Public Hearing - Fare Restructuring

[MetroShadow]

Virtual Public Hearings on Proposed 2022 Fare Changes | Pace Suburban Bus (pacebus.com)

Quick summary of changes:

• Continuation to Permanently align the 7 and 30-day passes with CTA's
• Lowering the cost of the Link-Up pass from $55 to $30
• Eliminating the travel restrictions of said pass
• Eliminating the PlusBus since the Link-Up restrictions are lifted.

From a Seamless perspective, I'm glad. Hopefully it gets the ridership jump needed; and hopefully the seamlessness would be an added bonus (here's hoping for fare capping in the future).

[renardo870]

This definitely is great news. The Link-Up pass used to be unlimited years ago but I believe it was changed due to budget cuts/fair increase.

[andrethebusman]

The real problem has been that city and suburban fare schemes have been dramatically different for many years. Wasn't always, in late 70s-early 80s were identical. Then PACE started going its own way. Time to re-coordinate.

[artthouwill]

12 minutes ago, andrethebusman said:

The real problem has been that city and suburban fare schemes have been dramatically different for many years. Wasn't always, in late 70s-early 80s were identical. Then PACE started going its own way. Time to re-coordinate.

I do know about that.  Either CTA has to adjust down or Pace has to adjust up.  CTA isn't going to adjust down and it doesn't seem fair for Pace riders to have to pay CTA fares but not get CTA level service, especially for suburb to suburb travel.  It's nice to see the agencies work together now,  but coordination was needed years ago.

[Busjack]

20 hours ago, artthouwill said:

I do know about that.  Either CTA has to adjust down or Pace has to adjust up.  CTA isn't going to adjust down and it doesn't seem fair for Pace riders to have to pay CTA fares but not get CTA level service, especially for suburb to suburb travel.  It's nice to see the agencies work together now,  but coordination was needed years ago.

On the last point there was all the wrangling that CTA wouldn't reimburse Pace for rides on passes, so they had to come up the CTA/Pace pass at a higher price.

The only reason the topic of this thread occurred is that the American Rescue Plan included money to restore routes and ridership. CTA and Pace are not doing this out of their own money.

[MetroShadow]

On 5/14/2022 at 7:43 AM, Busjack said:

On the last point there was all the wrangling that CTA wouldn't reimburse Pace for rides on passes, so they had to come up the CTA/Pace pass at a higher price.

The only reason the topic of this thread occurred is that the American Rescue Plan included money to restore routes and ridership. CTA and Pace are not doing this out of their own money.

Hopefully there's enough latent demand to recoup the funds (in due time). 

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, MetroShadow said:

Hopefully there's enough latent demand to recoup the funds (in due time). 

 

Again, the chicken and egg. The feds are providing the funds to restore routes and ridership.

• Technically, CTA doesn't have to restore routes, because it never cut them due to the pandemic, but CTA got approximately $1 billion in additional operating funds from the American Rescue Plan for that ($912 million; $118 million).
• Pace needs to rebuild routes and ridership, but the discussions about Van Go and On Demand indicate that the latent demand isn't there for at least now and the feeder routes probably will not be returning.

 

[renardo870]

Looks like Pace may propose additional fare changes that include universal 1 Day and 3 Day CTA/Pace Passes for the 2023 Budget.

 

Edited September 29, 2022 by renardo870
Made corrections

[Smolensk]

Thanks renardo870 for the notice.

 

Here is a copy of the Public Hearing Notice with the fare changes:

https://www.pacebus.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/2023 Budget Legal Notice.pdf

 

Some observations:

 

Neither notice says anything about the charges for CTA to Pace (currently 30 cents) or Pace to CTA (currently 25 cents) transfers.  Do they intend to keep these in place?

With the $5 one-day pass good on both CTA and Pace, this makes the $5 single ride ticket at O'Hare (which is good on CTA only) even more of a ripoff. 

Three one-day passes ($5 each) are a better value than the $15 three-day pass.  This is because the clock on the one-day passes "pauses" after 24 hours until you take the next ride.  On the three-day pass, the clock keeps running without pause for 72 hours.  Three one-day passes can potentially buy you more than 72 hours of elapsed time to use them.