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Title:

Understanding barriers to providing seamless regional fare payment in the San Francisco Bay Area

Accession Number:

01552935

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

Integrated transit fare structures are becoming increasingly important to metropolitan areas. Despite increased adoption of regional smartcard fare payment systems, regions have missed opportunities to concurrently coordinate fare policy. The San Francisco Bay Area presents an appropriate case study of such a region due to its numerous transit agencies and its “Clipper” smartcard program. This paper seeks to better understand the attitudes toward and significant barriers to providing seamless fare payment options for regional transit riders through this case study. Expert interviews and survey results identify the significant barriers to this goal as financial and institutional in nature. The lack of financial incentives for fare integration and transit agencies’ fear of revenue loss were identified as very significant barriers. Findings also suggest that the coordinating agency is critical to successfully providing “seamless travel” on a regional level. As such, future fare integration efforts should anticipate and address potential revenue losses and include financial incentives for interagency coordination. Finally, since results suggest that the relationship between fare coordination and revenue is not well understood, the research community could add to this discussion by studying regional transit fare models and their effects on ridership and revenues.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP030 Public Transportation Marketing and Fare Policy. Alternate title: Trouble at the Fare Gates: Understanding barriers to providing seamless regional fare payment in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Monograph Accession #:

01550057

Report/Paper Numbers:

15-3579

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Leshner, Eleanor
Barz, Sara K

Pagination:

19p

Publication Date:

2015

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; References; Tables

Geographic Terms:

San Francisco Bay Area

Subject Areas:

Administration and Management; Economics; Finance; Policy; Public Transportation; I10: Economics and Administration

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-3579

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Dec 30 2014 1:11PM