There are many ways to pay your fare on King County Metro. But whether you “tap” an ORCA card, flash a Transit GO Ticket from your phone, or use cash, a paper ticket or a pass, you’re funding transit and letting us know how to serve you better.
Metro relies on fare revenue to deliver transit service that hundreds of thousands of people count on every day. Even if your employer pays for or subsidizes your transit, it’s still important to “tap for transit” every time you board and, on Sound Transit Link light rail, when you exit, too.
But tapping your ORCA card or otherwise showing payment does more than help pay for transit service. Those taps provide us with data that we use to improve your service. For example, more taps at a specific location or at a certain time of day can indicate we should increase service there.
When you ride, you might hear a friendly reminder via onboard announcement:
“Greetings, Metro riders! Please remember to ‘Tap for Transit.’ Tapping your ORCA Card funds transit service and lets us know when and where to add more buses. You can also pay by cash, paper ticket, transfer, or the Transit GO Ticket mobile app. Youth 18 and younger ride for free. Thanks for riding!”
If you’re a RapidRide passenger and paying with an ORCA card, remember that RapidRide coaches allow you to “tap” at any door.
As the announcement says, if you’re 18 and younger, you ride for free! But if you have an ORCA card, please do give it a tap. Your ride with an ORCA Youth card remains free—but the data allows us to improve your experience.
So keep your ORCA Card or other payment method handy, and thank you for supporting Metro!
Grammatical correction of my prior text message:
Try using public transit MTA New York City Transit (MTA means “Metropolitan Transportation Authority”, which is a New York State-chartered agency that operates ALL public transit in the Five Boroughs, including subway service and the MTA Metro-North Railroad and the MTA Long Island Rail Road). Fare evasion is a serious matter than often goes on here. I don’t see anything being done about it. Young people openly “jump the turnstiles”, knowing that there is nobody to stop it. Bus drivers don’t enforce proper fare payments, neither.
I love that people don’t have to pay to ride anymore. The new ambassador thing is a joke, all you need to do is refuse to ID yourself… Fantastic job making Metro and Sound Transit a de facto fare free system!
Transit should not be free. Fares should be inforced or transit becomes a homeless shelter and thats some expensive housing.
This is a great example of another shortcoming of free transit–you lose mountains of important data. ST is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by blaming their woes on trumped up charges of fare evasion.
Frankly, the widely reported high percentage of unaddressed fair evasion/avoidance makes those of us who pay our fair fare feel like suckers. As a rule follower who believes in contributing to society for its collective good, I will continue to tap my Orca card as requested, but I would feel better about it if I knew that Metro and ST were doing what they could to ensure that others paid for their rides as well.
Try using public transit MTA New York City Transit (MTA means “Metropolitan Transportation Authority”, which is a New York State-chartered agency that operates ALL public transit in the Five Boroughs, including subway service. Fare evasion is a serious matter than often goes on here. I don’t see anything being done about it. Young people openly “jump the turnstiles”, knowing that there is nobody to stop it. Bus drivers don’t enforce proper fare payments, neither.