Our bus fares aren’t that cheap (if you transfer)
Photo by Payton Chung on Flickr.
WMATA is considering raising bus fares, with the justification that they’re lower than in other cities. But somehow every time this topic comes up, people forget that there’s a big difference between our bus fares and other cities’: riders transferring between bus and rail pay a lot more.
The agency recently put out a survey which, among other things, asked riders what they thought about various options for a fare increase. For Metrobus, the survey asked about raising the bus fare from the current $1.60 to $1.75 or $1.85:
METROBUS
Passenger fares cover about 30 cents out of every dollar of the cost of providing Metrobus service. The current Metrobus fare is $1.60 for SmarTrip® and $1.80 for cash. Metrobus fares are relatively low compared to other major metropolitan areas around the country:
STANDARD BUS FARES:
San Francisco & Chicago $2.00 Philadelphia $2.25 New York City & Atlanta $2.50
That makes it look like our bus fares are relatively cheap, right? Maybe compared to those cities if you’re just riding the bus. But a lot of people don’t just ride the bus. They take a bus from home to a Metrorail station and then ride the train, and back again in the evening. Or a bus to a train to another bus.
Many buses, in fact, don’t go downtown at all. They end at a Metrorail station. When Metro opened, the agency cut back many of the buses so they just fed the rail system. The same is going to happen around Tysons when the Silver Line opens (or even before).
Therefore, to really compare fares, we have to look at the fares for a rail and bus trip. Since our rail system has variable fares, it’s more complex to compute the bus-to-rail fare, so for simplicity let’s look at the rail-to-bus fare, assuming you’ve already paid for a rail trip from some other location.
City & Agency | Bus fare (w/card)1 | Bus fare after rail | Bus fare after other rail | Rail+bus pass? | Inter-agency rail+bus pass? |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Washington (WMATA) | $1.60 | $1.10 | Full fare from MARC/VRE | No | Yes |
Philadelphia (SEPTA) | $2.25 | $1.00 | $1.65 from PATCO2 | Yes | No |
Los Angeles (LACMTA) | $1.50 | 35¢/$1.503 | No other rail | Yes | No |
Chicago (CTA) | $2.00 | 25¢ | Full fare from Metra | Yes | Yes |
New York (NYCT) | $2.504 | FREE | Full fare | Yes | No |
Atlanta (MARTA) | $2.50 | FREE | No other rail | Yes | N/A |
San Francisco (MUNI) | $2.00 | FREE | $1.75 from BART | Yes | Yes |
Boston (MBTA) | $1.50 | FREE | Full fare from commuter rail | Yes |
1 All fare calculations assume you have the electronic fare media for that city. Most agencies offer better fares for people with the card (SmartTrip in Washington, MetroCard in NYC, Clipper in SF, Breeze in Atlanta, etc.)
2 Riders transferring from PATCO to select city train and bus lines can buy a round-trip ticket for $3.10, for an effective per-direction fare of $1.65.
3 Los Angeles offers no transfer discount even between multiple LA Metro rapid bus lines, but a rider on a Metro rail or bus line can transfer to a local municipal bus operated by one of the county’s cities for 35¢.
4 Riders using the pay-per-ride MetroCard also get a 5% fare bonus when putting more than $5 on the card, making the effective fare for riders who don’t have passes closer to $2.38.
5 The MBTA runs both commuter rail and Boston subway, so there aren’t enough agencies to have an inter-agency pass as in other cities on this table. However, the commuter rail passes do offer free “T” subway and bus rides, so Boston does have a pass analogous to those that give a “Yes” for the other cities.