40% increase in transit use among BayPass recipients
Disclaimer: This article has been updated with new data from the Clipper BayPass Program, now reflecting ridership statistics from August 2022 to August 2023. The original post reflected data from August 2022 to February 2023.
In a promising sign for an integrated regional fare system, BayPass Program users are taking on average 40% more trips than their peers who only have access to single-agency “institutional passes,” according to data collected from August 2022 to August 2023.
Students at participating universities already have access to free transit for local services through their respective institutional passes. For example, UC Berkeley students have free access to AC Transit with their “EasyPass” Program and SJSU’s “SmartPass” Program allows their students free VTA Light Rail and bus access. Launched in August 2022, Phase 1 of the BayPass Program is a two-year pilot program providing some 50,000 randomly selected university students and affordable housing residents across the Bay Area with free, unlimited access to all buses, rail, and ferry services using Clipper Card.
Ryan Reeves, Principal Planner at BART, provided an update on the program to the Metropolitan Transportation Committee (MTC) Fare Integration Task Force at their October meeting. Over 2 million trips were taken in the first year of the BayPass rollout, with a large majority of trips being taken on AC Transit, BART, SF MUNI, and VTA.
Designed as a randomized controlled experiment, planners such as Reeves will study the collected data to better understand regional travel pattern changes resulting from the program.
“The Clipper BayPass data is a really fascinating set of information that we’ve never been able to conduct: a statistically significant and valid sample of this size with 50,000 people in the Bay Area ever before,” said Bill Bacon, Principal Planner at the MTC at a March 2023 meeting when BayPass data was first made public. “We are learning a lot about how people prefer to use the system. I think that’s one of the key things we are trying to understand. If you remove barriers between agencies, how would customers prefer to use transit?”
Additionally, over 10,000 surveys collecting demographic and user experience data were completed. When asked by a committee member at the March 2023 meeting, Reeved stated there was no question pertaining to disability status but ensured such information will be present in the next survey.
Next Sets of the BayPass Program
Under Phase 2 of the BayPass Program, employers will be able to purchase regional transit passes for all employees. A focus of the program, as noted by Reeves, is reaching out to employers with transit-dependent, low-wage workers such as in retail, hospitality, manufacturing, hospitals, and the tourism industry. Pricing for this second phase will vary for employers, depending on a range of factors but the program aims to be overall revenue neutral and ridership positive.
“Our goal, very explicitly, is to create a successful program that can be a permanent program for the Bay Area which would be an all agency transit pass,” Bacon explained.
All 27 transit agency boards will need to approve the rollout of Phase 2 prior to its launch, in addition to any permanent regional fare program that may result from the results of BayPass. We at Seamless Bay Area see this fractured governance structure as a major issue constraining future growth of transit ridership for our region and see the need for an integrated and streamlined system.
Summary
The early results indicate that the BayPass Program is a promising step towards creating the seamless transit network badly needed to boost ridership, to further goals of equity and environmental sustainability, and to increase confidence of legislators and voters to support transit with the prospect of impending transit fiscal cliffs.