Metro studies future fare options
Revamp will offer riders ways to use personal devices
The Metropolitan Transit Authority on Thursday will consider the first in a series of agreements to revamp its fare payment system that eventually could offer riders the option of using smartphones, credit cards and electronic wallets to hop aboard its buses and trains.
In a nod to the changing ways consumers use to pay for services, the transit agency is expected to spend nearly $100 million to remake its collection of bus and train fares for the next 15 years. That future could lead to cash being kicked off the bus as transit officials weigh whether to replace aging fare boxes.
Metro is among a handful of large American transit agencies giving some thought to how to reduce the number of riders tossing coins and convert them to tapping a card, which could help speed up bus trips.
“Metro would be in the first wave of agencies making this transition but won’t be doing it alone,” said Ben Fried, communications director for TransitCenter, a New York-based advocacy group.
The first step for Metro is a seven-year $37 million contract with INIT, Innovations in Transportation Inc., for new software and management of its fare collection system, including new validators — the cinder blocksized devices people tap with their Q cards.
Two-thirds of the initial cost, more than $24 million, would go toward equipping buses and installing computer systems in Metro offices to handle fares.
With the new gear will come
new options for riders. Currently, riders can use Q cards, cash or Metro’s smartphone app to hop aboard.
The new machines will accept the current Q cards, along with such options as contactless credit cards that allow customers to pay by tapping a card reader and Apple Pay and Google Pay that store credit card info on mobile phones.
“The system will let us use mobile wallets,” said Denise Wendler, chief information officer for Metro. “It transitions very nicely with our old system and new opportunities.”
Don’t get too eager to tap with your phone or credit card, however. Changes to the system would not go live until 2022.
“Oh man, that’s such good news and bad news,” said Darryl Petersen, 36, as he waited on a Route 40 bus downtown last week.
Petersen said he applauds the idea of adding options — he still uses a Q card but has Metro’s apps downloaded for route information — but would rather not have to wait two years.
Other riders said they would be fine with the changes, as long as their preferred options remain.
“I remember when they switched to (Q) cards it was such an ordeal,” said Susan English, a long-time rider of the Red Line and buses between downtown and her home in Bellaire.
Eventually, she said most people adjusted, but it would be nice to avoid that confusion this time around.
Fear of pay gap
Metro, meanwhile, is banking much of the changes on shifting as many people away from cash as possible, but not without a lot of trepidation on the part of some officials.
“I have a continuing concern about the urban poor, if you will,” Metro board member Jim Robinson said at a meeting last week. “They don’t have cell phones and they don’t have Q cards and want to pay cash.”
Though many riders will welcome the chance to pay with a tap of their phone or a credit card, Robinson said some core riders always will rely on cash.
“There are just some people who are never going to have the technology,” he said. “I think we have to find a way to accommodate them.”
The rollout of the Q card in Houston in 2008 was marred by criticism from those who said it alienated cash-paying riders because all free transfers required a Q card.
Though it will be years before the bus stops accepting cash, the decision to do so could come sooner because Metro’s payment systems and Q card validators are coming to the end of their useful lives.
“If we want to replace our fare boxes, we need to make that decision pretty soon,” Wendler said.
Wendler said the options for Metro would be to replace the fareboxes with new ones, refurbish the ones they have to get a few more years out of the aging devices or remove them entirely from some or all buses.
Officials estimate that a complete revamp of Metro’s fare system could cost as much as $98.5 million over the next 15 years.
Even as Metro weighs the future of its fare payment system, officials are looking at making it easier to convert cash to a Metro pass. As part of the fare system restructuring, Metro is moving its internal Q card retailing system to an outside vendor, InComm, which manages a huge portion of the gift card market, along with tolling and transit cards for various agencies.
Allowing riders to purchase Q cards through InComm will allow Metro to roughly quadruple the number of locations where a card can be bought or money added, including convenience and grocery stores, Wendler said.
About 20 percent of Metro’s fares are paid in cash, said Julie Fernandez, the transit agency’s lead management analyst for fare policy. That represents about $13.8 million of the $68 million in fares paid by riders annually, which is a fraction of Metro’s $911 million budget for operations and capital projects.
Going cashless
Many transit agencies are looking to reduce or avoid cash payments altogether for a variety of reasons, including speeding up transit and eliminating the cost of handling money.
“Boston has made cashless bus fare collection an explicit goal, and the (Metropolitan Transit Authority) in New York has eliminated cash payment on express buses, intimating that regular buses could go cashless in the next few years (the earliest would be 2023),” Fried said.
Paying cash typically takes a few seconds longer than tapping a Q card, with those seconds adding up along a route. The faster people can board, the faster the bus can get moving again — improving the efficiency of trips and getting people to their destinations faster.
Eliminating cash fares also could give transit agencies better use of bus space by allowing passengers to board at the front and rear doors. In Houston, Metro riders can only exit from the back door, but must enter in the front to tap their cards or pay cash.
San Francisco opened its buses and trains to all-door boarding in 2012, and checks fares now with fare inspectors, similar to Metro’s enforcement of light rail payments in Houston. A 2017 study showed San Francisco’s bus speeds increased 2 percent and ridership on buses increased 2 percent.
“It’s not a coincidence that bus ridership has held up well in (San Francisco) relative to other American cities. It’s the only place with citywide all-door bus boarding,” Fried said.
Fare boxes also require Metro to make accommodations they do not need to make on Q card and credit card payments in Houston. Accepting cash, even at ticket vending machines along the rail line, requires Metro to have its own armored trucks to pick up cash boxes, which in turn are shadowed by Metro police.
As a result, many transit agencies have in the past decade devoted efforts to shifting riders to other options than cash, but no American transit agency has pulled cash from all its buses.
“Transit agencies tend to be change-averse, and overhauling fare payment and inspection is a big change,” Fried said.