Riders may not have noticed it, but something long associated with Metro buses has been missing: ticket books.
On June 30, Metro stopped selling the books of tickets the agency had offered since the 1970s.
No one seems to miss them.
“There have been relatively few complaints,” wrote Rochelle Ogershok, Metro spokesperson, in an email to Real Change.
The end of general ticket book sales does not affect Metro’s human-services ticket program. Metro operates a Reduced Fare Bus Ticket Program that offers subsidized tickets to more than 60 social service agencies in King County. Employees with those agencies hand out individual tickets to clients.
So far in 2013, approximately 75,000 ticket books have been sold to human service providers, Ogershok said. Subsidized bus tickets look the same as any other bus ticket.
The transit agency will also continue to sell ticket books through the mail to nonprofits or governmental agencies, which can offer free tickets to clients and patients. Bus tickets have no expiration date.
For many paying riders, bus tickets belong to a bygone era. Metro estimates that in 2009, 25,000 ticket books were sold each month. By 2013, sales had plunged to roughly 3,000 a month.
There’s a reason for the drop off: the rise of the ORCA card.
In 2010, 38 percent of Metro riders used ORCA. In 2011, it was 49 percent. By 2012, 58 percent of riders tapped their ORCA cards on card readers as they boarded, Ogershok said.
Metro has no short-term plan to move to a cashless system. However the agency is monitoring trends in mobile and electronic payments, Ogershok added, “with the expectation that these new technologies will present new opportunities for fare payment.”
The current one-zone, nonpeak fare is $2.25.
A press release on King County’s transportation department Web page stated that eliminating ticket books would save Metro roughly $80,000 a year in printing and supply costs.
Still, those savings pale in comparison to Metro’s projected annual revenue shortfall of $75 million. If Metro can’t come up with necessary funding by the middle of next year, the agency will have to cut 17 percent of bus service by autumn 2014.
Transit advocates and governmental officials had hoped a statewide transportation bill in the legislature could have helped Metro, but the legislature adjourned before passing the bill.
The state legislature held its third legislative session the first week of November, but no decisions were made that would affect Metro funding.