that are too lazy to even apply for assistance lol. Can’t save everyone I guess 😂
Fare evasion remains high IMO. I worked at a local transit agency for many years reporting on this, and the “farebox recovery” (FBR) slid each year, and the wide variance-from 70%+ for vanpool to 4% for rural routes, was largely hidden by the agency’s overall rate, which lumped them all together. Important to this is that the nominator, fares, were gross, not net, fares. Management was not interested in getting this reported, only in making it more difficult to separate it by type of service via, for example, introduction of “dummy” fareboxes, i.e., those that don’t have the capability to tabulate what was put into them. For BRT, their unique expenses could have been, but were never factored in: ticket vending machines (purchase, servicing, reprogramming for fare changes, security service to pick up funds, counting and depositing those revenues), ORCA machines, unique station elements, fare checkers. FBR for these services had fell to 10% just after COVID (2022) and without subtracting expenses. When it gets that low, the wisdom of collecting fares becomes questionable. Conversely, where it’s possible and practical to improve this, such as ST considering putting fare gates at certain locations, duh, it’s a logical change to make.