Fully integrated transit fares are needed to have unified transit branding and wayfinding
Branding and wayfinding of transit in metropolitan Vancouver is clear and unified, simplifying the user experience. A unified transit brand for all modes is possible in Vancouver because fares are fully integrated across all aspects of the transit system, overseen by a network manager, TransLink. (Image: Applied Wayfinding)
Two recent business cases show that fully integrated branding and fares would greatly increase ridership and improve the user experience of the Bay Area fragmented transit system.
When considered together, results of two parallel business cases being led by MTC - one on fare integration, and another on wayfinding and branding integration of the region’s 27 transit agencies - suggest dramatic ridership, economic, and environmental benefits of seamless transit fares in combination with fully unified wayfinding and branding.
Importantly, full wayfinding and branding integration - which is estimated to provide the greatest level of ridership and socio-economic benefits of various options studied - depends on the region adopting a fully integrated system of transit fares.
This is because fully integrated transit fares eliminates the need to communicate the individual brand of a local agency, vastly simplifying transit information and improving network legibility for riders. The combined benefits of implementing both integrated fares and unified transit branding strongly justify creating a network manager for Bay Area transit to be able to deliver on the full benefits of both complementary policy changes.
Fare Integration Business Case
The BART- and MTC-led Fare Coordination and Integration Study, on which Seamless Bay Area has reported regularly over the past two years, finally released preliminary recommendations that point to dramatic benefits of integrating transit fares in some specific, targeted ways. For example, the study estimates that making it free to transfer between the region’s 27 transit systems would generate at least 27,000 new daily transit riders - as much as some of the region’s highest ridership bus lines like AC Transit Line 51. It also identifies value in moving toward a common distance-based fare structure for regional services like BART, Caltrain, and express buses, estimating that such integration would generate 68,000 new daily riders and help reduce 850,000 daily vehicle miles travelled.
Yet, the fare integration business case seems to suggest minimal benefit of moving toward a fully integrated transit fare system in which there is one common fare structure for both all regional and local transit - such as envisioned in Seamless Bay Area’s integrated fare vision. This, despite the fact that many high ridership regions (Stockholm, Frankfurt, Milan, Vancouver, to name a few), have fully integrated transit fares across local and regional services. Rather, the ridership model used in the business case suggests that, if a consistent regional fare structure was introduced for regional transit (BART, Caltrain, etc), maintaining 20 different local fare regimes would result in higher ridership than if local fares were unified into a common system.*
We find this conclusion puzzling and out of step with what we see in other regions. Staff leading the study acknowledge that ridership models are not perfect predictors of behavior, and cannot take into account the host of complex factors that may cause someone to use transit. Nevertheless, someone looking at this business case only would conclude that there’s no benefit in trying to make local transit fares consistent.
Visual from MTC’s business case of wayfinding integration showing how a comprehensive wayfinding and branding system would appear to riders at different points in the user journey.
Wayfinding & Branding Business Case
That’s where the importance of another business case MTC has been advancing becomes relevant. MTC’s business case on integrated transit wayfinding and branding shows significant ridership and economic benefits from creating consistency in transit branding across 27 operators - a change that would require full regional consistency in fare policy. Full consistency in fares across local and regional transit as one fare system completely eliminates the need for communicating 27 different operator brands to customers and allows for the creation of a single unified brand for Bay Area transit. This allows for vastly simplified signage, branding, and communications, improved navigability and a better user experience.
The wayfinding business case identifies four “Tiers” of wayfinding integration. “Tier 3” envisions a comprehensive signage and mapping system applied across 27 transit agencies with a common ‘system identity’ logo, but maintains the primacy of local agency brand identities (BART, Muni, Caltrain) due to lack of fare and service integration. Tier 4, by contrast, unifies all services within a single dominant brand identity, and makes local agency identifies secondary information.
Full fare integration is a prerequisite for the Tier 4 wayfinding system. This is because, when fare policy is consistent across services, the operating agency of any given bus, train, or ferry is no longer essential information that a rider needs to understand or remember. If a local fare is consistent across the region, and every monthly or weekly pass product is valid on every system in the region, a bus flag sign no longer needs to indicate which is a SamTrans-operated bus versus a VTA-operated bus. BART, Caltrain, Golden Gate Buses, SMART, Ferries, and other express buses could be shown on a vastly simplified regional transit service map, with frequency indicated - but no need for brands.
With fully unified fares, the only reason for needing to know the brand of a service would be to know who’s responsible if something goes wrong; even that would not be necessary if Bay Area operators centralized customer service centers and created a single way for a rider to get information or report a problem.
