Post-COVID Transit Fares for Riders and Recovery

Abstract

In the face of persistent large-scale changes in travel behavior spurred by the COVID19 pandemic, mass transit agencies face a landscape full of new challenges. Transit ridership, often used as a primary measure of agency success, remains diminished. Nevertheless, the purpose of and benefits provided by a well-designed and well-operated transit network remain unchanged. This thesis investigates one powerful tool at the disposal of transit providers: fare policy. Fare policy can be used to spur transit usage, to fund agency operations, and to respond to societal goals. Rider-centric fare policies that simultaneously increase transit travel volumes while showing only small negative fare revenue impacts can be identified. Implementation of such policies is key moving forward to maintain public investment and individual engagement.

This thesis presents four case studies that analyze fare equity, new fare products, and multi-agency regional fare integration. First, fare equity is considered through a case study of Washington, DC’s Metrorail transit fare structure, residential and employment geography, and user demographics. The results highlight policy elements that consistently improve fare equity regardless of structure type, including peak pricing differentiation and removal of penalties for circuitous travel. The second case study designs and evaluates novel fare products using post-pandemic travel patterns on the CTA. The hypothetical products considered differ from traditional offerings by changing the usage restrictions and the validity periods. A flexible pass that confers a set number of CTA journeys at a discounted per-trip price is found to be the most promising, as it would provide the most utility to riders for whom pay-per-use travel is currently the most economical choice. The third case study considers single-day fare capping as an alternative to traditional 1-day passes for transit users in Chicago, identifying benefits to reduced-fare and bus-only riders while providing opportunities to boost agency ridership. Finally, the results of a recently introduced fully-integrated, multi-agency transit pass in the Chicago region are analyzed. Fare structure changes are used to estimate post-COVID commuter rail fare elasticity, and the elasticity for integrated passes. Additional findings include large increases in cross-agency travel, new customers accessing secondary transit agencies, and continued opportunities to integrate.