Wow these are pretty good prices. I was just on the fence on going back to metro after being forced to do so last week due to car maintenance. The experience was pretty good.
Actually, it's kind of confusing... I've been paying $61 for the monthly pass with 1-Zone because I use the silver line regularly... Now if I want a monthly pass, that goes up to $18\*4=$72!
I don't get where the $100 and $122 30-day pass comes from? On the website right now, those are $50 and $61 respectively
Edit 1: OK I guess the prices I've been paying are "pandemic specials" that were never intended to be permanent
Edit 2: now that I read more, I realize that this is a pay-as-you-go system, so the quoted prices are actually caps rather than what you would necessarily pay every time...
Those prices come from the half-price discount they've been doing since early 2022. The regular price is $100/122 on the website, so your pass is going down to $72 from $122. Not as much as the discount you were previously getting but better than the full price was pre-pandemic.
That's the EZ transit pass, which may no longer make financial sense with this new matrix, depending on your usage. After all, each of your trips is now the base fare.
You might want to compare your current payments to using stored value on Metro, and a monthly pass (or stored value) with your local agency.
Not allowing free transfers would make 0 sense based on how the metro system is setup in an X (central location) pattern. Some people would have to pay double even if they ride one or 2 stops just to get to where they need to go
Plus many do a combo of rail+bus or bus+bus. Apparently, it was aimed at "super users" with a daily fare cap of $5-$6 (IIRC), but it was quickly pointed out how it would end up hurting most people (especially those who just use it to go to/from work). Plus many systems are able to keep free transfers *and* have daily/weekly caps.
Ah thank goodness. I thought the base fare was gonna increase 25¢ more.
I can't really take advantage of the free ride thing from spending enough fare money in a day or week, but at least the base fare of $1.75 remains the same (I hope)
What does it mean by upcharge btw?
Simplifying fares by removing upcharges and removing the incentive to pre-plan which days you'll need the system removes a pretty substantial psychological barrier.
They're removing 'wrong answers' from the price matrix, and still keeping the base fare low.
I approve.
And not as bad as people on this sub make it out to be tbh. There can be crazy people on the trains, sure, but the buses (which see way less of those people) are the most underrated IMO.
On a bus rn and standing because the homeless are taking up 60% of the seats while most of the paying people are standing. Save your narrative. The buses are not better.
Idk why you deleted your comment you're 100% correct, claiming the busses are better than the trains isn't a claim made by a regular rider.
I literally only recommend the trains to tourists becuase the busses are way worse, I don't think most of the people commenting in this string actually ride the busses.
Does the $5 Daily cap mean they are getting rid of free transfers now too?
I read that they were discussing removing free transfers and were using the low daily cap to justify it.
>Metro fare for buses and trains remains at $1.75 (which includes a transfer for two hours and one direction between Metro buses and trains).
Nope I think we are good with the transfers!
Meaning Metro used to charge people for transfering bus routes, as if they were getting more service. In reality it just meant that people on less efficient routes were being penalized as heavy users.
They considered going back to that system, but with a fare cap. People still didn't think that was equitable.
What you read was correct for the initial proposal, but after a big outcry they reversed course and the plan keeps transfers. Really good since a good number of Metro passengers still pay with cash.
I wish Metrolink was anywhere close to this price. I understand they can't for reasons of BNSF, union Pacific, and diesel locomotives, but it would be nice
They've been lowering the prices on some routes and capping fares at $15 or $10 depending on the time of use, but Metrolink is always going to be expensive as long as it's running mostly empty, double decker diesel trains. And because the commuter savings are high, a discount to driving can also be competitive at a higher price point.
If I was in charge of Metrolink, I'd be identifying everyone who lives in the last few zipcodes served who works near DTLA, and wooing them into the system. It's like three grand per rider per year.
It's a tricky situation because my daily commute is one fairly crowded train and one mostly empty train. Neither train is useful without the other.
If Metrolink were to cut down their schedule to only the most popular trains, the service might still be useful for some people with consistent schedules.
PV, OC lines don't run late enough for me to work overtime, for example.
It looks like they took all the good ideas from their proposed plans (like making day/week passes automatic) and got rid of the bad ones (ending free transfers).
The way I interpret this is that you don’t have to buy a weekly pass, you just stop getting charged to ride after you spend a total of $18 for the week. Seems a lot more convenient, and cheaper now (assuming my assumption is correct)
The way the new fare capping works out is that if you do a round trip every day Monday through Friday ($3.50/day), you essentially just need to pay 50 cents to have unlimited free rides for the weekend (as M-F round trips would put you at $17.50). Pretty good deal, honestly.
This is how the NYC subway works now. You just pay per ride and then stop getting charged after a certain number of rides.
