Fareless Metro

To: Chairperson Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board members

LA Metro is considering whether to proceed with a proposed Fareless Transit System Initiative (FSI) pilot program that would provide many bus and rail transit riders with the opportunity to use LA Metro’s transit system without paying fares. System operations would be supported by other Metro revenues. We wish to encourage LA Metro’s efforts to provide bold and innovative solutions to our community’s transportation challenges, especially as we all work to recover and rebuild transit ridership from the consequences of this past year’s COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn it created.

However, we believe that LA Metro is missing a very important opportunity if it chooses to include only low-income community college students in its program, rather than including all community college students. We hope to convince you that the community as a whole, as well as Metro itself, will be better served by inclusion of the entire Los Angeles County community college student universe in the Fareless Transit System Initiative.

1. Rebuilding a robust bus and rail transit ridership, as quickly as possible, is an existential challenge for Metro.

One important goal of the proposed Fairless Transit System Initiative is to rebuild Metro’s bus and rail ridership that has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Metro’s system was providing service to 1.2 million riders prior to the pandemic, but now provides service to about 500,000 riders.

Some have questioned whether, after the pandemic, transit service will still be relevant to the future of this and other cities. Rebuilding the Metro ridership, which had been in decline for several years prior to the pandemic, is a very important part of Metro’s effort, as a system operator, planner and builder, to reestablish the importance of its mission as rapidly as possible to the county community as a whole.

2. The community college student universe as a whole is an ideal population for Metro to target in this effort.

In Metro’ campaign to rebuild its ridership, a population like community college students, which includes a significant share of low income would-be riders, is old enough to be independent, adventurous enough to try new things, environmentally conscious enough to value transit, and not affluent enough to own their own cars, should be a fertile market for the transit message.

And, unlike most of the workforce, the schedule of many community college students enables them to travel during off- peak periods when the system is more apt to have empty seats and the added costs of new riders is low.

3. Enabling low-income community college students to ride the system without fare is very good, but not optimal. Including the full student population in the program makes much more sense.

Roughly 2/3 of the community college student population are from low-income families and would qualify for Metro’s program as initially proposed. Yet, the administrative procedure for identifying who qualifies and providing them with a “pass” in some form will likely be itself costly to Metro and will still have administrative barriers to participation for many of the low-income students who do qualify. Indeed, experience with the low-cost student transit pass program should have taught Metro that aversion to administrative hoops is as much a barrier to participation in student pass programs as is costs. In addition, enabling only low-income students to participate will create for many such students a worry that being a “qualified” transit rider will carry with it some social stigma, further reducing the incentive to participate.

If the entire universe of community college students are eligible, then the process for qualifying and providing each student with the needed “pass,” in whatever form, becomes less administratively complex and costly for Metro, as well as for colleges and college students. What is easier is usually less costly. And, Metro will have reduced administrative hoops and the barriers they create for all students, not just for the 1/3 of students that would then become eligible.

Keep in mind, college students who are not low income are more likely to have cars at their disposal. A smaller share of them will be likely to take transit even when it is free and therefore less likely to create additional costs for the system at all.

4. If Metro insists that inclusion in the program of the 1/3 of students who are not low income creates too great a cost risk, then let us help you out.

Several LA County community college campuses, e.g., Santa Monica College, already operate robust student transit pass programs funded in significant part by small universal student fees paid at registration each semester, usually in the neighborhood of $15-20 per semester. These fees were approved on each campus either by a student referendum or by a vote of the Associated Students. Eight of nine campuses in the LACCD system have also approved such fees via student referendums, but these program have not been implemented.

Metro should take these campuses up on an offer, should the colleges make such an offer, to collect small universal fees from all students to cover some share of the Fareless Transit System Initiative costs. Campuses can then create their own exemptions for low-income students without burdensome new Metro procedures by relying upon student participation in pre-existing programs for awarding financial aid to low income students, e.g., Pell Grants, Calgrants, etc..

Indeed, Metro’s ambition is to seek federal funding to cover much of the costs of this Fareless Transit System Initiative. Metro may find a more receptive federal government when it is presented with such an additional innovation.

• MoveLA.org: Move LA’s mission is to build a broad constituency that will advocate for the development of a comprehensive, diverse, robust, clean, and financially sound public transportation system for Los Angeles County, champion strategies to accelerate its implementation and policies that will ensure prosperous and healthy neighborhoods around stations where people of all ages and incomes can live, work and thrive.