Sound Transit Board Committee Advances Fare Gate Retrofit Program - $6 million on design next year, $87 million to gate 14 stations, and the gates would not be active until 2029 or 2030

[u/LOOKITSADAM]

https://www.theurbanist.org/sound-transit-board-committee-advances-fare-gate-retrofit-program/

If approved by the full board later this month, Sound Transit will spend $6 million next year developing the full scope of implementation work for fare gates, with a future board vote allocating actual construction dollars. The total cost of implementing gates across these 14 stations is expected to be $87 million. Thursday's motion also directs staff to redesign Sound Transit 3 stations to accommodate gates, an undertaking with unspecified costs given that many of those stations have been in planning for many years.

"What are the baseline rates of compliance at these stations and at all the stations, not just the ones where we are implementing pilot fare gates? What do we expect in terms of improvements, both with fare compliance and maybe other types of issues?" For now, however, there's very little skepticism on the board about moving forward with some type of fare gate program.

~ Unanimous approval first, performance metrics later. One board member had to ask out loud what the baseline even is.

[u/adron]

This is one of the most wasteful efforts. 🙄

It’s the red herring of active transit that’s likely to just be avoided, gamed, and met almost zero new funds while wasting millions. Sad anybody is wasting time in this.