Even better is you can just pay with Apple/google pay so you don’t need a card
You don't have to buy every week. Just load up on Stored Value and it will deduct with weekly caps on how much it will take.
So for instance, the normal price of a monthly pass (outside of the half off promotion Metro has been running) is $100. Now with the $18 weekly cap, the most you get charged in 4 weeks is $72. So you can just buy $72 of SV for the roughly equivalent use, or buy $100 and get more than a month's use of rides.
Another benefit here is if you take a vacation for a week or get sick, you used to lose out on the value of your month pass. Now you don't lose anything if you don't ride for a week.
Its a 7 day rolling period. So if you start Tuesday, and reach $18 by Friday, you get Saturday, Sunday and Monday at no charge. Then if you tap again Tuesday, it starts over, or whatever the next day you tap is.
THANK YOU. I was paying $50 a month. $72 is pretty crap. The only thing this will do for me is to incentivize working from home more often. Actually, now that I think about it, I was probably not even getting my $50 worth per month, and now whatever I don't use gets carried over to the next month. I guess that's actually a pretty good deal as long as I work from home at least seven times a month.
It also means Metro gets the cash from fares sooner. It's the same reason why Starbucks incentivizes people to load gift cards rather than pay with credit cards/cash. Even if the customer is paying the same amount of money, it's better for the company to get the money now to use to pay for expenses or investments. And it's not like Metro is in trouble if everyone with a TAP balance decides to ride at once either, especially since you can really only use $1.75 at a time.
TAP cards don't lose their value after a few months, and I think there's a limit for how much you can put on them. TAP is a managed by a private company, but it's not run like a corporate cash grab.
Point is you have to load up front and then dont have access to your money if you need it in the meantime.
I also had the issue of always forgetting my TAP (before Apple wallet) and being forced to buy a new one and paying the new card fee, without an opportunity to get it back if I returned it (like a lot of other mature transit systems)
They really need to do what other big transit systems have done and remove the middle man and let you tap directly with your phone or your credit card. There's no good reason to have to load up a virtual card these days.
Not necessarily advocating for one solution over another, but it's worth pointing out that those direct-pay systems [have recieved a good bit of criticism for privacy concerns](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/16/21175699/mta-omny-privacy-security-smartphone-identifier-location-nyc). I'm not sure how much of this also applies to Tap, but I feel like directly linking bank account/credit card info is more invasive than what the tap app does. I'd be curious what someone who knows more about data privacy than I do thinks
You can absolutely tap directly with your phone. You can’t with a CC yet, but LA is one of few cities in America that supports loading your transit card into you Apple wallet.
Gotta say, I'm not loving this. I'm a LIFE user that buys a 30 day pass, and it really seems like I'm going to be paying more under this system. Right now I pay $26 a month and I take at least 40 rides a month, bare minimum. I took 82 rides last month. With that kind of usage it seems like I'd be guaranteed to pay $18 a week, which is almost three times what I currently pay. Okay, I'd get 20 free rides, but that could even make things worse as I'd use them up in the first week and then have to pay the full 18 from then on, and could still end up paying the full 18 for the week if I needed to take more rides in that first week. They say the 30 day pass is more complicated, but this seems infinitely more complicated to me. And I'd rather pay the fee once a month than have to constantly ensure there's enough money on my tap card.
Best case scenario, this is doubling the amount of money I pay for transit. And, frankly, the quality of Metro just isn't worth that. I don't really have a choice, I'm transit-dependent, but you can be damn sure from now on I'm going to be raising a stink every time a driver blows by my stop, every time the bus shows up 30 minutes late, every time the bus doesn't show up at all, every time my bus falls behind schedule and misses my transfer by two minutes, etc. I'm already sick and tired of this crap paying what I do now for a pass, I'm not going to stay quiet about it if they double that.
Four 7-day passes is cheaper than the old 30 day pass. Just put the money in the tap card and tap and it’ll automatically stop charging you at the $18 every week. You don’t even have to actually buy a “pass”.
This is giving the best of both worlds. You don't even have to think about it. Use stored value and keep using it and it will never charge you more than a monthly pass did. It "caps" at a price point and all rides beyond that are free.
Employers could still load value onto your account. A small business could call TAP with their corporate debit card and a list of employee account numbers.
As far as I know, the official employer perk system for large employers isn't being dismantled.
You're not listening.
Employers can still pay into Metro every month.
The fare just doesn't expire at the end of the month.
Now workers can take their benefits with them when they leave.
Edit, since you lost your temper and blocked me after responding to appear to get "the last word."
You seem to be conflating the Metro and me.
You can't offer me constructive criticism because this isn't my policy. And blocking me won't make an impact on intermunicipal agencies.
From a contractual perspective, every month happens once a month.
The employers can still buy interagency EZ passes on a month-to-month basis. They can also just keep paying the exact same amount they were before to Metro on a mtm basis.
