(1) Payment. ORCA is obvious, but what about everybody else? It’s impractical to get a card to every transit rider. So: do you make people “report” on and off and pay when they leave, even going downtown? Do you simply make the cash fare equal to the max and penalize tourists, occasional riders and the poor? How do you make that work?

(2) Enforcement. Distance-based fares require the system to know when you got on and when you get off. ORCA helps, but how do you have people swiping on and off? If you let them swipe back-door, do you hire fare inspectors? If not, do you eliminate free ride? Additionally: what’s to keep folks from boarding at 4th and Union, swiping “off” at 6th and Olive, and then riding all the way to Everett or Issaquah or Tacoma or Gold Bar on a $0.20 fare?

Like I said, it’s a concept that would be fantastic, but I don’t see how you can make it work without the advantages of rail.

(2) How about we put the back scanner outside the back door? Enter front, leave front or back. Yes, swipe on and off. I’m fine with getting rid of the ride free zone if we have a distance based fare – nobody will mind paying a dime or two.

Many European transit systems use distance-based fares in the form of many small zones. They also use the proof-of-payment system, on rail and even on buses since the late 1960s. Enforcement is key to success. Portland tried it on their buses in the 80s and it was a failure because their enforcement was weak and the equipment broke down often. One of the reasons they wanted to do POP was to make the fare structure more equitable by having more zones.

Here’s a bit of history about Metro fare zones

1973: Originally, Metro set fares at 20 cents base and 10 cents for each additional zone, and there were 30 different zones that the buses traveled through. In 1977, the agency moved to the simpler two-zone system.

So there’s your distance-based system. I don’t know how it performed though.

I don’t think ORCA will be a problem for tourists as long as they set up a system for returning cards. When I was in Singapore I got a stored-value card with a deposit and then returned it for my deposit.

But seriously, where’s your bus pass, Matt? As the kind of guy who walks home from the grocery store(!), you’re a shoo-in for a transit pass.

I’d rather see us figure out a way to get transit passes in more people’s hands. Hopping on a bus for a 6-block jaunt is only going to be viable for a certain subset of the urban population — the folks who live near frequent transit lines. The other way to crack this nut is just to work on policies that increase the percentage of those folks who have bus passes, either through subsidies, by offering better service, etc., etc.

I live close to 5 separate lines and a bus pass doesn’t make sense for me. The reason? Our rates are really set up for long-distance daily bus commuters or people without cars.