Thread by @JWPascale

Metro's board is hearing the presentation on potential fare changes right now.

You can tune in here if you're curious:

I'll tweet some of the board members' reactions.

dcist.com/story/21/09/21…

This idea, that fare value is stored on cards, always seemed super weird and odd to me. But the backend is 30+ years old so that's why it makes no sense.

Also why if you want to move your card to iPhone/Android your physical card no longer works.

Now on to questions.
Finance Chair Matt Letourneau: Are there any scenarios that raised ridership AND revenue?

WMATA's Tom Webster: No. Primarily ideas to drive ridership.

Lucinda Babers, a regular bus rider: Price doesn't bother me much. What I do want when I ride the bus is more frequent services and reliable and faster service. My preference would be to not look at $1 bus fares but focus on the low-income discount options.

Letourneau on the process: if the board is interested in any of these concepts, staff will analyze those more and we can come back to it.

Wiedefeld says modeling ridership for any of these ideas is more difficult during COVID. No one has the models.

New fed board member, Sarah Kline: Agrees with Babers on emphasizing service and reliability drivers ridership more than fares. There are many people where fares are burdensome, so interested in low-income fare options.

MD's Greg Slater: Price-sensitive customers aside, ridership driven by safe, frequent, reliable service.

Says would be good to focus on low-income discount.
Also, create more flexible multi-day passes w/ longer expiration dates to cater to flexible work weeks after pandemic.

DC's Tom Bulger: Wonders if WMATA should set a ridership target and then create fare policies to get there. Wants a target or benchmark.

Rail ridership is still 1/3 of pre-pandemic ridership.

MD's new member Donald Drummer: We need "decision support tools." Wants to be agile in response to covid but also need better data, analysis, and modeling for how any changes could affect ridership. Doesn't want to do trial and error and "hope we predicted well."

Metro's Tom Webster says no such thing w/ pandemic. Every model has been broken. It's not sensitive enough for this level of disruption. We'll do the best we can with the data we have and give a range of potential outcomes.

Letourneau: most important responsibility of the board is to provide enough revenue to run enough service for the system. Ultimately we know we have big looming challenges and I'm worried about the ability of local govts to fill the gaps when they're coming.

Letourneau also believes that peak-level ridership will return eventually.

Smedberg: agrees with Letourneau about upcoming financial challenges. Anything we do, we have to keep that top of mind. That's our responsibility. We can't make any rash or knee-jerk reactions. They will have long-term implications for sure.

Babers encourages more out-of-the-box thinking... she spitballs the idea of delivering Amazon packages the last mile with Metro.

Interesting idea, but would be wild and maybe unrealistic?

Next topic is annual report which you can see here: wmata.com/about/board/me…

Babers asks if national bus driver shortage is an issue for WMATA
Joe Leader says class sizes have been down slightly but started to rise up recently.

Hasn't been an issue yet it sounds like.

Surprised to learn that out of Metro's 1,593 bus fleet, only 4% are articulated, longer buses right now. Metro is seeking to increase that to 12% to be more in line with other transit systems in the U.S.

More articulated buses = more capacity on busy routes w/o expanding fleet.

Now on to full board meeting and sounds like we have quite a few public comments.

84 people submitted a template saying they are against the proposal to ban people for certain sex and weapons crimes.

Metro's board has quietly put this issue on hold the past few weeks.

During public comment, several more people say they are against the ban.

And so far one person is in support of the ban idea.

Smedberg says the board "will not be considering" the sex/weapons crimes ban proposal today.

"We will monitor the effectiveness of similar bans across the country before rescheduling the matter on the action at a future date."

So sounds like the idea is paused for now.

Letourneau says he feels there's a lot of misinformation around the proposed ban.

Asks Riders Advisory Council for ideas on how to reduce crime in the system. Hopes they can discuss this at a future meeting.