Two Regions, One Goal: Increasing Transit Coordination to increase ridership
The pandemic upended the financial models and ridership of most transit agencies across the country, and the Bay Area is no stranger to this. To this day, ridership still remains below pre-pandemic levels on regional services including BART and Caltrain due to shifting travel patterns.
The DC/Maryland/Virginia and Chicagoland regions are pursuing initiatives to bring their respective transit agencies to closer integration, with goals to increase ridership and help address the region’s financial challenges, with lessons for the Bay Area’s 27 transit agencies and other regions.
DC, Maryland and Virginia (DMV) Area Working on Integration Across State Lines
The DMVMoves Task Force, initiated in May by officials at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), has started to review proposals toward greater integration across state lines. Tasked to provide a final plan by May 2025, they are now working on a set of initiatives focusing on improving customer experience, and on agency operations, to:
Integrate and align fare policies,
Implement bus priority strategies,
Identify opportunities to combine functions,
Identify and pursue potential savings through cooperative purchasing, and
Making training and certification for transit personnel more consistent across the region.
Crucially, the Task Force is also reviewing the funding needs of the regional transit network, including the DC Metro, the Maryland Area Rail Commuter (MARC) train, Virginia Railway Express (VRE), and local bus service. New public revenue sources are being studied, not only to prevent funding gaps at current service levels, but also ways to enhance it.
A diagram of rail services offered in Washington, DC and their respective providers. Source.
Chicagoland Launches a Regional Day Pass
Image Credit: NBC Chicago
CTA, Pace, and Metra, the rail and bus operators of the Chicago Metropolitan Area (Chicagoland), voted in mid-2024 to introduce a “Regional Day Pass,” which will introduce a $10 unlimited combined day pass for the three services for the weekend, and $10-$16 on weekdays, according to the agreement. The rates will vary based on the number of zones the rider will travel in, making it cheaper than buying individual day passes per agency. The pass will only be available via the Ventra mobile app. The initiative shows the agencies’ willingness to adopt creative solutions to bring transit riders back and “soften the landing” on a $730 million fiscal cliff expected by 2026 by increasing revenue. However, it remains to be seen how much the revenue gained from increased ridership will help offset this deficit. Agencies had earlier projected a launch date in the fall of 2024, but the new fare has not yet been rolled out.
A similar initiative was launched in Zurich in Switzerland in the 1990s, coupled with better coordinated service. These initiatives increased ridership, giving transit providers the impetus for more service, leading to a virtuous cycle.
The Regional Day Pass could become part of a larger set of reforms. On January 15, the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) of Northeastern Illinois, which covers the Chicago area, unveiled a package of reforms that propose to strengthen its power over the three transit agencies. Besides seeking $1.5 billion annually in operational funding, the reforms would make it the main agency accountable for fares, service levels, and capital projects. Among other measures, this includes the proposal for a unified fare policy across the region.
Some Illinois state lawmakers are taking it further and proposing for the three agencies to merge into one authority, called the Metropolitan Mobility Authority. This would finally bring all fare systems under one integrated network. The merger is part of an overall package to also provide $1.5 billion in additional operations funding to the systems, in a bid to address the chronic underfunding of public transportation relative to other regional peers, something that has been observed even before the pandemic.
Lessons for the Bay Area
The clock is ticking for our officials to figure out a funding solution to avoid the fiscal cliff and build on funding to improve mobility for residents here in the Bay Area. As these cases show, we are not the only region having to deal with the issue of fragmented transit.
Just the same, the pandemic and impending fiscal cliff motivated other regions, like the DMV area and Chicagoland, to find innovative ways to bring back riders and respond to their new travel patterns. Their prompt action will help address these challenges and get the agencies back on track more quickly. It is hoped that these bold policy changes will bring about a virtuous cycle of increasing investment and ridership, together.
Gabriel Fadri is a transportation engineer and transit advocate based in Berkeley.