A six-month test starting in February will gauge the effects of letting cash-paying rail riders switch to buses for free.
The vast majority of riders use a Q card, day pass or some other form of Metro payment. Transfers with those items are free, provided subsequent trips are along the system and not just a reverse of the current trip. That prevents a rider from making a round trip on one fare, officials said.
About 10 percent of riders use cash, and about 4 percent use cash and transfer, according to Metro. The cash trips don’t include a free transfer because Metro eliminated a way to track transfers when it moved to the Q card in 2008.
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A lack of convenient transfers is especially cumbersome for rail users who don’t use Q cards. Riders who pay with cash or a credit card receive a paper ticket. During the pilot, those tickets will be good for bus trips within three hours after the ticket was purchased.
As part of the pilot program, bus drivers will have day pass cards to give to riders, which they can load with money on board the bus.
“Fundamentally, I think this solves our biggest problem,” said Metro board member Christof Spieler.
The details are a bit unclear in this story, but the basic idea is that if you transfer from a rail line to a bus on the same trip you don’t have to pay a second fare, regardless of how you paid for your initial trip. This is how it should be, and how it was before the David Wolff/Frank Wilson Metro team undid it. This is one of many things Metro is doing to boost ridership, with rail expansion and bus route reimagining being high on the list. Honestly, just the fact that Metro is doing a better job engaging with the community – you know, the people that actually ride the buses and trains – is a big step forward. I hope it translates into better numbers, but whatever it does, this needed to happen.