Green Mountain Transit plans to start collecting fares on many of its busiest bus routes in March 2024 — two months later than planned.
The agency has operated all of its bus routes fare-free since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Starting March 6, though, riders can expect to pay for their trips on local and commuter routes in Chittenden County, and LINK Express routes to Montpelier and St. Albans. (Other routes in Washington, Lamoille, Franklin and Grand Isle counties will stay free).
Rides will cost $2 — a slight increase for local route users over the pre-pandemic fares, according to the agency’s final 2024 urban fare plan, which it released Dec. 11. Riders who are over age 60, under age 18 or who have a disability will pay $1.
But the agency also plans to introduce new caps on how much riders can spend to ride the bus per day or per month in an effort to benefit its most frequent users.
The return to fares was delayed from early January because new “smart” transit cards critical to implementing the caps are shipping later than expected from Green Mountain Transit’s supplier, according to Clayton Clark, the bus system’s general manager.
In order to implement the caps, Green Mountain Transit needs to track how often each rider is using the bus, Clark said. Many riders will be able to do this by paying fares with a smartphone app. But riders who don’t have a smartphone — and who want to take advantage of the caps — will need to use a physical transit card, according to Clark.
Resuming fare collection without the cards on hand, he said, would disadvantage many of the system’s most economically vulnerable riders.
Fare caps are set to be $4 a day (or $2 for reduced-price riders), meaning riders would stop paying after their second trip in a day. Riders would also be capped at paying $50 (or, for reduced fares, $25) in a month, which is the equivalent of 25 bus rides.
Whereas riders previously could only pay onboard the bus using cash, they’ll also be able to do so next year with a credit card or the agency’s smartphone app.
Green Mountain Transit was required under state law this year to draw up a plan for 2024 that would generate enough fare revenue to cover 10% of the cost of operating its routes in Chittenden County. Clark said Friday that projections show $2 regular fares, and $50 regular monthly caps, should bring the system up to that threshold.
Agency leaders have said that bringing back fares — and for some routes, increasing them — will also help the transit system make up for the imminent end of federal Covid-19 relief funding that has buoyed its coffers throughout the pandemic.
The transit agency’s roughly $25 million annual budget is funded largely with federal and state dollars, but also with local assessments on the cities and towns its buses serve. Clark has said that fare revenue — estimated to total about $1 million in its first year back — will help reduce taxpayers’ share of the tab.
The decision appears to be less popular with riders, though. The agency’s 2024 fare plan includes about a dozen written public comments it received on the document, many of which express opposition to charging for rides again next year.