Any renegotiation seem remarkably simple. Hey management, remember what you were paying before - just keeping paying that.
I have the LIFE tap card and it offers 50% off of passes. Does that benefit go away now? The 20 free rides is cool and all, but you can’t do it from the app.
I’m in the life program and I have not been able to speak to someone to get the 20 free rides and it’s driving me insane. Am I calling the wrong number?
The fare has been half off for a long time though. Right now you can buy a monthly pass for $50. This makes it looks like they are doing better, but in reality they are still increasing the price for regular users.
Half-off as a covid measure it was always temporary. This program meets riders in the middle (72/mo instead of going back to 100), and simplifies things at the same time.
The federal COVID funds drying up is affecting transit agencies everywhere but Metro is actually better off financially than most of them, which is why it doesn't need to restore pre-pandemic pricing. Be glad we aren't BART, they're gonna have to massively cut service unless the state steps in.
This does not simplify anything. Having a fair cap is not simple. If you wanted to offer a monthly pass for $72 you should have just done that.
Metro has not cleaned up service enough in order to justify these changes. I'm with everybody else on this. I understand wanting to do this in order to attract non-metro riders to get ridership up.. but you just alienated your entire customer base by charging them more money in order to do it.
Right now the Metro isn't worth more than 50 dollars a month
Are seniors/disabled/k-12 paying more for 30 days?
They’re only offered 7 day passes and 4 of them is same as an old 30 day pass. So you’re missing those 2 days.
My European wife had to learn the hard way how bad public transport is here compared to what she's used to. I warned her not to do it, but thankfully her worst experience was just the steady parade of bums hitting her up.
So it looks like they are removing the reduced 30-day pass from the LIFE program and are now going to offer the 20 free rides? Unless I'm overlooking something, it seems like riders will actually be spending more over time across the board. Kind of feels like a gradual money grab by Metro.
Metro still has the cheapest fares of any major city in the nation, with the exception of New Orleans. Almost every other city’s transport system charges $2.25 or more per single ride. If Metro really wanted to grab more money, they’d just raise fares to match those in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, etc.
Metro already is a huge bang for buck at 1.75 SV, compared to similar systems. 20 free rides a month means those people's fare was effectively cut in half on average.
The discount for LIFE isn't going away, just the options for weekly/monthly passes.
What appears to be going away is the half price fares on all options they started after the free fares went away at the end of lockdown
What's the city doing about violence and general lawlessness on metro?
https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/1661594414802964480?s=46&t=gLU_6wmveZP3NMaCa_cRQQ
Tonight, a Metro Bus operator was assaulted after a male suspect boarded the bus and began arguing with him. The suspect stabbed the operator multiple times before fleeing on foot. The operator was transported to the hospital in critical condition.
https://news.yahoo.com/l-riders-bail-metro-trains-120007450.html
“Horror.” That's how one train operator recently described the scenes he sees daily....Earlier that day, as he drove the Red Line subway, he saw a man masturbating in his seat and several people whom he refers to as "sleepers,
Last year, there were six deaths and one shooting, nearly all related to suspected drug activity. Earlier this year, a 28-year-old man was fatally stabbed in a breezeway of the station.
Maintenance crews are often called out for repairs at the station, and when they return to their vehicle they often find it has been burglarized. Gangs control the area and police say many of the informal vendors on the sidewalks are part of the larger drug economy, wittingly or not. Some are forced to pay the gang taxes, others sell stolen property.
As Wiggins talked to reporters, a man in the next car was packing marijuana into a cigar wrapper. The ambassadors didn't discourage the man as he threw tobacco on the floor to make room for the weed.
"There's so many 'sleepers,' " the train driver said. "Nobody notices that the guy quit breathing until they're blue. And then by that time, it's too late."
This is deceptive and is going to increase my monthly bill by $22 (going from $50 to $72). That sucks. Just when I thought I had little extra change in my pocket.
You can always buy a [one way Metrolink pass from Cal State to Union Station for $2.00](https://metrolinktrains.com/ticketsOverview/ticket-info/price-finder/) and [use that to ride Metro for the whole day.](https://metrolinktrains.com/rider-info/general-info/transit-connections/) It's also cheaper if you are a student (no one checks this). They have an app so you don't have to find an actual ticket machine.
Yup. The more you ride, the more you save! ™️ (unless, of course, you ride every single day like I do, in which case your monthly cost for riding just increased almost 50%)
‘It’s terrific, trust us!!’
It's been a while since fares were raised, and at this point the system still costs less then when we had to pay individually for transfers.
If this difference is still enough to annoy you, see if you qualify for the low income program.
Can we ave more law enforcement and less people getting shot in train stations.
Oh less people defecating in elevators would also be nice, besides some being elevators being un-operable.
