Bay Area transit agencies want to give people more incentives to ride the bus, train, or ferry, and one way to do this is by offering discounts.
Leaders from several agencies, including BART and AC Transit, said at a recent Metropolitan Transportation Commission meeting that they are working on a discount pilot program that will cut rider fares when they transfer from one transit provider to another.
“The intent of the policy is that no one should pay extra just to switch agencies; we want riders to be able to use all transit services as if they were operated by one agency,” BART communications officer Alicia Trost told The Oaklandside.
The program will allow transit riders to make unlimited transfers between any bus, train, or ferry, within two hours and receive a “discount roughly equal to the cost of a local bus trip,” Trost said. The maximum discount will be $2.50. Customers who transfer between local buses will get a free second ride.
The discounts can’t result in a negative fare, so the trip paid each time must be more than the cost of the local bus trip.
Savings for people who use a lot of transfers could be significant.
For example, consider someone who lives next to Bella Vista Park in East Oakland and works in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury. Using their Clipper card, which already reduces fare prices, they could take the $2.25 Line 62 bus to the Lake Merritt BART station, pay $4.05 to travel to the Civic Center BART station in San Francisco, and then pay $2.50 to take the Muni Lines 7 or 6. The discount program would provide a savings of $88 per week for a daily commuter.
The current lowest fare on AC Transit for a single trip is $2.25 for people who pay with a Clipper card or with a mobile device, while cash costs $2.50. The lowest fare on San Francisco’s Muni service is $2.50 for those who pay with Clipper and $3 for those paying with cash.
BART offers several different discount programs, some with support from the MTC, including for seniors, young people, low-income adults, people who pay through autoload, and for people with disabilities.
The number of people who will be part of the fare discount pilot has not been decided, nor have the eligibility parameters been determined. Some agencies limit discounts to seniors and students.
When might the discounts begin?
Transit directors said they want the pilot to begin before the end of this year and last up to two years. The pilot will be largely funded through a $22 million grant from the MTC.
The pilot won’t be deployed until after regional transit agencies upgrade the technology of their fare entry systems to the latest versions from Clipper. The upgrade will add sensors at fare gates that accept wireless payments using physical and digital debit or credit cards and keep track of the transfers from agency to agency. Current fare gate transactions already send notifications to the fare buyer’s phone or bank account if they are signed up through Clipper.
Bay Area agencies and the MTC hope the reduced fare pilot will be as successful as other recent discount pilots. The larger, more nebulous hope is that it also helps reduce the region’s transit inequity issues.
An MTC study from 2013 found people who lived in “communities of concern,” mostly low-income, depended on car commuting even though it would be more economically advantageous to take transit, while a Harvard study found shorter, cheaper commutes helped people lift themselves up from poverty. Caltrain discounts, as noted by Stanford’s Future Bay Initiative, have in the past mainly benefitted higher-income riders.
Some agencies recently increased fare discounts to help low-income riders.
On January 1, 2024, BART increased its low-income discount for its Clipper START program from 20% to 50%. Riders eligible for this program must be between 19 and 64 and make less than twice the federal poverty level, or about $39,000 per year.
Trost said that 8% of BART trips are taken with a Senior discount card, 2% with a youth discount card, and 7% with their “high-value discount” automated payment card.
Other discount programs have improved transit ridership and riders’ experiences
At the recent MTC meeting where the discounts were discussed, officials considered recent findings from the first pilot of the Clipper Bay Pass, a single card that was given out to thousands of people to use on any transit agency for free.
According to the report, the free pass led to a 40% increase in ridership and a 74% increase in transfers.
The Clipper Bay Pass pilot started in the Summer of 2022 and will last until this Summer. The study has followed 50,000 residents and students from local universities, including UC Berkeley, Santa Rosa Junior College, and San Jose State University.
The free and discount pass pilots are both part of the Regional Transit Coordination project, which seeks to improve Bay Area transit agencies’ customer experience. These plans have taken on higher importance in the last few years. Many agencies, including AC Transit and BART, have seen declines in ridership leading to fears some agencies might have to dramatically cut routes and services. BART, in particular, has seen big ridership drops.
With the current student-centered free pass ending, the MTC partner agencies have already begun another, year-long free pass pilot involving regional employers. That pilot launched in January and aims to involve up to 20,000 people.
Oakland residents look forward to the transfer discounts
Low- and middle-income residents of Oakland who have previously taken advantage of transit discounts told The Oaklandside that they’re excited about the possible $2.50-max discount pilot program.
Evonne Liang, who lives with her two children and brother near Lake Merritt, was part of Oakland’s Universal Basic Mobility pilot in 2022 that gave people $300 for transit. She told us she uses buses and trains from multiple transit agencies to get around Oakland and San Francisco. A discount of up to $2.50 for each transfer for herself and her children would save her a lot of money she could spend on other necessities like groceries, she said.
“In the last couple of months, we went to the Oakland Zoo by using BART from Lake Merritt to the Coliseum station and then taking AC Transit to the Zoo. Then we did that to come back. That would have been $15 [in savings for the day] and that’s almost enough for lunch for three people,” she said.
Liang usually tries to save money by going to a local ministry on Telegraph Avenue to get free food twice a week. “Food is so expensive, where it’s not like $75 for a couple of bags at the grocery store.”
Mike Garcia, who was also a part of the basic mobility pilot, said that he would appreciate the transfer even though it may not be as impactful as a free pass. He estimated that he would save hundreds of dollars a year based on all the transfers he uses between systems just in Oakland and San Francisco.
“The money does add up and [a discount] would be pretty impactful,” he said.
He might also want to ride transit more, simply because it would stretch the value of his money.
“When you’re receiving assistance like that, it makes you want to use it more. I work remotely part-time and it makes you also want to go to the office more,” he said. Garcia said he was “really grateful” for any help.
