It sounds like a dream come true: unlimited Metro and bus access for the entire semester.
And for most students at American University, it is. But AU students are the only college students in the Washington, D.C. metro region – and some of the only ones in the country – to benefit from unlimited transit.
For more than a decade, universities across the country have been partnering with transit agencies to provide students with unlimited rides through “university-negotiated fare bundling.” This is when a university bargains for reduced fares from the local transit agency (often 50 percent or more off of the full fare) and purchases passes for the entire student body, which students then pay in their student-activity fee.
With fare bundling, students get steeply discounted transit passes, and transit agencies get guaranteed riders and revenue (WMATA got $2.7 million from its deal with American University this year).
In 2016, American University partnered with WMATA to launch the pilot UPass program for the 2016-2017 school year. The pilot was a huge success: 90 percent of full-time undergraduate and graduate students used their UPasses.
The UPass program costs AU students $130 a semester, or $1 each day. Although this mandatory pass adds to the student-activity fee, it’s covered in students’ financial-aid packages.
For students who commute to campus or to internships and jobs, the savings are incredible. In a video (below) for WMATA, AU student Kris Schneider saves $11.50 a day commuting to his internship and to class because of the UPass program. That’s $518 saved for the entire semester.
But there are more benefits: Unlimited fare passes have been proven to increase transit ridership among students, making better use of the existing infrastructure by relieving vehicular congestion and air pollution.
And eliminating the cost of transportation increases students’ access to jobs, internships, and other opportunities (As an AU student myself, I wouldn’t be writing this in the Mobility Lab office if it weren’t for UPass).
However, no other major university in the District has heeded WMATA’s call for more universities to join the UPass program. D.C. satellite campuses of Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University, and other schools have joined, but not any other D.C.-based universities.
While most students support the program, university officials are on the fence. George Washington University declined to adopt UPass despite students voting in favor of it. A university spokesperson said that making students pay the mandatory fee was not “feasible or fair.”
The mandatory fee is the main criticism of UPass; critics at American University disliked being required to pay for transit if they didn’t use it. GW student leaders feared the fee would be burdensome on low-income students.
However, transportation is a huge cost for college students. The Institute for College Access and Success reported that, in 2016, the average transportation costs for a full-time community college student were $1,760 per year – almost half of tuition.
But things are slowly changing. Transit agencies in St. Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Baltimore offer unlimited transit programs to local universities and have high rates of participation. Like WMATA, LA Metro’s program was also launched in 2016, indicating that university-negotiated fare bundling might be growing in popularity.
Smaller regions are pursuing UPasses, too. This year, Connecticut unveiled unlimited statewide transit for students at state universities and community colleges. The UPass works in every transit system in the state.
There’s still a lot of work to do, though. Transit agencies in New York and Boston – where 7.3 percent of Bostonians are university students – don’t offer UPass programs to local universities. New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn’t even give student discounts.
Until they do, college students better load up their transit cards.
For much more of our coverage on free transit passes, go here.
Photo of Georgetown University shuttle bus in Arlington by 7beachbum/Flickr.