Virginia considers free or reduced fares for local transit agencies

The costs of public transit can hinder people’s access to jobs, health appointments, and everyday errands. In Virginia, local agencies may soon get the state’s support to try lowering or eliminating fares to ensure that costs aren’t a burden on riders’ daily lives.

As part of a major transportation proposal from Governor Ralph Northam, transit agencies could choose to run pilot programs to remove transit fares entirely, or offer reduced fares for low-income residents. The $6.3 million proposal is included in HB1414 and SB890, the bills introduced by House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, respectively. And though it’s mentioned only three times in the bills, the “Transit Incentive Program” proposal could go a long way to boost ridership and provide more equitable access to transit in Virginia.

“Transit is about moving people and making connections. Unfortunately, the cost of transit trips can be a barrier to education, health care, and jobs for many low-income Virginians,” said Jennifer Mitchell, director of Virginia’s Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

How the program could work

If passed, the bills would fund experiments at transit agencies across the Commonwealth and permit a wide variety of reduced- and free-fare programs.

One approach could be to offer subsidized or fully free transit passes to low-income populations or those who receive some form of government assistance. Another would be to eliminate fares along high-capacity corridors with high transit demand, such as the Pulse BRT line in Richmond. Lastly, agencies could eliminate transit fares for everyone if they assert that the cost and hassle of fare collection outweighs the revenue that routes bring in.

All demonstration projects will be evaluated based on their impact on regional mobility and access to jobs and healthcare.

A boost for workers

To Lisa Guthrie, executive director of the Virginia Transit Association, the Transit Incentive Program represents a natural next step in the Commonwealth’s dogged determination to remain the number one state for business while also beginning to tackle its status as the worst state for workers.

“Virginia recognizes the importance of investment in our workforce and offers programs that focus on job training and skill development,” Guthrie said. “We all agree that we want Virginia to attract industry and create jobs, yet we have been slow to identify and implement remedies to eliminate the top barrier to obtaining and retaining a job: transportation.”

A recent MIT analysis of a low-income reduced-fare program in Boston supports the case that these efforts help people with low incomes. A team of professors and graduate students recruited SNAP (food stamp) recipients to study their transit habits. Participants were randomly assigned regular pre-loaded fare cards or fare cards that provided their users with a 50% discount on all of their trips.

Researchers found that regardless of which card they received, low-income riders took more trips to access health care and social services than the average transit passenger. They were also far more likely to ride at off-peak hours, take bus instead of rail, and need more transfers to get to their destination. Lastly, low-income riders who received a subsidy toward their fares took about 30% more trips on transit than the average Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority passenger.

Fare-free programs sprout up across the US

The fare-free transit movement is rather new to the United States, aside from many smaller cities and university towns that have offered some form of free transit for decades. Now, though, the push is making its way into larger and larger American municipalities. (In Europe, for comparison, no-tariff transit is rather common, with over 100 cities and towns across the continent providing some level of free public transportation.)

Olympia, Washington, and Kansas City both represented the largest US cities to kill their collection programs when they went fare-free this year, and now the idea has entered the political discourse of a much larger city: Boston. Shortly after the MBTA announced its fourth planned fare hike in a decade, city councilor and anticipated mayoral candidate Michelle Wu penned an op-ed asserting her belief that the agency shouldn’t be charging people to ride Boston’s trains and buses at all.

“Raising the cost of public transit would burden residents who can least afford transportation alternatives and punish commuters who are doing the most to ease traffic and improve air quality. But the heaviest cost is that focusing on whether to raise or maintain fares distracts from what should be our larger goal: free public transportation,” Wu argued. “We need bold proposals to make public transit the most reliable, convenient, and affordable transportation option.”

Two recent experiments with fare-free transit increased ridership by 24% in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and by 57% in Montgomery County, Maryland. If the projects made possible by Virginia’s proposal can replicate such successes, then cities such as Richmond and Virginia Beach—which rank among the 100 worst localities for both transit funding and asthma—may have a chance of improving their air quality as well as regional mobility.

Not everyone is on board

One of the largest obstacles to free-fare transit—and a cause of concern for detractors of the programs—is the question of who will pay for it.

In Boston, for instance, bus fare revenues totaled $109 million last year, acccording to the New York Times. “Boston has the highest-paid bus drivers in the country. They’re not going to work for free. The fuelers, the mechanics—they’re not going to work for free,” Brian Kane, deputy director of the MBTA Advisory Board, told the Times last month. Advocates for free public transportation say that figure is artificially inflated, in part by the high cost of collecting fares, and argue that the true bill is closer to $36 million, a sum that could be covered by a two-cent add-on to the gas tax or private philanthropy.

Other detractors argue that money spent on reduced-fare and fare-free transit could be better spent increasing the reliability and frequency of transit networks more generally. By strategically investing in their transportation systems, places like Seattle have ushered in huge gains in ridership simply by ramping up access to frequent transit. The estimated $10 million it would take to provide all Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC) routes for free would indeed prove revolutionary for the system if it were instead invested in boosting coverage and frequency.

In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty, spending the ~$10M it would take to make GRTC fare-free would be such a bad use of money.

— Ross Catrow (@RossCatrow) December 6, 2019

Could it work in the Commonwealth?

Thanks to the backing of the bills’ powerful patrons, the governor’s transportation plan has so far sped through the requisite committees and hearings. If the full General Assembly passes Northam’s proposal, a new era for transit in Virginia may be on the horizon. For longtime public transportation enthusiasts like Guthrie, who got her start in environmental advocacy, these proposals are some of the most exciting legislation she’s seen in years.

“Governor Northam’s biennial budget and omnibus transportation bills are the first initiatives in Virginia to eliminate access barriers by creating programs that will pilot free and reduced transit and vanpooling fares and get Virginians to work without adding more traffic congestion and exhaust emissions,” said Guthrie. “Regardless of geographic, political, age, gender, race, or class distinctions, we all benefit from transit even if we don’t all ride transit.”