The free ride is almost over on Miami-Dade Transit with fares returning June 1
Miami-Dade County plans to move buses and Metrorail stations closer to a pre-pandemic routine this summer by lifting the suspension of passenger fares on June 1.
Miami-Dade’s transit agency suspended fares early in the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, on March 22, 2020, as a way to keep bus operators isolated from passengers and reduce contact with machinery needed to purchase fare cards and pay for rides.
At the time, Miami-Dade couldn’t provide transit employees with high-grade masks or enough cleaning equipment to regularly sanitize the areas around them.
Since then, Miami-Dade has installed plastic barriers where bus operators sit and equipped vehicles with air-sanitizing equipment. Mask and cleaning supplies are plentiful. In February, the county ended rules requiring passengers to enter the bus from the rear, away from operators, setting up the reactivation of pay stations at the front of the vehicles.
In an announcement, the county’s Department of Transportation and Public Works cited both new safety measures and as “more residents are being vaccinated.”
Masks are still required on all Miami-Dade transit vehicles, and capacity restrictions remain. Miami-Dade continues to block off seats in buses to reduce crowding, leading to passengers being left at stops during busy periods.
The county’s transit union wants Miami-Dade to go further and lift capacity restrictions as well.
“It was different when we didn’t have mask mandates, and we didn’t have protection for the drivers. But we’ve corrected that,” said Jeffery Mitchell, president of the Local 291 chapter of the Transportation Workers Union. “Just enforce the mask mandate.”
In 2019, the county collected about $82 million in fares and recorded about $638 million in operating expenses on its annual financial report for transit.
Property taxes and sales taxes subsidize most of the county’s transit system. That changed in 2020, with the influx of about $230 million in federal relief dollars as part of the CARES Act. That’s in addition to the $474 million Miami-Dade received for general COVID-19 relief from the legislation.
This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 2:54 PM.