Fare inspectors are back on King County buses, but tickets aren't

When fare inspectors returned last year to King County Metro buses after a long absence, they asked nearly 79,000 passengers for proof of payment, and wrote 2,186 warnings for people who had none.

Those 30 officers, however, issued just eight citations to people caught fare-less.

It's a stark figure considering the hundreds of thousands of people who board a bus every day in Seattle. What's more, the people who were cited, which comes after a couple of warnings, didn't pay the fines or find other ways to resolve their tickets, according to a report issued this month about the fare enforcement program.

Metro officials said the program is working as intended, and pointed to the vast majority of people who, when checked by officers, had paid a fare in the seven months the program was running last year. They also say that more and more passengers have fares in hand since inspections began.

Metropolitan King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn, however, said the program didn't even pass the laugh test."

"You have just eight citations, none of which are paid, causing me very significant concern," said Dunn, who called for a hearing on the report. "It's a low number. You fine people to deter behavior. You got to cite some people."

Councilmember Steffanie Fain, who chairs the council's Transportation, Economy and Environment Committee, said a hearing to review the report's findings has already been scheduled for June 16.

Enforcement began in May 2025, with fare inspectors focused on 10 busy routes where they suspected many people weren't paying to ride: RapidRide lines A, B, C, D, E and F, as well as routes 7, 36, 40 and 106 and the Seattle Streetcar.

Metro operates 139 routes. At its busiest, during the weekday rush, the agency has more than 900 buses in service, including those it runs for the Sound Transit Express routes.

Education, then enforcement

David Eldred, Metro's chief administrative officer, suggested the low number of citations is by design.

"We are really trying to do two things," Eldred said. "Fare education, first, and then for folks who just don't want to pay, or can't pay and aren't going to, our job becomes compliance and enforcement."

In recent months, Metro estimates that between 3% and 6% of people don't pay to board one of the 10 lines in question. Those numbers stand in contrast with the 35% of people who rode without a fare across the entire system last year.

"Education is effective and our data is showing that," Eldred said, adding, "We are not reluctant to issue citations."

People who are caught riding the bus without a fare get two warnings. The third violation comes with a $20 fine, which increases to $40 if not paid within 30 days. Rather than pay a fine, people can instead load $20 onto an ORCA card, enroll in a reduced fare program if they're eligible, do two hours of community service or appeal the citation.

Metro's focus on education follows a course set in 2018, when an audit found inspectors disproportionately ticketed people who were homeless.

To make fare inspection more equitable and fair, enforcement now leads with "community values … by framing fare payment within the broader concept of community, service frequency and expanding bus access," according to the report.

The carriers of that message are unarmed and must receive 80 hours of training before they can inspect fares.

The training is part of the $3.1 million budgeted for fare enforcement this year, part of $24.3 million spent overall on transit security, most of which goes to pay and equip the agency's 260 transit security officers, said Rebecca Frankhouser, director of Metro's Safety, Security and Quality Assurance Division. That force is separate from the armed and uniformed Metro transit police, who are contracted with the King County sheriff's office.

The officers know first aid, CPR, how to use an automated external defibrillator, and how to recognize opioid overdoses and administer naloxone, an opioid-overdose antidote. Metro previously required equity and social justice training for inspectors, though that has been under review since the agency started a contract last year with a new company, PalAmerican.

It's not enough, Dunn said, noting that he's "never agreed" with how Metro enforces fares.

"They've always believed in a policy that does almost no fare enforcement," Dunn said, referring to the focus on education. "That encourages problems on our buses, including rampant drug use, and it creates a problem for the system in general because of farebox recovery."

In December 2024, the King County Council updated its policy governing how much fares should cover Metro's operations, a measurement known as farebox recovery, saying they should pay for at least 10% of operations, with a target of 15%.

Before the change, fares were required to cover 25% of the system's operations, with a goal of 30%. Until COVID, the agency generally met its mark, or didn't miss by much.

In the years since 2020, fares have paid for below 10% of operations.

Still, Eldred said the program is working, and conversations have begun about whether to expand its reach or keep it on the busiest routes.

Fair fares

Checking fares on Metro buses began in 2010, when RapidRide A started service. RapidRide, a type of bus rapid transit, depends on people paying fares quickly, which reduces passenger boarding times at each stop and allows more reliable service. In RapidRide's case, people used to pay before boarding, but now ORCA and credit card readers are at all doors.

In 2018, an audit of the program found that "enforcement outcomes are in conflict with King County's equity and social justice goals, such as negative impacts for people experiencing housing instability."

The audit found that only 94 people cited in 2016 actually paid the $124 fine, a fraction of the 3,911 citations issued.

Dow Constantine, who was then King County executive but now leads Sound Transit, proposed moving fare citations away from the court system and to the agency's own administrative system. This avoided sending scofflaw bus riders to court, which was done in the past with a misdemeanor criminal charge that came with a third fare violation.

At the time, Metro had more than 10,000 open citations languishing in court, said Metro's Eldred.

As the pandemic began to grip the globe in February 2020, Metro suspended fare collection and enforcement to help control the spread of COVID. Though fare collection resumed in October 2020, enforcement remained on hold as Metro reformed how it checked fares.

Between February 2020 and May 2025, no warnings, violations or suspensions were issued on Metro buses. Instead, according to this year's report, fare inspectors were repurposed as transit security "to help maintain safety on routes that were experiencing the highest number of reports for assistance from operators."

When Metro resumed fare enforcement last year, agency officials said the move had less to do with safety and revenue and more to do with riders' perceptions of fairness and everyone paying their share of fares.

Still, the return of inspectors followed some worrying news about the region's buses, including when Metro closed all the bus stops at South Jackson Street and 12th Avenue South for nearly three months, citing "safety concerns" at the notorious intersection, which Metro at the time said "continues to be a location of frequent illegal activity."

Within days of the stops being shuttered, bus driver Shawn Yim was fatally stabbed in the University District while working. His suspected killer, a passenger, was caught days later.

Beyond that, the yearslong effort to address the disproportionate number of citations issued to homeless people is still a concern.

The eight citations given in 2025 were unpaid largely because the riders didn't provide a specific address or phone number, and some gave the address for a shelter, suggesting that "several of the riders who received a citation in 2025 may have been experiencing housing instability," this year's report stated.

"We don't want to criminalize a rider's experience. If they can't pay a fare they sure can't pay a citation," said Metro's Frankhouser. "We have a lot of fare options. It's a matter of helping them understand their options.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated which court handles misdemeanor cases.

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This story was originally published April 24, 2026 at 6:43 AM.