70% of WMATA bus riders don't pay

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The issue with free or cheap buses is that you end up with homeless taking them over to sit in there all day long to hang out there. Same thing happens in SF. Then paying customers don’t want to use the buses because they’re dirty and stink, etc.

I ride both Metro and Ride On (the bus system that serves Montgomery County) pretty frequently. I haven't seen an increase in homeless people, or problematic people, on Ride On since they became free.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are they letting them on the bus? When I was a teenager and I didn't have enough money for the bus they didn't let me on and I was going to WORK.

Did you just try boarding the bus anyway?

Well back then I didn't know what the fare was I think it was $1.40-$1.80? maybe but you had to have exact change too. Forget about it if you had crumpled $1 bills. There was no websites to get this information from. Not at all like today.

Back then, the price was clearly posted. In addition, they were happy to take 2 crumpled $1 bills.

You can't possibly be suggesting that bus drivers interview riders and then make a judgement call as to whether they are going to someplace deemed important like WORK before deciding. Or maybe you mean the opposite, and someone going to WORK which generates money to pay for the fare should be not allowed, and someone going somewhere like a WIC appointment should be allowed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bus is super cheap. I can understand not wanting to pay for metro subway though. I like to take my kids downtown during the week in the summer and I feel like I'm always charged a rush hour fare of $6.50 no matter when I go. $6.5x 3 people x roundtrip= $39 just for a short trip

If you drive from Rockville to downtown, it's about 45 miles round trip. At the IRS rate of 70 cents a mile, that's $31.50 for gas, wear and tear, etc. and you still probably need to pay for parking. It's fine if you prefer to drive but either way there's a cost.

It's roughly equal from your estimate. Shouldn't the public option be much cheaper due to economies of scale?

The public option is much cheaper, unless you happen to have multiple riders in your vehicle. Many (most?) people commute alone, and for single riders metro is almost always cheaper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bus is super cheap. I can understand not wanting to pay for metro subway though. I like to take my kids downtown during the week in the summer and I feel like I'm always charged a rush hour fare of $6.50 no matter when I go. $6.5x 3 people x roundtrip= $39 just for a short trip

$40 to take two kids on the subway is insane.

But that is what it costs to take a couple of kids downtown. It is almost always cheaper to simply drive and pay for a garage.

DC needs to figure out what the priority is. To me, it's fewer drivers on the road and less pollution, so I'd prefer both to be free and/or inexpensive. For awhile, Tenley only had 2 hour parking, which made it impossible to even metro to Cleveland Park for dinner. Opening it to 4 hours means that I take the metro more often.

Why would you drive to Tenley and then metro to Cleveland Park? I am trying to figure out where someone would live that there isn't bus transportation to Tenley, isn't walking distance to Tenley, and that Tenley is the closest station.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL the metro busses say "FARE REQUIRED" on the front sign. And still no one is paying?! Says a lot about this area.

Certain routes are driving this.

The D20 (formerly known as the X2) averages about 315,000 boardings per month, but only 39,000 of them are paid (about 88% evade the fare), but the D80 (formerly the 33/31) averages about 338,000 boardings per month, with 183,000 paid (only 45% evade the fare).

Well have you considered the possibility that many people in need of public transportation are simply not aware that it’s required to pay the fare?

Maybe they just don’t know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL the metro busses say "FARE REQUIRED" on the front sign. And still no one is paying?! Says a lot about this area.

Certain routes are driving this.

The D20 (formerly known as the X2) averages about 315,000 boardings per month, but only 39,000 of them are paid (about 88% evade the fare), but the D80 (formerly the 33/31) averages about 338,000 boardings per month, with 183,000 paid (only 45% evade the fare).

Well have you considered the possibility that many people in need of public transportation are simply not aware that it’s required to pay the fare?

Maybe they just don’t know?

Could this ignorance be because of the DC public school system? Or the fare evaders are lawless reprobates, disobeying God’s commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” These people are 1 reason Trump had to deploy the National Guard. I blame the parents (probably just a single mother) who is too lazy or criminal herself to teach her children to do the right thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL the metro busses say "FARE REQUIRED" on the front sign. And still no one is paying?! Says a lot about this area.

Certain routes are driving this.

The D20 (formerly known as the X2) averages about 315,000 boardings per month, but only 39,000 of them are paid (about 88% evade the fare), but the D80 (formerly the 33/31) averages about 338,000 boardings per month, with 183,000 paid (only 45% evade the fare).

Well have you considered the possibility that many people in need of public transportation are simply not aware that it’s required to pay the fare?

Maybe they just don’t know?

Absolutely not. The route designation - the LED sign in the front of the bus that indicates the route number and destination - cycles through FARE REQUIRED every few seconds. At every single bus stop, the bus makes an automated announcement to people waiting on the street "Route: [XX], destination: [YY]. The base fare for this bus is $2.25"

Don't tell me that people don't know they have to pay for the bus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL the metro busses say "FARE REQUIRED" on the front sign. And still no one is paying?! Says a lot about this area.

