As Sound Transit starts to grapple with long-term budget woes that could potentially derail transit projects across the region, agency leadership is expecting to take another look at an issue long thought settled: whether to implement physical gates at stations to increase fare compliance.
Unlike many other major U.S. transit agencies, Sound Transit’s light rail or commuter rail stations don’t feature gates where riders have to present proof-of-payment to enter, and instead rely entirely on fare ambassadors at stations and on board trains to enforce compliance. But the idea of implementing fare gates at Link stations has been a topic that has bubbled up from time to time.
Cost concerns and technical constraints in retrofitting existing stations with gates appear the top reasons the idea hasn’t moved forward previously.
However, as the other revenue sources that Sound Transit depends on to build facilities and maintain operations face a projected $4 billion to $5 billion shortfall through 2046, CEO Dow Constantine says he is set to include some funding to further study fare gates in his proposed budget for 2026. That study would come after an initial look at fare gates suggested Sound Transit could increase fare revenue by as much as $750 million over 20 years, even after accounting for the cost of the gates.
“I will tell you that my budget will have some funding, if the board wishes, to get exploring fare gates — not actually build fare gates, but I’ve been asked by several board members if we should look at that option,” Constantine told The Urbanist during a briefing on the agency’s Enterprise Initiative work, which is set to find ways to reduce costs across all of the agency’s different departments.
Sound Transit’s current financial plan assumes that 4% the agency’s revenues will come from fares over the next two decades, a figure that seems small but which translates to over $5.5 billion dollars. The percentage of riders confirmed to be paying some type of fare has been increasing in recent years even without physical fare compliance infrastructure.
In 2024, the agency estimated 61% of passengers paid with some type of fare media including paper tickets or ORCA cards, an increase over 56% in 2023. But that rate remains well below what would be likely achieved if fare gates were in place.
Constantine said that Sound Transit is looking at California’s BART system for potential lessons that could come from adding or upgrading fare gates onto an existing system. As an accountability requirement for emergency state transit funding, BART started adding fare gates to select stations in 2023, and is set to have new “next generation” fate gates installed at all 50 stations systemwide by the end of this year.
“We went down to look at BART. They’ve just finished a project with fare gates at all of their stations. They did like 50 stations, and we want to see what their experience is with that,” Constantine said. “It’s not identical to our system, but it’s a close enough analog. And you know, they felt they needed to do that for their compliance, but they also wanted to help with security and other issues that have the passenger experience.”
Constantine acknowledged that at-grade stations present a challenge for fare gates, requiring far more barriers to separate the station from the public streetscape as compared to underground or elevated stations. Some at-grade Link stations would appear to lack the space to make this practical, such as the stations in the median of MLK Way S. Even if feasible, the result could be an at-grade station with a cage-like feel — not necessarily inviting.
“We’ll learn from our peers and see if partial fare gates, no fare gates, or a partial system where some of the more popular stations have gates, or potentially someday all of the stations — it’s very hard to do at-grade [stations], right?” Constantine added. “So, we’re going to take a little bit of money to allow the board, if they choose, to explore that.”
BART officials have painted the $90 million spent on upgraded gates as a success, citing a survey that showed a decrease in the number of riders reporting they had witnessed fare evasion, from 25% in 2024 to 17% earlier this year. And the new upgraded gates coincide with a substantial decrease in crime across the BART system, although that trend of decreased crime is not confined to the Bay Area.
Yet analysis conducted by the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) released earlier this year threw some cold water on how BART has framed the gains that came from the upgraded fare gates, noting that the agency’s goals for the change were all muddled together without clear outcomes in mind.
“BART has conflated its approach to addressing revenue loss and fare evasion costs with community calls for improved safety and quality of life factors for riders,” CPE’s final report noted. “It is unclear which, if any, of these issues are driving BART’s decision to harden gates and focus on fare enforcement. It is also unclear whether BART has calculated how much revenue will be generated from fare enforcement and what the impact will be on public safety. No such analysis is currently available on BART’s website or in its publications, and no such strategy was made available to CPE throughout this project.”
BART’s fiscal year 2026 budget, adopted this summer, assumes a 4% annual increase in fare revenue that the agency partly attributes to the new infrastructure, along with changes to fares and regional employer pass policies.
Beefing up fare enforcement infrastructure isn’t a project that’s unique to BART, of course, and agencies across the country are either investing in gate upgrades or considering them. In New York City, where jumping turnstiles became a media trope decades ago, the MTA will start testing upgraded gates at 20 stations starting this fall, a program that has been combined with efforts like increased staffing at stations to deter fare evaders.
Like the driver compartment barriers set to be installed on King County Metro buses in response to safety concerns, upgraded fare gates come with a relatively high price tag, but their implementation is much less complicated than human-scale interventions that would improve public safety at transit stations and likely cut down on fare evasion in the process. And so gates are often the path of least resistance.
As a potential source of revenue for Sound Transit, fare gates likely won’t lose their allure as the agency advances scenarios that are intended to advance projects in the face of intense budget pressures. Last month, Sound Transit Board Chair Dave Somers brought up the topic up on the same day the board voted to approve a set of principles that will anchor their work going forward.
“It’s going to be — diving deeper into these issues, [and] one that we haven’t talked about in quite a while is fare recovery,” Somers told members of the press following the August board meeting. “If you dive into the Enterprise [Initiative], all the list of things that they’re looking at, it’s in there. And we will be going through it in the next six months.”
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
