In an effort to win back more riders than it lost during the pandemic, starting Monday Metrorail will cut the price to ride after 9:30 p.m. In addition, it is currently selling monthly passes that are cheaper than in the past.
Starting Monday of this week, after 9:30 p.m. all Metrorail trips will cost $2 until closing time no matter how far a rider goes. There is already a flat $2 fare on weekends that Metro put in place last year.
Also, monthly passes that are on sale now have reduced prices and can be used starting July 1. Metro says the prices for unlimited monthly ride passes will now be between $64-$192 instead of $72-$216.
As an acknowledgment that even people who have returned to the office are telecommuting more than they used to, the monthly passes are now based on riders making 32 trips a month – basically 16 days of commuting back and forth to work – instead of 36 trips a month. Metro says monthly pass buyers will essentially pay for 32 trips, and any trips beyond that will be free.
Metro’s board of directors voted on the price cuts earlier this year as part of an effort to entice back rail riders who stopped using the system during the pandemic.
Metrorail recently had its highest weekday ridership week of the entire pandemic when riders made an average of 270,000 trips a day the week of June 13-17. But as you can see in this chart, that is still nowhere near the ridership Metrorail was seeing in 2019 before the pandemic:
- June 17-21, 2019 669,000
- June 15-19, 2020 49,600
- June 14-18, 2021 150,400
- June 13-17, 2022 270,000
Riders 7News spoke with at the King St.-Old Town station in Alexandria Sunday said in order to get them to ride more often, improving wait times is a much higher priority than price cuts.
Metro expects to cut wait times on the Blue, Orange, and Silver Line trains from 20 minutes between trains to 15 sometime in July – and wait times on all lines are expected to drop once Metro brings back more 7000-series trains. Interim general manager Andy Off says he expects more of them to start coming back later this summer.
Metro recently brought back some 7000-series trains for the first time in 2022, but it has only been a small number. Metro only has approval from overseer, the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, to run eight trains at the moment.
The trains were ordered off the tracks following a derailment last October and have not been in use for the vast majority of the time since then.