Integrated Transit Fare Vision Calculator: How it works
The Integrated Transit Fare Vision Map Calculator Tool allows you to compare current transit fares against what the fare would be with Seamless Bay Area’s Integrated Fare Vision.
Current prices
To calculate current fare prices for a transit trip, the Fare Calculator Tool (“Calculator”) uses the fare data published to a transit agency’s GTFS via the Google Maps API. Agencies publish their cash fare for a full fare (or Adult Fare) for a given single trip to GTFS, thus BART fares estimates in Google Maps include the $0.50 paper surcharge. Discounts for the Clipper card are not included in fare estimates on Google Maps. Furthermore, Google Maps does not calculate fare pricing based on fare products, e.g. Muni’s monthly transit pass, or rider class, e.g. senior discount.
For agencies that do not publish their fares to GTFS, we created a workaround. Price estimates for trips that include a) AC Transit assume the local trip fare (most trips on AC Transit are local trips) and b) Dumbarton Express assume the transbay trip fare (most trips on Dumbarton Express are transbay trips).
Discounts
Because discounts by rider class can vary by transit service type within an individual transit agency, the Calculator averages the discount by transit service across the region. For instance, FAST offers Youth riders a 14% discount on local transit but a 27% on Route 20 transit service. As the average discount by rider class isn’t a true discount that users experience across the region, the Calculator displays a range of likely values for the current fare estimate.
Fare Products and Daily Fare Caps
To show the impact of the new Integrated Fare Vision over time, we wanted to compare the pricing approach to fare capping to the current pricing for fare products. Unfortunately, the region has a degree of fare product complexity that is difficult to model using the Google Maps API. Agencies sell multiple fare products that cover the same time period, e.g. Muni sells both the monthly Muni Fastpass (M-Pass) and Muni + BART (A-Pass) Fastpass. Thus the Calculator uses constructed averages to report daily, and monthly pass prices. For instance, to calculate the monthly price of a given trip in San Francisco, the calculator multiplies the current Single Trip Fare price by 27, which results in either $81 (the Muni only Fastpass price) or a price closer to the BART+Muni in San Francisco Fastpass price of $98.
Where loyalty transit passes don’t currently exist (e.g. Golden Gate Ferry), the Calculator displays a daily and monthly estimate that’s constructed based on the price of the single trip fare multiplied by the estimated number of trips taken within each time period. The calculator reports the Daily amount as 3x the Single Trip Fare, and it reports the Monthly amount as 36x the Single Trip Fare. .
While behavioral science indicates that transit riders will not always make the most rational decision, the Calculator always assumes that transit riders will choose a Daily, or Monthly fare product over paying more for multiple Single Trip Fares.