BART to Muni Transfers Could Soon be Free

The Bay Area is considering a pilot program that would make it free or cheaper to transfer between different public transit agencies. This means that if you took BART to another transit agency, like VTA or Muni, you could pay the full BART fare and then not have to pay anything to transfer.

If you transfer to Muni, AC Transit or VTA within two hours, your fare would be discounted by up to $2.50.

The goal of this pilot program is to increase ridership and encourage people to use public transit more often. The Bay Area has a lot of different public transit agencies, and it can be expensive to use them all. This pilot program would make it cheaper to use multiple agencies, which could encourage people to take public transit instead of driving.

The program is still in the early stages, but it could be implemented as early as summer 2024. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is the organization that is in charge of the program, and they are still working out the details. The pilot project would last at least 18 months and make use of some $22 million that the MTC has set aside for efforts to streamline usage of the Bay Area’s myriad transit agencies.