Call to Action: Sign Petition to Put the Rider First

In response to continued parochialism from transit directors, the group "Seamless Bay Area" has launched a petition to create a single, rational, integrated fare structure for the Bay Area's 27 different transit systems.

From the advocacy group's petition page:

"We launched the petition both to build support for fare integration, but also for broader reforms that may be introduced over the next year, particularly as discussions over a future 'mega' transportation funding measure continue," wrote Seamless's co-founder Ian Griffiths in a direct message to Streetsblog.

The petition, which was launched just before the Independence Day holiday break, will be sent to a range of lawmakers, from state Assemblymember Phil Ting to state Senator Jim Beall, BART board chair Bevan Dufty, and the SFMTA's Malcolm Heinicke.

Hail a Lyft or an Uber, and you pay one fare, with one app, and one rational, distance-base charge to get from your origin to your destination. But take transit from A to B, and you're faced with a disassociated, irrational, and confusing bunch of charges, depending on whether you use AC Transit, Muni, BART, or any of the other 27 systems. This has long been the bane of Bay Area transit advocates--and Seamless wants to fix it.

The group wants Bay Area transit fares to work as they do in Toronto, London, Switzerland, and elsewhere. In those places, an umbrella agency collects fares in a rational, integrated way, so from a rider perspective it doesn't matter if they're taking an equivalent of Caltrain, or SamTrans, or VTA--fares, over the same distance, are the same, and paying them is simple. Riders, in fact, don't even always know they're transferring between systems. "The Seamless Transit Principles have been developed to guide local, regional, and state decision-makers to pursue a seamlessly integrated, world-class transit system that works for people," writes the group on its page.

Just last month at the nine-member Clipper Executive Board of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, managers of Caltrain, BART, AC Transit, VTA, and other agencies voted not to even study fare integration, despite the pleas of transit advocates from Seamless, SPUR, and Friends of Caltrain. This makes statewide efforts to integrate transit fare systems look like a mere academic exercise.

A few days after the vote, Streetsblog spoke with MTC chief Therese McMillan about the decision, and she insisted that fare integration is "not going to be put aside." She pointing out that the next time the issue will be considered by the MTC, in the fall, there will be different people voting and heading up key transit agencies, including at BART and SFMTA.

The transit advocates hope that, with this petition, those new managers will be encouraged to take a more regional perspective.

"The petition has been in the works since before the Clipper vote but the timing has worked out well such that we can now use the petition to channel people’s anger about that event into action, and hopefully get that study back on track," wrote Griffiths.

Read more about the group's Seamless Transit Principles. And be sure to sign the petition.