From fare changes to boosted bus service, here’s what to expect from Metro this year

The Metro Board approved a set of changes on Thursday that will bring the return of some rail service as well as enhance a network of fairly-frequent bus routes. The changes, which will begin going into effect as early as this summer, move the agency in the direction of providing more, all-day service to riders, rather than focusing on the morning and evening peak “rush hour” periods.

The Board has been grappling with how to end pandemic-related service cuts, what post-pandemic ridership might look like, and what service and fares should look like in the future. Questions of travel trends (Will people still commute? What will “rush hour” look like? What about weekends?) have combined with questions of equity (Who is, and who should public transit be serving? How and who do free fares benefit the most?) and this initial set of initiatives is Metro’s attempt to address those questions.

Pandemic ridership changes have led the Board to think more about providing all-day bus and rail service, rather than focusing on the peaks.

Ridership on both bus and rail are still significantly down compared to before the pandemic, and hourly usage has been much more consistent than before. Workers with “typical” 9-5 jobs and more ability to telework than those more reliant on transit have exercised their options to work from home, hop into their cars, or otherwise commute without Metro and have yet to come back in full force, and it appears that Metro staff have spotted an opportunity to update some of the system’s philosophies.

So, what’s happening first?

WMATA’s first step was restoring some bus service on June 6. As part of Metro’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget, the agency restored some service on 60 routes; the agency says it’s now operating 85% of bus service that existed before the pandemic.

These already-approved changes extend bus service on 34 lines to (or back to) 2am, and include some weekend service restoration as well. In addition, Fairfax Connector is taking over five Metrobus routes — the 3T, 15K, 3A, 29C, and 29W — beginning July 10.

As part of the new changes approved last week, the Metrorail system is adding back one hour of service. The system will close at midnight all days of the week, an hour later than its previous 11 pm closing time.

…and in the fall?

Labor Day is when most of the changes go into effect.

On the rail side, peak rush-hour service (5-9:30 am and 3-7 pm) will be increased on all lines. Trains will arrive every 10 minutes, not 12, except on the Red Line, where they will come every five, not six minutes.

Train service will be extended later in the evenings to 1 am on Fridays and Saturdays, and late-night frequencies will be bumped up. Trains will run every 15 instead of every 20 minutes in the evenings after 7 pm. Metro says they expect all trains will be the longest ones available and not the shorter six-car trains, continuing what we’ve seen during the pandemic.

On weekends, trains will run every 12 minutes on both Saturdays and Sundays (before the pandemic, trains ran every 15 minutes on Sundays). The agency will be offering a $2 flat weekend fare for the first time, so you won’t be paying more (up to $3.85) if you take a longer trip.

For those who transfer from rail to buses, the bus trip essentially will be free. The $2 bus fare will be “included” in the rail fare (and vice versa), so using both systems together should be a bit more seamless. A 30-day discounted fare promotion in September is also expected to be offered, temporarily dropping the cost of monthly and one, three, and seven-day passes.

But the bulk of updates are to bus service. Metro staff centered the updates around two sets of bus lines to provide more robust bus service than what has been available before. The “12-Minute Network” is an attempt by the agency to provide a set of bus routes which they call “frequent,” and provide enhancements to others so service could be considered “consistent.”

The 36 routes in this network — 20 of which will run at 12-minute frequencies, and another 16 at 20-minute intervals — will span at least the hours of 7am to 9pm if not more, and Metro says the increases have the potential to benefit 60% of bus riders.

A number of the routes in this 12/20-minute network ran frequently before the pandemic - the X2 already runs every 10-12 minutes during the day, for example - so this announcement solidifies service on some routes while expanding it on others.

On top of the 12/20-minute network service changes, Metro says 46 other routes will have “service restored or improved.” But this isn’t across the board — some routes will remain suspended and others will continue to run less often than before the pandemic.

Longer term

Metro staff want the Board to think about the agency’s longer-term future too. Items proposed by staff for consideration include revisiting bus route structures (where buses go, which corridors Metrobus focuses on vs local jurisdiction bus providers), fare capping, low-income fare discounts, and what “substantial service increases” could look like if Metro were to receive additional funding.

Meanwhile, Metro will have to keep an eye on its budget as riders return; the agency avoided the worst this year thanks to federal funding, but staff expect they’ll need to grapple with a budget hole in the future. While the agency was able to use federal relief funding to plug budget gaps in its Fiscal Year 2021, 2022, and 2023 budgets, its current forecasts expect to have to come up with an extra $217 million for 2024.