At today’s Caltrain board meeting at the public hearing of proposed fare increases three times over the coming five years, several board members supported a alternative idea raise revenue while improving ridership and equitable access – expanding the Go Pass bulk discount program to full-time contractors workers at smaller businesses represented by Transportation Management Associations.
Earlier, at last week’s Caltrain Board Finance Committee meeting, the CFO of the agency and the chair of the committee had also supported pursuing the concept of expanding the GoPass to cover these groups that are not currently eligible; though additional study would be needed to verify the opportunity. The CFO and multiple board members expressed a desire to reduce future fare increases, if there was a source of stable funding and potentially alternative fare sources.
So it sounds likely that this idea will be moving forward. We’ll follow up and find out about the next steps.
The proposal to expand the Go Pass to cover contractors and TMAs is supported by a growing list of business, labor, commute manager, transit, sustainability and equity groups – the latest addition is SAMCEDA, the business association for San Mateo County.
Probably reflection of reality that contractors are now longer rare and expensive consultants, but rather be common and significant part of the workforce.
Chair Gillian Gillette stated that she dislikes passes, especially the Go-Pass (1:10:40 in meeting video) http://samtrans.granicus.com/player/clip/267?view_id=3
She went on to describe passes as being for people with money and low income customers can’t afford the high cost of monthly or annual passes and went on to talk about difficulties to purchasing transit tickets, and old system, racist policies, around WW2 housing and transportation, the popularity of the car, and loss of transit ridership, so transit decided to discount and incentivize people with money to ride transit and developed passes.
One member of the public also stated that the Go-Pass should be eliminated some time soon.
Yes Go-Pass riders are riding for free, subsidized by their employer, but more importantly their employers are purchasing Go-Passes for a large number of employees that will NEVER ride Caltrain. Some people just don’t understand how the Go-Pass program works.
At the finance committee meeting, 0:45:25 http://samtrans.granicus.com/player/clip/263?view_id=3
The CFO stated the Go-Pass brought over $20 million in revenue at the beginning of the Calendar year (middle of Caltrain fiscal year). Twenty million is 21% of FY 18/19 year to date revenue of $95 million. So, if Go-Pass were to be discontinued, how will Caltrain replace that revenue? There is no guarantee that Go-Pass customers will begin paying full fare to ride Caltrain. Nor is there any guarantee that monthly pass customers would continue to ride if it were eliminated.
Bottom line is that with some creative efforts (discounted) monthly passes can be made available to low-income riders such as an accumulator program on Clipper. Once a means-based fare customer reached 30 rides (current multiplier), in the month, then all additional rides are free. The monthly would be discounted 20%, same as the means-base fare, so the rider save 20%, in addition to the monthly pass discount.