Travelers on Seattle’s light rail trains may soon be asked to show their ORCA fare cards and tickets to inspectors while waiting on the tracks, as well as on moving trains.
Sound Transit announced that testing will begin Monday at four downtown stations and will be expanded to other areas later this year.
Transit officials are trying to plug the fare-revenue leaks as thousands of riders scrimp on the $2.25 to $3.50 tickets. The region’s light-rail network has replaced turnstiles with an improved voluntary system and occasional surprise inspections by transit officials. Last year, transit officials estimated that nearly half of riders don’t pay their fares.
Residents of King, Snohomish and Pierce counties pay hundreds of dollars in vehicle, property and sales taxes each year to the light rail, but many are outraged that they won’t even get a few dollars. Last year, fare revenue was just $59.4 million, or 2.1 percent of total revenue for Sound Transit, the company that built and operates the nation’s largest transit expansion project.
On average 82,000 passengers per day Line 1 between Northgate and Angle Lake is used daily, exceeding 100,000 passengers over 12 days last July. A local line opened on the East Side on April 27, followed by extensions to Lynnwood on August 30, downtown Redmond in early 2025, the Seattle-Bellevue section over Lake Washington next winter, and Federal Way in 2026.
Things to notice
Spokeswoman Rachel Cunningham said patrolling station platforms allows them to check more passengers than rushing through crowded carriages. Teams of four will start at either end of the platform and work their way to the middle. Other methods will be tested downtown over the summer.
“Most people probably won’t notice anything new,” Cunningham said.
For now, Sound Transit will continue to conduct inspections on trains, limiting the number of its 55 fare agents who can work on platforms.
Ideally, if an ambassador spots someone on a station platform who hasn’t received their pay, they’ll send them upstairs to be paid without further fuss, Cunningham explained.
“Passengers will have the option to say, ‘Oh, I forgot to tap, or I didn’t tap correctly, or I didn’t know where to buy a ticket.’ This gives passengers the opportunity to pay their fare so we don’t issue fines or give them warnings on the spot.” Staff will be on the mezzanine level to explain the changes and help passengers pay.
Fare agents, dressed in blue, act as educators and fare enforcers, showing low-income passengers how to get cheaper fares. Discount ORCA Lift Cards Cunningham said the cost is $1 per visit. Regular fare Fares vary from $2.25 to $3.50 depending on distance, but will change to a flat rate of $3 on Aug. 30.
Passengers may already have noticed yellow stripes, ORCA readers that have been moved from the train deck to the mezzanine, and “fare paid zone” signs. Officials spent $6.7 million on the improvements, designed to accommodate the new off-train inspections.
Cunningham said the trial is needed before the Northgate-Lynnwood Extension opens Aug. 30 and increases congestion north of downtown, which will make on-board solicitation more difficult, so transit managers expect fare collection at stations to spread to north of downtown soon.
Inspectors currently check 5% of passengers but are on track to reach a 10% goal, with the plan to eventually move to primarily checking fares off the train, Sean Dennerline, deputy director of passenger experience, said at a commission briefing in April.
A staff report last year estimated that only 55% of passengers paid fares, but the actual performance is likely to be slightly better when free youth trips are taken into account. Recent budget tables assume that 75% will pay fares in the long term. A few years ago, when inspections and penalties were tougher, nearly 95% paid fares.
Less stringent enforcement
King County Metro Transit and Sound Transit largely stopped fare enforcement in the wake of the pandemic, which reduced transit ridership, and the racial justice protests of 2020. Studies in the late 2010s found that Black and homeless riders were ticketed disproportionately compared to their populations as public transit riders.
Sound Transit is overhauling its policies in 2022 to reduce confrontations and stop sending people to criminal court after years of accusations and summary removals from trains.
The Fare Ambassador Programme is It will cost $672 million by 2046.Initially, it was virtually impossible to hire and retain fare ambassadors, but the numbers are finally increasing.
As of March, 84% of people who underwent a fare check showed proof of payment. Traffic officials reportThe remaining 7% did not pay the fare but showed identification, and 9% did not comply. The people encountered by fare agents are not an accurate representation of all 82,000 or so trips. (Passenger statistics are based on laser counters above the doors of trains and are unrelated to fare revenues.)
Passengers who don’t pay their fare can receive two warnings within a 12-month period. A third and fourth offense carries a fine of $50 and $75, respectively, but the fines can be waived by buying a ticket or filling out a survey. A fifth offense carries a civil penalty of $124. Passengers who don’t pay their fare or show identification can be removed from the train by security.
Cunningham said passengers’ faces aren’t photographed during the ticket inspection process, but their IDs are scanned to collect text rather than photos. There’s plenty of footage of trains and stations to use for crime and crash investigations.
Sound Transit has issued 48,000 warnings and 767 penalty notices since Sept. 20, Cunningham said.
Sound Transit’s board voted last week to scale back its budget goals and reduce the percentage of operating costs covered by fares to 22% from a long-standing target of 40% that it met or nearly met between 2016 and 2018. The changes reflect a combination of tax evasion, discounts to keep fares affordable, rising costs of operating trains and the expansion of service from congested hubs like the U-District to stations with fewer paying riders per mile.
The public and some officials occasionally ask about fare gates: Vancouver, British Columbia’s SkyTrain system added fare gates to 53 stations over the past decade at a cost of $195 million, while agencies in New York, Washington, D.C. and the San Francisco Bay Area are replacing easy-passage gates with taller barriers.
Sound Transit consultants wrote in 2022 that adding gates to five busiest stations — Northgate, U District, Capitol Hill, Westlake and International District/Chinatown — could collect more fares and break even within seven years.
The Department of Transportation has not looked further into fare gates, nor has it studied the other end of the policy spectrum: zero-fare transit.
