Metro riders won a one-day reprieve from the latest round of fare increases on Monday after incomplete signs stymied riders on Sunday when new 25-cent charges took effect on paper fare cards.
Riders who used the agency’s own charts to put exact fare on their cards — a common phenomenon for frugal visitors who swarm the region on summer Sundays — found they couldn’t get out of the fare gates because they were a quarter short. The station signs showed the fares for SmarTrip users only, and did not include the extra 25-cent cost per trip for those using the paper cards.
So the transit agency pulled back the fare increases until Tuesday in order to bolster signs with clear information about the new fees, which include the 25-cent surcharges and new 20-cent “peak of the peak” charges for the busiest 90-minute segments of weekday afternoon commutes. “We didn’t want to cause more conflicts,” said Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.
The solution: Scotch tape and small yellow signs. A crew of about 25 Metro workers fanned out to the 86 stations Monday to tape the temporary signs to each fare chart, she said.
It was the second delay within a week and the latest confusion for riders. The agency enacted “temporary” 10-cent surcharges in February to cover a deficit. Then it enacted phase one of permanent increases on June 27. The second phase was to begin Sunday.
Initially the agency ran into problems by calling the paper fare card charge a “discount” for SmarTrip-toting riders in its marketing, not a surcharge on top of existing fares.
Then on Thursday, the agency said it couldn’t implement both the morning and afternoon peak-of-the-peak fares, as the fare gates lacked memory for both. The morning charge was pushed off until late August.
Later this week, the agency plans to replace the yellow taped signs with decals that “will hold up better,” Farbstein said. By the end of the month, she said, Metro will replace the fare charts entirely.
Monday’s postponement cost Metro an estimated $60,000 in lost revenue, Farbstein said. It’s not clear how much the agency lost amid Sunday’s confusion, nor how much the additional signage will cost.
Before the fare debacle, Metro had estimated the two-phase fare increase would cost $500,000 to enact.
