‘They fail, or they move the goalpost’: Curley questions Sound Transit’s $87M fare gate math

Sound Transit’s board voted last week to begin designing fare gates at 14 light rail stations in an $87 million pilot program aimed at curbing fare evasion that the agency said has left roughly 37% of riders not paying. The agency projects the gates could recover between $32.8 million and $82.7 million per year and pay for themselves within two to three years.

KIRO host John Curley said on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio that the math doesn’t hold up.

“$60 million is what we get with farebox. That’s 60% of the people paying,” Curley said. “$98 million is if everybody paid. So, $38 million is what’s not being collected, but they say that the farebox gates are going to be able to get them $82 million within two to three years. The number doesn’t make sense.”

Curley pointed to San Francisco’s BART system, which pursued a similar $90 million fare gate project with similar payback projections.

“They said, ‘We’ll be able to pay it back within two to three years,'” Curley said. “Unfortunately, what they hoped for hasn’t worked out. They’re only getting $10 million recovery every year, so it’s going to take almost 10 years for them to get the money back.”

Sound Transit spokeswoman Rachelle Cunningham said the gates will go to the busiest stations and terminus stations, including the airport and most downtown stops.

Board member Claudia Balducci, whom Curley said he invited on the show but did not appear, defended the program.

“It is a huge part of our funding, and there is definitely something to the fares are the way we all contribute to the system that we all benefit from,” Balducci said.

Curley says fare evasion is a symptom of a system nobody trusts

Curley traced the fare evasion problem back to 2020, when Sound Transit dropped fares during COVID, then struggled to reinstate them.

“In 2020, because of the great COVID canard, there was no charge,” Curley said. “For some reason, because people were getting COVID, you didn’t have to pay a fare.”

He said by 2024, 44% or more of riders were not paying, and the agency’s “fare ambassadors,” whose role was to educate, not enforce, were ignored and eventually scrapped.

Curley noted the deeper issue is a system carrying about 1% of Puget Sound commuters, with the regional council hoping to double that to 2%, while spending $150 billion.

“If it doesn’t work and you’re only carrying a small percentage of the people, why keep going?” Curley said. “Does anybody really have any faith in Sound Transit? Every time they say they’re going to build something on time and what the budget is going to be, they fail, or they move the goalposts.

“It’s called a sunk cost,” Curley added. “‘Well, we’ve already spent $150 billion. We’ve got to keep going, because at this point we’ve spent so much money we can’t stop spending the money now.’ Well, listen, if it doesn’t work, why keep going?”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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