No More Lasseiz-Fare: Pilot Program Will Install Fare Gates at Up to 14 Stations

Mayor Wilson had some pointed questions about the plan, including how it would impact low-income riders. The pilot won't include the stadium station, where middle-class fare evasion is rampant.

From Sound Transit presentation

By Erica C. Barnett

Sound Transit is recommending a “pilot” project that would add fare gates to as many as 14 light rails stations, citing high rates of fare “evasion” by riders who board trains without paying at ORCA card readers at stations. The proposal would cost between etween $79 million and $88 million, according to staff, and bring in an additional $30 million a year by increasing fare compliance rates from a current estimate of 63 percent to 95 percent or higher.

In addition, Sound Transit’s executive director of security and fare evasion Brian de Place said, “There’s been a significant amount of attention, in transit circles at least, around other benefits from fare gates, including increased perceptions of safety [and] lower maintenance costs. And importantly, fare gates also allow the opportunity to de-conflict compliance-related actions that sometimes result in escalations and can put our workers at safety risk.”

In other words: Putting gates between riders and train make it less likely that people will board for free and argue with fare enforcement officers when they get caught.

According to a staff presentation, the pilot stations will likely include every Seattle station between Northgate and the International District, plus Redmond, Bellevue, Lynnwood, and SeaTac Airport. The pilot will exclude stations that are at-grade, largely for technical and safety reasons, Sound Transit principal architect Gavin Schaefer said.

In a “typical passenger journey,” Schaefer said, the “addition of the gates improves our passenger experience by making the transition [into the]” fare paid zone more legible. Currently, Sound Transit uses signs and yellow paint to designate the parts of stations where only paid riders are supposed to go.

Although “fare evasion” is typically coded as a kind of illicit turnstile-jumping, a large percentage of people leaving stadium events, like Mariners games, routinely board crowded trains without paying. Both Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello asked why Sound Transit isn’t proposing fare gates for the stadium station; Wilson also wanted to know how much this middle-class fare evasion contributed to the overall percentage of non-paying riders and whether Sound Transit had considered the impact of long lines for fare gates after sports events.

De Place said Sound Transit hadn’t calculated how many people fail to pay for light rail after stadium events, adding that “we do see people not paying at those times. Adding fare gates at Husky Stadium, where riders descend to the platform, “could actually help with that queuing and crowd control,” de Place added.

Wilson also wanted to know what the break-even ridership level would be if Sound Transit decided not to install fare gates and simply waited for fare payment to rise back toward pre-pandemic levels. “You would probably need to get back to” the pre-pandemic high of around 85 percent, de Place said, an outcome Sound Transit considers unlikely.

Wilson (who once made the case in PubliCola for a business tax to fund free transit) also wanted to know whether Sound Transit would make a more concerted effort to enroll people in its low-income fare discount program, which is open to people making up to twice the $16,000 federal poverty level. A staffer said fare ambassadors already tell people about the program when they check for payment on the trains, suggesting that the burden for signing people up for reduced fare passes will continue to fall on social service providers.

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay also asked about “unintended consequences” of fare gates in other cities. But unlike Wilson, he praised some of the outcomes the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has reported since it installed “hardened” fare gates that can trap riders who fail to pay. “They saw, I think it was $10 million in increased revenue, a 41 percent reduction in crime, [and] hundreds if not thousands of hours saved on cleanup time,” The new 7-foot-tall gates were controversial when they were introduced, with some riders calling them “prison-like” and complaining about long backups at the slow-moving new fare checkpoints.