Certain routes are driving this.

The D20 (formerly known as the X2) averages about 315,000 boardings per month, but only 39,000 of them are paid (about 88% evade the fare), but the D80 (formerly the 33/31) averages about 338,000 boardings per month, with 183,000 paid (only 45% evade the fare).

Well have you considered the possibility that many people in need of public transportation are simply not aware that it’s required to pay the fare?

Maybe they just don’t know?

Absolutely not. The route designation - the LED sign in the front of the bus that indicates the route number and destination - cycles through FARE REQUIRED every few seconds. At every single bus stop, the bus makes an automated announcement to people waiting on the street "Route: [XX], destination: [YY]. The base fare for this bus is $2.25"

Don't tell me that people don't know they have to pay for the bus.

Are we sure they can read?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I rode the buses in the 80s and 90s. They would not let you on the bus without paying your fare. Why did that change?

So you're like 100 now?

92. Question is still valid - when and why did that change?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL the metro busses say "FARE REQUIRED" on the front sign. And still no one is paying?! Says a lot about this area.

Certain routes are driving this.

The D20 (formerly known as the X2) averages about 315,000 boardings per month, but only 39,000 of them are paid (about 88% evade the fare), but the D80 (formerly the 33/31) averages about 338,000 boardings per month, with 183,000 paid (only 45% evade the fare).

Well have you considered the possibility that many people in need of public transportation are simply not aware that it’s required to pay the fare?

Maybe they just don’t know?

There are signs. They also are told. It really is not ignorance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL the metro busses say "FARE REQUIRED" on the front sign. And still no one is paying?! Says a lot about this area.

Certain routes are driving this.

The D20 (formerly known as the X2) averages about 315,000 boardings per month, but only 39,000 of them are paid (about 88% evade the fare), but the D80 (formerly the 33/31) averages about 338,000 boardings per month, with 183,000 paid (only 45% evade the fare).

Well have you considered the possibility that many people in need of public transportation are simply not aware that it’s required to pay the fare?

Maybe they just don’t know?

What do you mean maybe they don’t know? Do you think bus riders are stupid or illiterate ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ALL the metro busses say "FARE REQUIRED" on the front sign. And still no one is paying?! Says a lot about this area.

Certain routes are driving this.

The D20 (formerly known as the X2) averages about 315,000 boardings per month, but only 39,000 of them are paid (about 88% evade the fare), but the D80 (formerly the 33/31) averages about 338,000 boardings per month, with 183,000 paid (only 45% evade the fare).

Well have you considered the possibility that many people in need of public transportation are simply not aware that it’s required to pay the fare?

Maybe they just don’t know?

Absolutely not. The route designation - the LED sign in the front of the bus that indicates the route number and destination - cycles through FARE REQUIRED every few seconds. At every single bus stop, the bus makes an automated announcement to people waiting on the street "Route: [XX], destination: [YY]. The base fare for this bus is $2.25"

Don't tell me that people don't know they have to pay for the bus.

Are we sure they can read?

Plenty of Washingtonians are functionally illiterate, but the vast majority aren't deaf as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The issue with free or cheap buses is that you end up with homeless taking them over to sit in there all day long to hang out there. Same thing happens in SF. Then paying customers don’t want to use the buses because they’re dirty and stink, etc.

I ride both Metro and Ride On (the bus system that serves Montgomery County) pretty frequently. I haven't seen an increase in homeless people, or problematic people, on Ride On since they became free.

+1 Same. I use public transportation (metro+bus) all the time in both MoCo and DC and have never even witnessed a problematic incident on the bus. It's working people and kids getting where they need to go. Yes, some people don't pay. But I will say that there were often times a year ago that the bus fare reader machine was out of service and taped up and I thought people got out of the habit of paying. But this year I haven't seen as many problems with the fare readers. Having the WMATA card on the phone also helps--no digging around to find it anymore.

My big complaint is that buses are not always where they're supposed to be a good chunk of the time. Not sure what's wrong with their GPS but on the app it will show for a long period that your bus will appear in 2 minutes (in real-time), and then all of a sudden it changes, and it's 25 minutes away, so for me, bus is not nearly as reliable as metro if you're commuting to work so I will often walk to metro just to avoid being disappointed by the much closer bus. It seems like WMATA should be able to have better tech on communicating schedules than they do have.

[Anonymous]

I saved just over $3500 during that period when the Metro was payment optional. Just to see what would happen, I invested it separately from my normal funds and it’s inching towards $20k since then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I rode the buses in the 80s and 90s. They would not let you on the bus without paying your fare. Why did that change?

So you're like 100 now?

92. Question is still valid - when and why did that change?

It changed over time. The main reason is probably safety. You have no idea how often bus drivers get assaulted and there is really no point in setting them up to be assaulted by requiring them to enforce the requirement to pay a fare. The cost to WMATA for workers' compensation claims due to an assault is astronomical in comparison to the cost of a missing fare. And, there will never be enough MTPD officers to ride all of the buses and enforce payment of fares.