The wayfinding study uses a ‘placeholder’ system brand, “Bay” to demonstrate how Tier 4 implementation would significantly reduce to communicate agency brands for riders. With a common brand, far simpler wayfinding system based around service levels and modes could be rolled out to improve system navigability and network awareness. Here, the study indicates how color could be used to clearly identify mode within a Tier 4 wayfinding system - this is currently not possible because color is currently strongly associated with brand and agency.
The wayfinding business case shows a significant additional ridership and economic benefit gained from the full branding integration of Bay Area transit represented by “Tier 4”, in comparison to “Tier 3”, which stops short of branding harmony. Tier 4 costs only slightly more than Tier 3 to implement, but delivers $123 million more of economic benefits over 15 years. Tier 4 has a significantly higher cost-benefit ratio, 2.92, compared to 2.33 for Tier 3.
Bringing both business cases together, and adding the benefits of service integration
So what happens when we consider the benefits of fare, wayfinding, and branding integration together instead of in isolation? The business cases were unfortunately completed with different time horizons, and likely have different methodologies for calculating costs and impacts - the details of all the assumptions that went into the business cases have not been released. However, a back-of-the-napkin analysis using the figures that have been shared in public materials reveals the possibility that, when considered together, the deepest levels of fare policy and branding integration would provide the greatest level of benefits to our region of all the options studied.**
The upcoming Network Management Business Case may be the place where the co-benefits of wayfinding and fare integration can be considered together, alongside a third key pillar of an integrated transit system that is yet to be analyzed in any business case: service integration. Transit service integration - creating a regional, consistent network of transit lines with coordinated frequencies and schedules across all modes, with optimized transit routes to eliminate duplication and gaps - complements fare and branding integration and will bring its own sets of ridership benefits.
Our research of other regions indicates that fare integration, branding integration, and service integration are all synergistic, and if pursued together will bring ridership benefits greater than if they were pursued separately. It’s critical we don’t treat these policy issues in silos, or develop bespoke governance and management structures to pursue each initiative separately. To be effectively implemented, a comprehensive Bay Area network manager is needed that can oversee fare policy, service integration, and customer experience for all modes of transit across the region.
Business cases are a helpful tools for our region to analyze policy issues. At a high level, these business cases broadly show that the greater levels of integration lead to better outcomes and impact; sometimes requiring higher levels of investment. But business cases cannot make political decisions for us. The question of whether to set up a network manager is no longer a technical decision - it’s a political one. It involves changing where power resides - removing some authorities from local agencies and placing those authorities within a shared, accountable regional entity. The benefits of doing so are tremendous. We urge elected leaders - including MTC commissioners, transit agency board members, and state officials - to view these business cases as part of the bigger picture case for setting up a network manager. The sooner we put a network manager in place, the sooner we can begin to swiftly move forward with the transformative, simultaneous, and synergistic projects of fare, branding, and service integration.
—-
Footnotes
*To be clear, what the business case does here is compare a scenario of a consistent, fare-by-distance fare structure for regional trips and with no changes to local fares (“Option 3”), to a scenario of consistent fare-by-distance fare structure for regional trips and the creation of a single flat local fares (“Option 4”). Options 3 and 4 are modeled with the same level of overall subsidy.
**Here are our admittedly back-of-the-napkin calculations estimating the possible combined benefits of both of these business cases:
Fare integration Option 3, which creates a common regional fares under a BART-like fare-by-distance structure but keeps local fares as they are today, has an estimated socio-economic benefit of $340m over 5 years; The benefits of Option 4, which also has a common regional fare-by-distance structures AND a common local flat fare, are estimated at $310m over 5 years.
Wayfinding Tier 3, which creates a unified system of wayfinding and signage but maintains the primacy of agency brands is estimated to have socio-economic benefits of $359m over 15 years; Wayfinding Tier 4, which also adds branding integration, has benefits of $483m over 15 years.
If the benefits of the wayfinding over 5 years are approximately one third of the benefits over 15 years, then Tier 3 benefits are $119m over 5 years and Tier 4 benefits are $161m over 5 years.
Therefore:
Benefits of Option 3 Fare Integration + Tier 3 Wayfinding = $459m over 5 years
Benefits of Option 4 Fare integration + Tier 4 Wayfinding = $471m over 5 years
The costs of Option 3 and 4 fare integration are similar, with annual estimated subsidies of $70m and $74m respectively; the costs of Tier 3 and Tier 4 wayfinding were also close, $156m and $167m respectively over 15 years.