Saturday, December 4, 2010

New Fare Option

Starting in December 1, Metro Transit will be offering new fare option. Passengers will be able to purchase a 7-Day pass on the Go-To-Card. The cost for the pass will be $22.00. This pass will be good on Local and Non-Peak Express Buses. This is an effort to expand the use of Go-To-Card with passenger who have a fixed income and is not able to purchase the 31-Day Pass.


UPDATE: Here is information on Metro Transit website for the New 7-Day Pass.

3 comments:

J M said...

Are the one day passes available on the GoTo cards? I know you can buy one at the farebox so I would assume so. I still think in 5-10 years GoTo cards will be the only fare media aside from perhaps one day passes for visitors and passes from TVMs.

Incidentally I think with the next fare increase they should keep the base fare at $1.75 local/$2.25 express/+$0.75 peak and then just charge the extra $0.25 or whatever for the transfer. That way people who just take one bus for 5-20 minutes or whatever to go to work aren't paying as much over time as someone riding 4 buses roundtrip across town to go somewhere.

LRV Op Dude said...

No, you cannot buy a day pass on Go-To-Card.

As far as the fare increase expect a .25 increase across the board.

John Charles Wilson said...

Why, at this late date, is there nothing on the MT website about a 7-day pass? 1 Dec. is only 2 days away as I write this! I agree that now that the bugs are mostly worked out of the GoTo system, the other passes should be phased out. Yes, even the 1-day pass should be available on a GoTo card.

That said, I disagree with the person who wants to see a 25-cent transfer surcharge. It adds more complexity, something we don't need. I propose the next fare increase be to raise the off-peak fares to equal the peak fares and end the "temporary" peak surcharge which was enacted in 1982 to circumvent a law that has been long off the books. (The law limited the base fare to 60 cents; the then Metropolitan Transit Commission needed a fare increase before the Legislature could change it so they got creative with the definition of "base fare". This has been moot for over 20 years now.)

One thing that might make sense with all the illegal giving/selling of transfers is to abolish them completely. Divide the current fare by the average number of boardings per fare, including transfer use (I'm sure the stats exist somewhere), and make that the new fare *per boarding* (rounded to the nearest 25 cents, of course).