Starting Saturday, July 1, Metro is introducing fare capping, a new way to pay your fare that makes riding more convenient and less expensive. Just remember, the more you ride, the more you save! Some fares are going down too! Here is all you need to know:
Those who pay regular fare
•The regular fare remains $1.75 with two hours of free transfers.
•No one will pay more than $5 a day to ride or $18 in a seven day period— after you reach the 1-day and 7-day caps, you can continue to ride free. When you buy a pass, you may not always ride enough to get the full value of the pass but with fare capping you never overpay. You only pay for the rides you take.
•To enjoy this benefit, you need to have a TAP card and pay for fare with Stored Value. If you’re still paying fares with cash, please get a TAP card. They’re available for $2 at TAP vending machines located at Metro Rail and Busway stations, onboard Metro buses, at Metro Customer Centers, at TAP vendors, and on taptogo.net or the TAP mobile app. New regular TAP cards purchased can be used up to 15 years and you don’t have to register the card or do anything to immediately enjoy the benefits of fare capping.
•To echo that point: you can still pay with cash, but you’ll end up paying more to ride. Get a TAP card!!! Note: digital TAP cards and reduced fare TAP cards remain free.
•Our Metro 1-Day, 7-Day and 30-Day passes are being discontinued beginning July 1 as they’re longer necessary with fare capping.
Seniors and Riders With Disabilities
•The base fare for seniors and customers with disabilities will remain at 75 cents during peak hours and 35 cents during off-peak hours.
•The daily cap remains at $2.50 and the seven-day cap will be $5.
K-12 and College/Vocational students
•The base fare for K-12 will drop from $1 to 75 cents and college and vocational students will see their base fare drop from $1.75 to 75 cents.
•Student fares will be capped at $2.50/day and $6 in a seven-day period.
GoPass participants
•If you have a GoPass nothing changes. Continue to enjoy riding free and you don’t have to do anything.
LIFE riders
•Riders who are enrolled in our Low Income Fare Is Easy (LIFE) program will get 20 free rides per month — each ride will include two hours of free transfers. After taking the 20 free rides in a month, LIFE riders will participate in fare capping, where they can reach their one-day and seven-day fare cap and earn additional free rides.
•Key point — even when paying for fares, LIFE riders will never pay more than $5 a day or $18 a week to ride.
J Line and Express Bus Riders
•No more upcharges — the cost of riding drops to Metro’s regular fare!
Riding Metro
When you tap on the bus fareboxes or TAP validators at rail stations, the display will show how much Stored Value (money) is being deducted or whether the ride is free. More detailed information, including your fare capping status, will be available on the TAP vending machines, the TAP app, on taptogo.net or by calling TAP Customer Service at 866-827-8646.
To learn more about our new fares, please visit metro.net/farecapping.
Categories: Go Metro, Policy & Funding
I don’t see metro-to-muni transfers listed anywhere above. Will these still be available after July 1st, and if so, at what price?
What about monthly passes paid for by employers?
Any movement on fixing the bug in the payment system that forces riders to pay the full fare again when transferring metro > metro after originally transferring from a municipal bus? I shouldn’t have to carry two tap cards around to avoid that penalty.
Kudos to the new scheme and particularly to the elimination of zone upcharges. This has been a source of confusion going back to paper passes with zone stickers that I got as a student, to having to buy a bunch of day passes to load on the TAP card because there was no balance function, and now finally there is just one fare. This was TAP’s unrealized potential from the beginning.
To add to the comment I just posted, the 50% pass discount program that started in January 2022 has been around for so long that many riders might consider the prices to be normal. New riders since them have had no indication that this was a temporary discount that would expire.
Since you’re ending this discount program, you need to announce it more widely. I had forgotten all about it myself, until clicking the related post from December 8, 2022.
Your charts at the beginning show incorrect amounts for the current fares. The page at https://www.metro.net/riding/fares/ appears to accurately reflect what’s available at the moment.
Maximum of $72 for the month now, this is actually a really good value!
Yet people will find a way to complain about it when Metro does free ride days.
A) How was it complicated before? and B) What did Foothill Transit say about the Silver Line finally getting rid of its Freeway upcharge?
What means “Upcharge”?
Does it have to do with validators?
You no longer need to worry about that if you’re exclusively using LA Metro.
Upcharges were extra fares on top of the base fares for freeway bus routes, which Metro no longer really operates.
Steve, any word yet on how transfers will work between the A line and the E line when the Regional Connector opens in a few weeks? Will we need to tap again? If so, will machines be available for the purpose at all platforms of the new underground transfer stations?
I can tell you right now based on riding the connector, there are no TAP validators for transfers on the platform level at Little Tokyo, so it’s safe to safe you won’t need to TAP again when transferring between Blue and Expo at all. Just transfers trains in any of the Downtown Stations and be on your way.
Seems like yet another lack of communication on Metro’s part here, as per usual.
Hello, what happens to existing passes (1-day, 7-day, 30-day) that are already purchased and loaded onto a TAP card prior to 7/1/2023?
If my TAP card has a running 30-Day Pass and will expire on July 18th (the point being, after July 1st), will such 30-Day Pass be “grandfathered” and can still be used until July 18th (i.e., not touching the stored value in my card between July 1st and July 18th)?
I think this is one of the most common situations.