Innovating Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s transit fare policies during a global crisis

OXD has been contracted to apply design and qualitative research methods to uncover key business insights about the San Francisco Bay Area’s public transit fare policies across the region’s 27 transit operators, including BART, SFMTA, and AC Transit. The San Francisco Bay Area is home to nearly eight million people and before the COVID-19 pandemic over 1.7 million trips were taken on public transit each weekday.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020, we transitioned seamlessly from in-person interviews to an entirely remote approach. Our team has supported projects with a remote research approach for clients including Government of Alberta, Legal Aid BC, Canadian Digital Services, Parks Canada, and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI). The pandemic has not stopped us from delivering quality on important research work.

San Fransisco people on BART transit
Photo of BART transit by Corey Agopian on Unsplash

OXD has been hired to help better understand barriers related to fares and the user experience of transit in the Bay Area. Our research work is supporting:

  • developing goals for the regional fare system that will support an improved user experience, increased transit ridership, and build on robust public outreach;
  • identifying barriers related to fares and the user experience—especially those that are impeding increased ridership;
  • identifying opportunities to increase transit ridership by improving the regional fare system through regional fare coordination and integration strategies; and
  • developing a detailed implementation plan, including funding plan, for recommended improvements.

By uncovering these barriers, we can design and implement a better, and more fair and equitable fare policy that overcomes them and increases ridership.

To learn more about our remote research work, read our Insight, How to broaden your reach and reduce participant barriers with remote user research.

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