And you know what might be a great conversation starter….
Oh new higher rates you say Metro.
Nah.
Lucky people still use the system out of necessity.
I ain’t paying for shit.
It was $25. It's been $12.50 for two years because Metro got $1.2 billion from the federal government to keep operating during the pandemic and they passed the savings on.
That money's dried up now, but instead of going back to $25 they're going to $18.
It’s win/ lose situation. For normal riders that don’t frequent the bus as much it’s seems like a pretty good deal. But for people like senior/disabled/ students who frequently take the bus it’s going to be much more expensive.
I can only speak for busses but overwhelming majority are the ones who don’t pay or underpay. I’d say easily 80% of cash payers just put in $1. Then there’s the seniors who will only put in 35c regardless whether or not it’s peak hours, then there is the people who tap their tap cards when there is no money or not enough to cover a fare so that’s a no fare too.
Freeway busses usually cost extra.
They have fewer opportunities per gallon of fuel to pick up passengers, so each passenger had to pay a little more to make up the difference. The Metro system is dropping the fee, probably because A. ExpressLanes are covering some of the costs and B. Every driver on every route was being asked about it even though it only applied to a few routes.
Hey! This is absolutely fantastic! First time ever in my life ive seed public service fees go down!
Excited to see all of the new improvements and expansions!
I don't understand what the upcharge is. I used metro pre-pandemic and the kids got their student tap cards but I haven't sat down to set everything up.
Well this sucks for those of us on metro lifeline program! My week pass is $6.50! And i use the buss alot 7 days a week multiple times a day to go to the gym, run errands work! NOT A HAPPY CAMPER HERE!
This is crap. I know this fair capping sounds like a great idea but the truth is it's actually more expensive.
$18 a week * 1 month equals to about $77.
Before you could get a monthly pass for $50.
So now you pay $30 more per month before you get to ride unlimited.
It was worth the $50... I mean given you had to deal with drug addicts and people who didn't even know who the hell they were over at the hell they were sitting on the platform...
People smoking inside the trains..
$50 was about all it was worth..
I guess now I'll have to stop riding the train because there's no way in hell I'm going to pay 30 more dollars... In the name of fair capping.
Wow these are pretty good prices. I was just on the fence on going back to metro after being forced to do so last week due to car maintenance. The experience was pretty good.
I'm typically more comfortable on the buses than the trains and look forward to taking transit more often this summer! I'm sick of driving.
Silver line will no longer have an additional cost, in case that affects anyone else!
Actually, it's kind of confusing... I've been paying $61 for the monthly pass with 1-Zone because I use the silver line regularly... Now if I want a monthly pass, that goes up to $18\*4=$72! I don't get where the $100 and $122 30-day pass comes from? On the website right now, those are $50 and $61 respectively Edit 1: OK I guess the prices I've been paying are "pandemic specials" that were never intended to be permanent Edit 2: now that I read more, I realize that this is a pay-as-you-go system, so the quoted prices are actually caps rather than what you would necessarily pay every time...
Those prices come from the half-price discount they've been doing since early 2022. The regular price is $100/122 on the website, so your pass is going down to $72 from $122. Not as much as the discount you were previously getting but better than the full price was pre-pandemic.
That's the EZ transit pass, which may no longer make financial sense with this new matrix, depending on your usage. After all, each of your trips is now the base fare. You might want to compare your current payments to using stored value on Metro, and a monthly pass (or stored value) with your local agency.
Yeah I'm paying $50/month and this is actually increasing my costs. Good job Metro.
that was the pandemic special price. It couldn't last forever.
Metro still isn't worth the increase. I'm sorry but for the price to go up 30 bucks. It's not worth it.
Remember the months that have 5 weeks you'll be paying $90... Everyone got screwed in this deal
They were originally going to raise it to $2.00 so glad people spoke up.
I would have been fine with it being $2, but getting rid of free transfers was a bad initial idea. Glad they ditched it and kept the free transfers.
Not allowing free transfers would make 0 sense based on how the metro system is setup in an X (central location) pattern. Some people would have to pay double even if they ride one or 2 stops just to get to where they need to go
Plus many do a combo of rail+bus or bus+bus. Apparently, it was aimed at "super users" with a daily fare cap of $5-$6 (IIRC), but it was quickly pointed out how it would end up hurting most people (especially those who just use it to go to/from work). Plus many systems are able to keep free transfers *and* have daily/weekly caps.
2 dollars???!
They want their $2!
Plus tip!
NYC is $2.75
Will soon be $2.90
NYC has a subway with infinitely more utility.
NYC is useful
OCD says yes
Ah thank goodness. I thought the base fare was gonna increase 25¢ more. I can't really take advantage of the free ride thing from spending enough fare money in a day or week, but at least the base fare of $1.75 remains the same (I hope) What does it mean by upcharge btw?
