In March 2020, Los Angeles’ public-transit agency, Metro, stopped collecting fares on its buses as a COVID-19 safety precaution. For the next 22 months, Metro waived fares for anyone who wanted to keep riding its buses, anywhere they wanted to go (as long as they wore a mask, of course). And people did keep riding. — Curbed
A spokesperson from the agency estimates that from April 2020 to December 2021 there were approximately 281 million fare-free rides, reaching about 80 percent of pre-pandemic ridership, making it the largest free-transit experiment in U.S. history. Fare collection, however, restarted last week and now, Metro is using the information gained from the experiment to plan improvements and initiative other free- and reduced-fare programs.
As detailed by Curbed, unlike many other U.S. transit agencies, L.A.’s Metro doesn’t rely as heavily on fares, in which they account for only 6 percent of total revenue. This made the free-transit initiative a lot easier to implement. Proponents of the fareless metro system believe it should be permanent as the majority of riders, who are low income, already qualify for discounted fares through the city’s low-income fare program.
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