Use an ORCA card to pay your fare.
It’s faster than feeding cash into a fare box. Multiply that small time savings by every passenger on the bus, and you get a noticeably faster ride. You can buy an ORCA card online at www.orcacard.com, at a ticket vending machine at any Link station (including all Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel stations*), or at any Metro Transit or Regional Partners Pass Sales Outlet (locations are listed at www.orcacard.com).

*A ticket vending machine is being installed this week at Convention Place station in the transit tunnel.

Use off-board ORCA readers and board through the back doors.
At stations with off-board ORCA readers, you can pay before you get on the bus and then board through one of the back doors (between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. only – at other times, all riders enter through the front door for security reasons). Where this option is available, it’s a great way to cut down the bottleneck at the front of the bus. We’re working with the City of Seattle to install ORCA readers in downtown Seattle, with the goal of having them in place by fall 2013.

Exit via the back doors.
You can cut the amount of time the bus spends at your stop by leaving through the back doors, so other passengers can start boarding through the front door right away.

photo: passengers approaching and exiting from a stopped bus
Exiting through the back doors allows other passengers to start boarding at the front.

If you’re standing, move away from the doors.
This will allow others to board or leave the bus more quickly. Small delays at each stop add up to a longer ride, so preventing those delays gets everyone where they’re going more quickly.