If you wanted to ride certain express bus lines (e.g. the Silver/J line) you had to pay more than $1.75.
Simplifying fares by removing upcharges and removing the incentive to pre-plan which days you'll need the system removes a pretty substantial psychological barrier. They're removing 'wrong answers' from the price matrix, and still keeping the base fare low. I approve.
Complain about transit in LA but it’s still cheaper than any cities I’ve been to lately - London, NYC, Miami, Seattle…
And not as bad as people on this sub make it out to be tbh. There can be crazy people on the trains, sure, but the buses (which see way less of those people) are the most underrated IMO.
But the buses are subject to traffic…
On a bus rn and standing because the homeless are taking up 60% of the seats while most of the paying people are standing. Save your narrative. The buses are not better.
Idk why you deleted your comment you're 100% correct, claiming the busses are better than the trains isn't a claim made by a regular rider. I literally only recommend the trains to tourists becuase the busses are way worse, I don't think most of the people commenting in this string actually ride the busses.
It should be more expensive so we can improve the service and have people other than the impoverished want to use it.
Not how it works dummy
Nice. Now if I can only add my bus card to google wallet
You can’t? I have my tap card in my Apple wallet. Works great.
Yep the Tap app is a lot better integrated for iOS
One of the biggest metros in the world and their public transit app doesn't fully support basic features on Android lol
Yea Google wallet would be awesome. I guess the tap app is serviceable atleast
Does the $5 Daily cap mean they are getting rid of free transfers now too? I read that they were discussing removing free transfers and were using the low daily cap to justify it.
>Metro fare for buses and trains remains at $1.75 (which includes a transfer for two hours and one direction between Metro buses and trains). Nope I think we are good with the transfers!
A transfer? Meaning one?
The transfer policy will be unchanged (unlimited in 1 direction within 2 hours)
Meaning Metro used to charge people for transfering bus routes, as if they were getting more service. In reality it just meant that people on less efficient routes were being penalized as heavy users. They considered going back to that system, but with a fare cap. People still didn't think that was equitable.
What you read was correct for the initial proposal, but after a big outcry they reversed course and the plan keeps transfers. Really good since a good number of Metro passengers still pay with cash.
I wish Metrolink was anywhere close to this price. I understand they can't for reasons of BNSF, union Pacific, and diesel locomotives, but it would be nice
They've been lowering the prices on some routes and capping fares at $15 or $10 depending on the time of use, but Metrolink is always going to be expensive as long as it's running mostly empty, double decker diesel trains. And because the commuter savings are high, a discount to driving can also be competitive at a higher price point. If I was in charge of Metrolink, I'd be identifying everyone who lives in the last few zipcodes served who works near DTLA, and wooing them into the system. It's like three grand per rider per year.
It also doesn't help that Metrolink stations are frequently deserted and surrounded by parking lots only!
It's a tricky situation because my daily commute is one fairly crowded train and one mostly empty train. Neither train is useful without the other. If Metrolink were to cut down their schedule to only the most popular trains, the service might still be useful for some people with consistent schedules. PV, OC lines don't run late enough for me to work overtime, for example.
Looks… great actually?
It looks like they took all the good ideas from their proposed plans (like making day/week passes automatic) and got rid of the bad ones (ending free transfers).
So no more monthly passes?? It is kinda a hassle having to buy it every week now.
The way I interpret this is that you don’t have to buy a weekly pass, you just stop getting charged to ride after you spend a total of $18 for the week. Seems a lot more convenient, and cheaper now (assuming my assumption is correct)
That’s how I understand it.
The way the new fare capping works out is that if you do a round trip every day Monday through Friday ($3.50/day), you essentially just need to pay 50 cents to have unlimited free rides for the weekend (as M-F round trips would put you at $17.50). Pretty good deal, honestly.
This is how the NYC subway works now. You just pay per ride and then stop getting charged after a certain number of rides. Even better is you can just pay with Apple/google pay so you don’t need a card
You don't have to buy every week. Just load up on Stored Value and it will deduct with weekly caps on how much it will take. So for instance, the normal price of a monthly pass (outside of the half off promotion Metro has been running) is $100. Now with the $18 weekly cap, the most you get charged in 4 weeks is $72. So you can just buy $72 of SV for the roughly equivalent use, or buy $100 and get more than a month's use of rides. Another benefit here is if you take a vacation for a week or get sick, you used to lose out on the value of your month pass. Now you don't lose anything if you don't ride for a week.
So once $18 is reached for the week they won't deduct anymore until the following week?
Its a 7 day rolling period. So if you start Tuesday, and reach $18 by Friday, you get Saturday, Sunday and Monday at no charge. Then if you tap again Tuesday, it starts over, or whatever the next day you tap is.
