Fare Capping: Balancing Revenue and Equity Impacts (2022)

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Fare Capping BALANCING REVENUE AND EQUITY IMPACTS A SYNTHESIS OF TRANSIT PRACTICE Amy Pettine Eryn Rosenblum Brian Manford Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates Boston, MA 2022 Research sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration in cooperation with the Transit Development Corporation Subject Areas Passenger Transportation • Policy • Public Transportation T R A N S I T C O O P E R A T I V E R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M TCRP SYNTHESIS 160

TCRP SYNTHESIS 160 Project J-07, Topic SH-21 ISSN 1073-4880 ISBN 978-0-309-09464-1 © 2022 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Authors herein are responsible for the authenticity of their materials and for obtaining written permissions from publishers or persons who own the copyright to any previously published or copyrighted material used herein. Cooperative Research Programs (CRP) grants permission to reproduce material in this publication for classroom and not-for-profit purposes. Permission is given with the understanding that none of the material will be used to imply TRB, AASHTO, FAA, FHWA, FTA, GHSA, NHTSA, or TDC endorsement of a particular product, method, or practice. It is expected that those reproducing the material in this document for educational and not-for-profit uses will give appropriate acknowledgment of the source of any reprinted or reproduced material. For other uses of the material, request permission from CRP. 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The need for TCRP was originally identified in TRB Special Report 213—Research for Public Transit: New Directions, published in 1987 and based on a study sponsored by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration—now the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). A report by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), Transportation 2000, also recognized the need for local, problem- solving research. TCRP, modeled after the successful National Coop- erative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), undertakes research and other technical activities in response to the needs of transit ser- vice providers. The scope of TCRP includes various transit research fields including planning, service configuration, equipment, facilities, operations, human resources, maintenance, policy, and administrative practices. TCRP was established under FTA sponsorship in July 1992. Pro- posed by the U.S. Department of Transportation, TCRP was authorized as part of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA). On May 13, 1992, a memorandum agreement outlining TCRP operating procedures was executed by the three cooperating organi- zations: FTA; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, acting through the Transportation Research Board (TRB); and the Transit Development Corporation, Inc. (TDC), a nonprofit educational and research organization established by APTA. TDC is responsible for forming the independent governing board, designated as the TCRP Oversight and Project Selection (TOPS) Commission. Research problem statements for TCRP are solicited periodically but may be submitted to TRB by anyone at any time. It is the responsibility of the TOPS Commission to formulate the research program by identi- fying the highest priority projects. 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CRP STAFF FOR TCRP SYNTHESIS 160 Christopher J. Hedges, Director, Cooperative Research Programs Lori L. Sundstrom, Deputy Director, Cooperative Research Programs Gwen Chisholm Smith, Manager, Transit Cooperative Research Program Mariela Garcia-Colberg, Senior Program Officer Emily Griswold, Program Coordinator Natalie Barnes, Director of Publications Heather DiAngelis, Associate Director of Publications TCRP PROJECT J-07 PANEL Elizabeth Presutti, Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART), Des Moines, IA (Chair) Jameson Auten, Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, Kansas City, MO Mallory Avis, Battle Creek Transit, Battle Creek, MI Fabian Cevallos, Tamarac, FL Roderick B. Diaz, Southern California Regional Rail Authority, Los Angeles, CA Mark Donaghy, Petersburg, KY Rachel Dungca, Metro Transit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Anthony, MN Christian T. Kent, Christian T. Kent, Transit Management Consulting, LLC, Virginia Beach, VA Ronald J. Kilcoyne, TMD, Walnut Creek, CA Brad J. Miller, Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA), St. Petersburg, FL Beverly Neff, San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, San Diego, CA Jarrett William Stoltzfus, Proterra, Walnut, CA Edward F. Watt, Rockaway Park, NY David C. Wilcock, VHB, Boston, MA Tara Clark, FTA Liaison Arthur L. Guzzetti, APTA Liaison William Terry, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Liaison TOPIC SH-21 PANEL Jeffrey Bernstein, New Jersey Transit, Teaneck, NJ Fabian Cevallos, Tamarac, FL Maha Jahshan, King County (WA) Metro Transit, Kent, WA Peter Lipscombe, TransLink—Vancouver Transportation Agency, New Westminster, Canada Mark McCourt, Redhill Group, Inc., Irvine, CA Simon Matthieu Mosbah, WSP, Washington, DC Sam Sargent, Capital Metro, Austin, TX Kimberly Haynes Slaughter, SYSTRA, New York, NY John Xie, Foothill Transit, West Covina, CA Jason Yucis, FTA Liaison C O O P E R A T I V E R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M S

