Metro Fares Going Up

We're not sure if Metro planned to give us an extra day of the old fares by scheduling the new ones to take affect tomorrow (the day after Leap Day), but we sure do appreciate it.

Either way, please remember that as of tomorrow off-peak fares will be $1.50 and peak fares will be $1.75. Youth and seniors will keep paying what they've been paying until July, by the way.

As a part of our friendly reminder, we also thought it wise to let folks with annual passes know that you too will have to deal with the higher fare before your pass runs out. According to the Metro rep we just got on the phone, you can either keep the old pass and pay an extra quarter each time you get on, or go down to the Second and Jackson office (201 S. Jackson) to pay the difference. (You'll get a new pass.) Lucky holders of a three-month pass for the months January, February and March will not be liable for that extra quarter until their passes run out.

As an aside, we think this all seems like a lot of effort to put customers through that could be avoided if we had Smart Cards like the rest of the known transit-riding world. So, uh, Metro can you get your act together and finally one? You've only been working on it since 2003.

We want buses in the sky too and thank Laser Butter (who seems to have a proclivity for good names) for promoting the idea with "sky bus". Found in the Seattlest Flickr Pool (natch).