Metro charges $1.50 for bus riders using SmarTrip cards, but some riders around the region are paying far less through special programs. And some are even getting free rides.
Various entities, ranging from local governments to federal agencies and even an apartment complex, have helped subsidize riders’ trips further than they already are to keep commuters from clogging streets and hogging parking spots with more cars.
Every Metrobus trip, which costs nearly $4, is subsidized by taxpayers about $2.70 per rider, according to Metro, so the groups are making up at least some of the difference.
Starting Monday, Metro will be rolling out buses along a new route to accommodate workers headed to the Mark Center to accommodate an influx of federal workers as part of a massive military base-closing operation. The riders won’t have to pay for the trips, though, because the Defense Department has agreed to pay the fares of its workers and contractors on the 7M and all 7-line routes.
In Montgomery County, meanwhile, the county is kicking in about $156,000 in the current budget so youths and senior citizens get free rides at certain times of day and reduced fares the rest of the time, according to county spokeswoman Esther Bowring.
Environmental Protection Agency workers get free rides to two Arlington work sites on one line. The District shoulders some of the fare for riders in Anacostia and D.C. students, while Fairfax County does for riders on the S80 and S91 line in Springfield.
For a while, an Arlington apartment building subsidized rides on Metrobus, said Metro’s director of bus planning, James Hamre. Occasionally groups have even sponsored a single day of rides, such as for the Columbia Pike Jazz Festival, he said.
The programs have various origins and some date back to the mid-1990s, but the intent has been the same: to encourage people to take transit.
Lots of other riders are also riding without shelling out their own cash. The federal government pays up to $230 per month to more than 120,000 federal workers to ride Metro or other related transit services. All Metro employees and retirees ride for free, as do current and past board executives and board members. Uniformed law enforcement officers also can board the system for free.