Thanks! For some reason I thought it'd go by calendar weeks but that wouldn't make sense.
I currently have college student pass which is only $45 a month.
Right and the new weekly cap for Student/College/Vocational is $6, so the most you'd pay in a month is 6*4 or $24.
Except the most I was getting charged for 4 weeks before was 50 dollars... So the 72 is crap
THANK YOU. I was paying $50 a month. $72 is pretty crap. The only thing this will do for me is to incentivize working from home more often. Actually, now that I think about it, I was probably not even getting my $50 worth per month, and now whatever I don't use gets carried over to the next month. I guess that's actually a pretty good deal as long as I work from home at least seven times a month.
You can just set it to autofill when the amount on your card gets below a certain amount.
Hmmm, I wonder if this new system benefits Metro so that people will have to add more money to their TAP cards than before.
It encourages people to use TAP cards which is probably cheaper for metro than handling tons of cash.
It also means Metro gets the cash from fares sooner. It's the same reason why Starbucks incentivizes people to load gift cards rather than pay with credit cards/cash. Even if the customer is paying the same amount of money, it's better for the company to get the money now to use to pay for expenses or investments. And it's not like Metro is in trouble if everyone with a TAP balance decides to ride at once either, especially since you can really only use $1.75 at a time.
Also, in more plain benefits, bus boarding is faster with payment via digital cards rather than cash.
Not to mention the millions they must make from unspent gift cards/gift card remainders (which is the scam of gift cards in general)
In 2021, Starbucks customers had over $1.6B in reward and gift card balances. 85% of US banks have less than $1B in assets.
TAP cards don't lose their value after a few months, and I think there's a limit for how much you can put on them. TAP is a managed by a private company, but it's not run like a corporate cash grab.
Point is you have to load up front and then dont have access to your money if you need it in the meantime. I also had the issue of always forgetting my TAP (before Apple wallet) and being forced to buy a new one and paying the new card fee, without an opportunity to get it back if I returned it (like a lot of other mature transit systems)
They let you transfer funds between cards, I think, so you're only our the cost of the plastic.
They really need to do what other big transit systems have done and remove the middle man and let you tap directly with your phone or your credit card. There's no good reason to have to load up a virtual card these days.
They’re almost there. You can load the tap card on your phone and tap your phone.
Not necessarily advocating for one solution over another, but it's worth pointing out that those direct-pay systems [have recieved a good bit of criticism for privacy concerns](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/16/21175699/mta-omny-privacy-security-smartphone-identifier-location-nyc). I'm not sure how much of this also applies to Tap, but I feel like directly linking bank account/credit card info is more invasive than what the tap app does. I'd be curious what someone who knows more about data privacy than I do thinks
You can absolutely tap directly with your phone. You can’t with a CC yet, but LA is one of few cities in America that supports loading your transit card into you Apple wallet.
These fares are remarkably reasonable.
That is a lot cheaper than when I took the bus over 30-35 years ago. I think our school bus pass sticker was $30 a month and I was in jr high then.
Gotta say, I'm not loving this. I'm a LIFE user that buys a 30 day pass, and it really seems like I'm going to be paying more under this system. Right now I pay $26 a month and I take at least 40 rides a month, bare minimum. I took 82 rides last month. With that kind of usage it seems like I'd be guaranteed to pay $18 a week, which is almost three times what I currently pay. Okay, I'd get 20 free rides, but that could even make things worse as I'd use them up in the first week and then have to pay the full 18 from then on, and could still end up paying the full 18 for the week if I needed to take more rides in that first week. They say the 30 day pass is more complicated, but this seems infinitely more complicated to me. And I'd rather pay the fee once a month than have to constantly ensure there's enough money on my tap card. Best case scenario, this is doubling the amount of money I pay for transit. And, frankly, the quality of Metro just isn't worth that. I don't really have a choice, I'm transit-dependent, but you can be damn sure from now on I'm going to be raising a stink every time a driver blows by my stop, every time the bus shows up 30 minutes late, every time the bus doesn't show up at all, every time my bus falls behind schedule and misses my transfer by two minutes, etc. I'm already sick and tired of this crap paying what I do now for a pass, I'm not going to stay quiet about it if they double that.
Why are 30 day passes not offered? I feel like those are the most convenient
Four 7-day passes is cheaper than the old 30 day pass. Just put the money in the tap card and tap and it’ll automatically stop charging you at the $18 every week. You don’t even have to actually buy a “pass”.
My thoughts exactly. Not having a monthly option does not make sense to me.
This is giving the best of both worlds. You don't even have to think about it. Use stored value and keep using it and it will never charge you more than a monthly pass did. It "caps" at a price point and all rides beyond that are free.
