You Won't Have to Jump Any Turnstiles to Avoid Paying $1.75 to Ride Light Rail...

But, Officer, I was totally just practicing my Parkour!

Sound Transit established its light rail fares yesterday: $1.75 base fare ($1.25 for kids), plus $.05 a mile, rounded to the nearest quarter. How will you pay for it? Kinda the same way you pay (or don't pay) for the SLUT. Buy a ticket and be subject to spot checks. (This is also the premise for a bizarre and somewhat overrated Hungarian movie I watched the other night.)

"I don't like calling it an honor system," says ST spokesperson Bruce Gray. "We'll have police on every train, and they can check for fares and issue a $150 fine" if a passenger hasn't paid. (Note--this is small potatoes next to Phoenix, which really socks it to delinquent riders with half-g fines CorrectionOur cousins at New Times say the fines are only $50-100. Denver charges only $21 for a first offense.) The agency will contract with the King County Sheriff for the officers.

While the system didn't work so well for Los Angeles' subway--they gave it up in 2007 because they were losing money--it has become industry standard for light rail, notes Gray. (For example, Phoenix, Houston, Portland, Denver, and San Diego all use spot checks.)

"You save a lot on the back end," says Gray. "If you do some kind of turnstile or barricade entry to the platform, you've gotta staff that. When you've got stations that are open 20 hours day, we find more sense" to go with the spot checks.

Gray says he doesn't know what percentage of people are likely not to pay (it's roughly 2% on Sounder trains, but likely to be higher on light rail), but says that the "fare evasion rate" was calculated into the agency's estimate that it would be able to cover 52% of operating costs with fares by the year 2017.

Also calculated into that estimate, says Gray: A fare hike. "We expect to raise fares before U-Link comes online."