Sound Transit alongside Community Transit and the wider ORCA card pod will make some limited fare changes on Saturday, March 1. Sound Transit will slightly reduce the cost of ST Express bus trips and the ORCA card pod will make trial promotional prices for regional day passes permanent.
Last August, the ORCA card pod launched a promotional fare reduction for ORCA regional day passes, both for regular adult and reduced fare riders. Those reductions will be made permanent, lowering regular adult day passes by 25% from $8.00 to $6.00 and for reduced fare day passes by 50% from $4.00 to $2.00. The reduced fare program is eligible to riders that are seniors (aged 65 or more), disabled, low-income under ORCA Lift, or a Medicare participant.
ORCA regional day passes can be used to cover almost all public transit services in Puget Sound, usually at no extra cost. That gives riders access to a large variety of transit options, such as local and regional buses, light rail, and passenger-only ferries.
With the regular adult ORCA regional day pass, most transit services that are priced $3.00 or less for adults are fully covered. If a service exceeds $3.00, a pass holder will need to have extra cash in their ORCA e-purse to pay the difference. Likewise, the reduced fare ORCA regional day pass will cover transit services priced $1.00 or less for reduced fare riders, and requiring extra fare payment for transit services exceeding $1.00 fares.
Regional day passes are not valid on King County Metro Access services, Kitsap Transit Access and Fast Ferries services, and Washington State Ferries.
How to load a regional day pass
Riders can purchase an ORCA regional day passes online or in person at an ORCA ticket vending machine, at an ORCA customer service location, or by contacting Sound Transit at 888-988-6722 / TTY: 711.
To purchase online, riders can visit myORCA.com or download or open the myORCA app.
- If you have a myORCA account, log into your account. On myORCA.com, log in, click “manage this card”, select “passes” and choose “Regional” under pass type. Then, select “Daily $3.00”, or “Daily $1.00” if you are a reduced fare customer, and adjust your quantity under “frequency”. Tap “add to cart” to checkout.
- On the myORCA app, log in, select the card you wish to add the pass to, click “add money”, then “add a pass”, and then select “All Day Puget Pass”. Choose your quantity and add it to your shopping cart to check out.
If you don’t have a myORCA account, you can still add the pass to your ORCA card online.
If you have a digital ORCA card on Google Wallet, you can add the pass to your ORCA card via the Google Wallet app.
Farebox recovery impacts
Reduced costs for regional day passes, however, do come with some cost to fare revenue. Sound Transit estimates that from September through December of last year, revenue loss was about $11,000 per month during the initial trial period. Extrapolated out a year, that could top $132,000 in revenue losses per year.
Meanwhile, ST Express bus fares will be reduced from $3.25 to $3.00. This is meant to align the cost of bus trips with the flat fare rate that Sound Transit’s governing board approved for Link in late 2023 and that went into effect last August when the Lynnwood Link Extension formally opened.
Starting in September, King County Metro will also be modifying most transit fares, slightly increasing regular adult fares from $2.75 to $3.00. So the revised ST Express bus fares would bring parity for most transit in King County, with the main exceptions being Sounder, ferries, and the Seattle Streetcar and Seattle Monorail.
To save on fares, adults who pay regular fares can load a monthly PugetPass on their ORCA cards at a cost of $108.00. At this tier, PugetPass allows for unlimited rides in a month, provided that the fare upon boarding transit is $3.00 or less. Fares exceeding $3.00 will require that riders top up by having extra cash in their ORCA e-purse to cover the fare difference.
In the past, Sound Transit maintained a zone-based fare system on ST Express bus routes. But that was eliminated in favor of a flat-fare system starting in July 2020, when the standard fare was set at $3.25. The original zone-based fare system was meant to better recover the cost of long-distance travel across county lines with a $3.75 multi-zone fare and a $2.75 one-zone fare. Long-distance commuter routes are some of the most expensive to operate.
Last year, Sound Transit’s governing board formally revised farebox recovery targets, lowering the target to 12% for ST Express, with a minimum of 7%. Prior to the pandemic, the agency had a farebox recovery target rate of 25% for ST Express, and as of fall 2024, ST Express farebox recovery stood around 16%.
While the 25-cent fare rate reduction on ST Express will only reduce fare collection by about $400,000 each year over a $3.25 fare, the wider retreat from farebox recovery on the service coupled with artificially low day passes and fares on other services will ultimately affect Sound Transit’s finances, reducing farebox recovery by many millions of dollars per year and further affecting the agency’s ability to borrow for and deliver its massive capital expansion project list in Sound Transit 3.
All things equal, Sound Transit would have set a $4.50 adult fare on ST Express by now to keep up with rapidly rising operating costs and cost recovery objectives. But, riders who pay out of pocket for regular adult fares will be big beneficiaries of the anemic farebox recovery policies in vogue and almost certainly appreciate the fare reductions.
Stephen is a professional urban planner in Puget Sound with a passion for sustainable, livable, and diverse cities. He is especially interested in how policies, regulations, and programs can promote positive outcomes for communities. With stints in great cities like Bellingham and Cork, Stephen currently lives in Seattle. He primarily covers land use and transportation issues and has been with The Urbanist since 2014.