“Yes, yes, and yes”: Regional leaders embrace integrated fares and seamless transit
Last week, regional leaders at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission took a big step forward in endorsing continued progress towards more integrated fares and seamless transit in the Bay Area. At several points during a two-day MTC workshop, held Oct. 27-28, staff asked commissioners to comment on the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force’s proposed direction to implement policies that advance seamless transit, including three questions about whether staff should proceed proactively. The dominant answer from the majority of the commissioners to each of these questions was, “yes, yes, and yes!”
The two-day workshop was focused on implementing the Transformation Action Plan, a blueprint for a rider-first transit system created and recently released by the Blue Ribbon Transit Recovery Task Force, which was convened in 2020 with the goal of helping public transit recover from the impacts of COVID by creating a more seamless system. Fare integration was one of the top three strategies in the 27-item Transformation Action Plan. At last week’s workshop, commissioners voiced strong support for advancing fare integration, including an all-agency transit pass pilot starting in 2022 and free transfers starting in 2023 (see this blog post for more details).
More than 50 Bay Area organizations have signed joint letters in support of more integrated transit fares in the Bay Area.
Commissioners and transit agency general managers also expressed their support for the use of $80 million to fund fare integration steps and other Blue Ribbon Task Force recommendations, including integrated wayfinding pilots and transit priority lanes throughout the region. While no formal votes were held, these conversations bode well for future votes to ratify the decisions at upcoming Commission meetings.
The outcome of broad advocacy and support
This progress would not have been possible without the many dozens of transit riders and organizations who have spoken up in support of integrated, affordable fares since this summer, when the fare integration recommendations started to emerge.
More than 200 volunteers have spoken and written at recent transit and regional board meetings, while 50+ organizations have signed joint letters supporting fare integration.
Next steps to bring about integrated, affordable fares
As a next step, the fare policy vision needs to be approved on November 15 at the Fare Integration Task Force, and then again at 27 separate transit agency boards meetings starting in December. Then more work will be needed to make the pilots permanent, and to expand to the even more convenient, more affordable fare policies that depend on future funding.
If you want to get involved and haven’t yet participated, please sign up here to adopt the transit agency or agencies you use. We’ll let you know about opportunities to speak up for fare integration, and the funding and policy changes needed to bring this about, in the coming months.
If you are involved in an organization that would like to support integrated and affordable fares, please consider adding your name a joint letter with 50+ organizations that support fare integration around the region; to learn more, email ian@seamlessbayarea.org.
While supporters have successfully navigated this cumbersome process, the experience with fare integration clearly demonstrates why our region needs governance reform to create a Network Manager entity. An accountable network manager, as exists in regions like Seattle, Vancouver, or Frankfurt, would make it far simpler to introduce policies that affect all transit agencies in our region, without having to advocate at numerous regional policy bodies and speak at dozens of separate agency board meetings.
That’s why it is so important that, in addition to this good progress on fare integration, the MTC last week also endorsed moving forward with a Network Management business case in the coming months. This is an important step towards overcoming the governance fragmentation that makes these types of rider-first policies so difficult to put in place.
We’ll be keeping you informed in the coming months about additional ways we can work together to keep advancing convenient, rider-friendly, affordable, accessible public transportation.