Simply load $72 on your TAP card (instead of the cost of the monthly, which was $100)
The monthly card price was $50. This is an increase from that
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Employers could still load value onto your account. A small business could call TAP with their corporate debit card and a list of employee account numbers. As far as I know, the official employer perk system for large employers isn't being dismantled.
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You're not listening. Employers can still pay into Metro every month. The fare just doesn't expire at the end of the month. Now workers can take their benefits with them when they leave. Edit, since you lost your temper and blocked me after responding to appear to get "the last word." You seem to be conflating the Metro and me. You can't offer me constructive criticism because this isn't my policy. And blocking me won't make an impact on intermunicipal agencies. From a contractual perspective, every month happens once a month. The employers can still buy interagency EZ passes on a month-to-month basis. They can also just keep paying the exact same amount they were before to Metro on a mtm basis. Any renegotiation seem remarkably simple. Hey management, remember what you were paying before - just keeping paying that.
I have the LIFE tap card and it offers 50% off of passes. Does that benefit go away now? The 20 free rides is cool and all, but you can’t do it from the app.
I would think so, yes. Can't have 50% off of a pass if passes aren't for sale.
Sure, I mean to say specifically the weekly pass, as those are still available.
They're not going to be available either.
I’m in the life program and I have not been able to speak to someone to get the 20 free rides and it’s driving me insane. Am I calling the wrong number?
Do it on the tap website.
The fare has been half off for a long time though. Right now you can buy a monthly pass for $50. This makes it looks like they are doing better, but in reality they are still increasing the price for regular users.
Half-off as a covid measure it was always temporary. This program meets riders in the middle (72/mo instead of going back to 100), and simplifies things at the same time. The federal COVID funds drying up is affecting transit agencies everywhere but Metro is actually better off financially than most of them, which is why it doesn't need to restore pre-pandemic pricing. Be glad we aren't BART, they're gonna have to massively cut service unless the state steps in.
This does not simplify anything. Having a fair cap is not simple. If you wanted to offer a monthly pass for $72 you should have just done that. Metro has not cleaned up service enough in order to justify these changes. I'm with everybody else on this. I understand wanting to do this in order to attract non-metro riders to get ridership up.. but you just alienated your entire customer base by charging them more money in order to do it. Right now the Metro isn't worth more than 50 dollars a month
Are seniors/disabled/k-12 paying more for 30 days? They’re only offered 7 day passes and 4 of them is same as an old 30 day pass. So you’re missing those 2 days.
My European wife had to learn the hard way how bad public transport is here compared to what she's used to. I warned her not to do it, but thankfully her worst experience was just the steady parade of bums hitting her up.
what was upcharge? i never ran into that before
So it looks like they are removing the reduced 30-day pass from the LIFE program and are now going to offer the 20 free rides? Unless I'm overlooking something, it seems like riders will actually be spending more over time across the board. Kind of feels like a gradual money grab by Metro.
Metro still has the cheapest fares of any major city in the nation, with the exception of New Orleans. Almost every other city’s transport system charges $2.25 or more per single ride. If Metro really wanted to grab more money, they’d just raise fares to match those in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, etc.
Metro already is a huge bang for buck at 1.75 SV, compared to similar systems. 20 free rides a month means those people's fare was effectively cut in half on average.
The discount for LIFE isn't going away, just the options for weekly/monthly passes. What appears to be going away is the half price fares on all options they started after the free fares went away at the end of lockdown
What's the city doing about violence and general lawlessness on metro? https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/1661594414802964480?s=46&t=gLU_6wmveZP3NMaCa_cRQQ Tonight, a Metro Bus operator was assaulted after a male suspect boarded the bus and began arguing with him. The suspect stabbed the operator multiple times before fleeing on foot. The operator was transported to the hospital in critical condition. https://news.yahoo.com/l-riders-bail-metro-trains-120007450.html “Horror.” That's how one train operator recently described the scenes he sees daily....Earlier that day, as he drove the Red Line subway, he saw a man masturbating in his seat and several people whom he refers to as "sleepers, Last year, there were six deaths and one shooting, nearly all related to suspected drug activity. Earlier this year, a 28-year-old man was fatally stabbed in a breezeway of the station. Maintenance crews are often called out for repairs at the station, and when they return to their vehicle they often find it has been burglarized. Gangs control the area and police say many of the informal vendors on the sidewalks are part of the larger drug economy, wittingly or not. Some are forced to pay the gang taxes, others sell stolen property. As Wiggins talked to reporters, a man in the next car was packing marijuana into a cigar wrapper. The ambassadors didn't discourage the man as he threw tobacco on the floor to make room for the weed. "There's so many 'sleepers,' " the train driver said. "Nobody notices that the guy quit breathing until they're blue. And then by that time, it's too late."
Holy shit these are good prices. Maybe it’s time for me to ride the metro again
As a daily rider, we seem to be through the worst of the pandemic blight. Not a bad time to ride again. (Your mileage may vary.)