ABOUT THE TCRP SYNTHESIS PROGRAM Transit administrators, engineers, and researchers often face problems for which information already exists, either in documented form or as undocumented experience and practice. This infor- mation may be fragmented, scattered, and unevaluated. As a consequence, full knowledge of what has been learned about a problem may not be brought to bear on its solution. Costly research findings may go unused, valuable experience may be overlooked, and due consideration may not be given to recommended practices for solving or alleviating the problem. There is information on nearly every subject of concern to the transit industry. Much of it derives from research or from the work of practitioners faced with problems in their day-to-day work. To provide a systematic means for assembling and evaluating such useful information and to make it available to the entire transit community, the Transit Cooperative Research Program Oversight and Project Selection (TOPS) Committee authorized the Transportation Research Board to undertake a continuing study. This study, TCRP Project J-07, “Synthesis of Information Related to Transit Practices,” searches out and synthesizes useful knowledge from all available sources and prepares concise, documented reports on specific topics. Reports from this endeavor constitute a TCRP report series, Synthesis of Transit Practice. This synthesis series reports on current knowledge and practice, in a compact format, without the detailed directions usually found in handbooks or design manuals. Each report in the series provides a compendium of the best knowledge available on those measures found to be the most successful in resolving specific problems. FOREWORD By Mariela Garcia-Colberg Staff Officer Transportation Research Board Transit agencies in the United States are beginning to experiment with fare caps to ensure that passengers who pay for single rides do not pay more than multiple-ride passes included in their fare structure. A fare cap is a practice, in which users are charged according to rides taken over a period of time; a user’s combined fares over multiple rides cannot exceed the amount a rider would have paid if he or she had purchased the optimal period pass based on their usage. Fare capping offers many advantages: greater convenience, transit fairness, and, most of all, more equitable access to the discounts afforded by those who purchase transit passes. The practice of fare capping is growing quickly in the United States. Many agencies are considering fare capping but find that there are limited resources dedicated to this emerging practice. Because best practices in fare capping are still unclear, transit agencies may have a difficult time weighing fare capping’s benefits against its revenue costs or comparing costs against equity issues. The objective of this synthesis report is to document the implementation of fare capping in the North American transit agencies and its impacts on revenue, ridership, and equity goals. The report can help transit agency staff and others to better understand the benefits and challenges associated with fare capping. This report will also be helpful to agencies that are looking to improve upon their current fare collection system, which may present the option of fare capping moving forward. TCRP Synthesis 160 includes a review of the literature; a survey of 35 North American transit agen- cies that have recently considered implementing, are in the planning stages of implementing, or have implemented fare capping; and detailed case examples for five transit agencies that provide greater insight into the motivations, program designs, implementations, and lessons learned.

Amy Pettine, Eryn Rosenblum, and Brian Manford from Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates collected and synthesized the information and wrote the report, under the guidance of a panel of experts in the subject area. The members of the topic panel are acknowledged on page iv. This synthesis is an immediately useful document that records the practices that were acceptable within the limitations of the knowledge available at the time of its preparation. As progress in research and practice continues, new knowledge will be added to that now at hand.

Note: Photographs, figures, and tables in this report may have been converted from color to grayscale for printing. The electronic version of the report (posted on the web at www.trb.org) retains the color versions. 1 Summary 4 Chapter 1 Introduction 4 Background and Synthesis Objectives 5 Distinctive Aspects of Fare Capping 6 Technical Approach and Report Organization 7 Chapter 2 Review of Existing Research 7 Overview 9 Key Objectives and Motivations 11 History of Fare Capping 12 Approaches to Fare Capping in the United States 14 Summary 16 Chapter 3 Transit Agency Survey 16 Survey Data Collection Procedure 17 Characteristics of Responding Agencies 19 Survey Results by Topic 26 Chapter 4 Case Examples 26 Introduction 26 Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority 29 Miami-Dade Transit 32 C-TRAN 34 NFTA Metro 37 IndyGo 40 Summary 41 Chapter 5 Conclusions and Further Research 41 Motivations for, and Objectives of, Fare Capping 41 Key Findings 43 Future Research 45 References 48 Appendix A Survey Questionnaire 75 Appendix B Survey Responses 141 Appendix C Case Study [Example] Agency Interview Guide C O N T E N T S