Angry Transit Nerd

First of all, I want to apologize for taking so long for a second post.  The last thing the Internet needs is another dead blog.  It turns out that being angry is easy, but presenting that anger coherently and backed by research is a lot of work.

"King County Metro Route 120 terminating" by Oran Viriyincy

You said two, didn't you?  But look again.  It's Metro route 120 outbound from downtown Seattle, which means it's pay-as-you-leave.  To deter fare evasion, the operator will not open the rear door outside of the Ride Free Area, even to board passengers.  Thus all boarding and alighting outside the Ride Free Area takes place through the front door only.  No bus manufacturer in their right mind would build a 60-foot coach with only one door, but that's how Metro uses them.

Just yesterday evening a friend and I were on a very full 73 from downtown to her apartment in Eastlake.  Having been pushed toward the back of the coach by boarding passengers, we then had to squeeze though an aisle crowded with standees to pay and exit the coach, all the while hampered by Metro's preference for floorplans that maximize seating rather than enable internal circulation.  This same slow deboarding process occurs at every stop, and what's worse is that any passengers waiting to board have to wait until it is completed.

Most other cities I have visited understand the importance of simultaneous boarding and alighting and a front-to-back flow.  For instance, in New York City an automated announcement of "please exit through the rear door" is played every time someone pulls the stop cord.  The rear doors are passenger-activated, so they remain closed most of the time and largely deter people from sneaking on through the back door and not paying.

Of course, pay-as-you-leave is merely an artifact of the downtown Ride Free Area. Eliminating the Ride Free Area would require a lot of political will, as Seattle pays Metro a subsidy for it (though whether Seattle pays enough is a subject of contention).  Downtown businesses like it.  And it's supposed to keep buses moving through the CBD, where high boarding volumes would exacerbate the problem of slow fare collection.

But times have changed since the Ride Free Area was instituted in 1973.  The fare system in place at that time had 30 zones - 20 cents base plus 10 cents for each additional zone, which I'm sure made collection a nightmare.  It would be four years before the first local employer (Safeco) subsidized transit passes for its employees.  The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel was over a decade away, and the 3rd Avenue busway wouldn't appear until even later.  And of course, the technology behind ORCA hadn't even been invented yet.

Meanwhile, we have a completely backwards situation with respect to Link Light Rail.  Unlike the buses in the DSTT, Link officially does not participate in the RFA.  But also unlike the buses, Link uses a proof-of-payment system where fare inspectors board vehicles at random and enforce fares.  Having a free area on a bus requires pay-as-you-leave, or if you're Portland, making fare payment "optional" within the area.  But with a POP system, it's as simple as not having your fare inspectors enforce fares within the zone.  By all logic, Link should be free downtown and buses should not.  This is the system that Portland has adopted in their rebrand of "Fareless Square" as the "Free Rail Zone."

In conclusion, here's my (incomplete) recipe for ending the Ride Free Area and getting rid of this pay-as-you-leave nonsense once and for all:

1. End it.  All surface buses are pay-as-you-board, all the time.
2. Consolidate routes that enter the CBD.  Metro is currently looking at deleting several Eastside routes that are duplicative of ST and other Metro routes that enter Downtown Seattle and improving service on local Eastside routes to provide better transfer opportunities.  This is an encouraging sign, and I think this trend needs to continue.
3. Make ORCA more attractive.  I know there has been resistance to the idea of a cash surcharge based on social equity concerns, but I think it's an idea worth looking at.  And they really need to make ORCA easier to obtain and refill.  I've heard they're talking about adding TVMs at places like Bellevue TC, which is a good step.  Why is it you can't get a new ORCA card at the same retailers where you can add value to an existing card?
4. Make the DSTT platforms a fare-paid area.  Since operational rules prohibit coaches from passing in the DSTT and fares are never collected on Link, I think it would be a mistake to have buses in the DSTT collecting fares. And it is sounding like buses will remain in the tunnel until at least 2020, so a solution would need to be found to support continued joint operations.  The trick is that the fare differences between the three services in the tunnel (Metro, ST Express, and Link) make enforcing fares on the platforms instead of the vehicles difficult.  I don't have a perfect solution here.

A final note: you may have noticed that I haven't said anything about the front-door-only-after-7 rule.  Well I've been reading a copy of "The Book" over on the Puget Sound Transit Operators blog, and Section 6, Subsection 23 reads: "When scheduled to leave a terminal in the Ride-Free Area boundary between 7 p.m. and 5:59 a.m. (non-RFA hours), collect fares and issue transfers when customers board. Use the front door only to load. Customers may exit through either door" and "When operating to downtown Seattle, fares are to be collected and transfers issued when customers board. Use front door to load and both doors to unload."  I don't know if the policy has changed recently, but if my reading is correct, the policy does not require unloading through the front door only after 7 PM.  If anyone has insight on this, I would love to hear it.