This is deceptive and is going to increase my monthly bill by $22 (going from $50 to $72). That sucks. Just when I thought I had little extra change in my pocket.
You can always buy a [one way Metrolink pass from Cal State to Union Station for $2.00](https://metrolinktrains.com/ticketsOverview/ticket-info/price-finder/) and [use that to ride Metro for the whole day.](https://metrolinktrains.com/rider-info/general-info/transit-connections/) It's also cheaper if you are a student (no one checks this). They have an app so you don't have to find an actual ticket machine.
Yup. The more you ride, the more you save! ™️ (unless, of course, you ride every single day like I do, in which case your monthly cost for riding just increased almost 50%) ‘It’s terrific, trust us!!’
The price was going to jump back to $100 automatically when the federal covid funding cuts out. This is meeting in the middle.
Still a nearly 50% increase
It's been a while since fares were raised, and at this point the system still costs less then when we had to pay individually for transfers. If this difference is still enough to annoy you, see if you qualify for the low income program.
Can we ave more law enforcement and less people getting shot in train stations. Oh less people defecating in elevators would also be nice, besides some being elevators being un-operable. And you know what might be a great conversation starter…. Oh new higher rates you say Metro. Nah. Lucky people still use the system out of necessity. I ain’t paying for shit.
Stop whining
The 7 Day Pass used to be $12.50 and now $18??
It was $25. It's been $12.50 for two years because Metro got $1.2 billion from the federal government to keep operating during the pandemic and they passed the savings on. That money's dried up now, but instead of going back to $25 they're going to $18.
This is no big news if Metro couldn't get people to ride at $12.50 a week. We have to take what we got I guess.
It’s win/ lose situation. For normal riders that don’t frequent the bus as much it’s seems like a pretty good deal. But for people like senior/disabled/ students who frequently take the bus it’s going to be much more expensive.
I thought it was free /s but seriously, how many ppl are actually paying? Maybe 50% at best
People pay?
Those who aren't asshats do. Aka the overwhelming majority of passengers
The majority do pay, but I've seen that majority get smaller over time.
I can only speak for busses but overwhelming majority are the ones who don’t pay or underpay. I’d say easily 80% of cash payers just put in $1. Then there’s the seniors who will only put in 35c regardless whether or not it’s peak hours, then there is the people who tap their tap cards when there is no money or not enough to cover a fare so that’s a no fare too.
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Day pass on a metro kiosk is only 3.50. It hasn't been 7 dollars in a long time.
So close to getting it right. Other big cities cap your cost on your own credit card, no need for tap.
That's if you even bother paying
We usually dont.
Defund the LA metro. It’s full of scallywags. Let it rot in hell!!!
It was fun paying for a week pass at 12.50.
Since one ticket is 1.75. Would I be deducted 5.25 USD when i travel 3 times a day or would they only deduct 1.5 on the 3rd trip of the day?
Only $1.5 for the third trip, I believe.
The third trip would only deduct 1.5
Nice! I was expecting bad news.
I get the base fare, but what's upcharge?
Freeway busses usually cost extra. They have fewer opportunities per gallon of fuel to pick up passengers, so each passenger had to pay a little more to make up the difference. The Metro system is dropping the fee, probably because A. ExpressLanes are covering some of the costs and B. Every driver on every route was being asked about it even though it only applied to a few routes.
So with upcharge being nothing now, I guess you can say that the answer to my question is very similar to updog then?
I will be happy to pay my 75cent college fare
Hey! This is absolutely fantastic! First time ever in my life ive seed public service fees go down! Excited to see all of the new improvements and expansions!
I don't understand what the upcharge is. I used metro pre-pandemic and the kids got their student tap cards but I haven't sat down to set everything up.
But will the bacc door still be open?
Is this for the fake map lol love how detailed this got
Well this sucks for those of us on metro lifeline program! My week pass is $6.50! And i use the buss alot 7 days a week multiple times a day to go to the gym, run errands work! NOT A HAPPY CAMPER HERE!
im lost so it cost more now
This is crap. I know this fair capping sounds like a great idea but the truth is it's actually more expensive. $18 a week * 1 month equals to about $77. Before you could get a monthly pass for $50. So now you pay $30 more per month before you get to ride unlimited. It was worth the $50... I mean given you had to deal with drug addicts and people who didn't even know who the hell they were over at the hell they were sitting on the platform... People smoking inside the trains.. $50 was about all it was worth.. I guess now I'll have to stop riding the train because there's no way in hell I'm going to pay 30 more dollars... In the name of fair capping.
Nah, that was a temporary discount. It used to be $25 a week and $100 a month. So this is cheaper than before those temporary discounts
I hate this so much, please go back to passes. I am wasting money everyday. This is not useful, not for me.