{"id":404873,"date":"2025-11-26T01:36:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T01:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/404873\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T01:36:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T01:36:12","slug":"la-metro-hails-success-of-programs-offering-free-rides-discounted-passes-daily-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/404873\/","title":{"rendered":"LA Metro hails success of programs offering free rides, discounted passes \u2013 Daily News"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than 1 million people have signed up for programs that provide free rides and discounted passes to students, low-income and fire-impacted Angelenos since 2021, Metro<\/a> announced today.<\/p>\n

In total, these two programs \u2014 Low Income Fair Is Easy and GoPass \u2014 have provided more than 92 million free rides and 14 million rides on discounted passes, officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTransportation<\/a> costs can eat up a significant portion of a household budget, second only to housing, and programs like these help riders get to where they need to go while saving money that can instead go toward groceries, medical care, education expenses and other basic necessities,\u201d Metro Board Chair and Whittier City Councilman Fernando Dutra said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins hailed the success of the programs, noting it was a \u201cmajor focus\u201d of the agency to grow them out over the last few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very satisfying to see how far we\u2019ve come in a relatively short period of time,\u201d Wiggins said in a statement. \u201cTransportation is the No. 2 household expense, behind housing, so these free rides through GoPass and LIFE are changing lives in a really meaningful way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you to all our LIFE and GoPass riders for choosing Metro to get around the region, and we\u2019ll continue to identify ways to make these programs easier and more accessible to everyone who depends on us,\u201d Wiggins added.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Metro introduced its LIFE program, providing free rides and discounted passes to low income and fire-impacted LA County residents. Metro has registered more than 475,000 customers for the program, resulting in 25 million free rides and 14 million rides with discounted passes.<\/p>\n

Metro expanded eligibility for the LIFE program in response to January\u2019s fires. More than 6,300 fire-impacted residents have signed up for the program since then.<\/p>\n

New participants receive a free 90-day unlimited rides pass. Following that period, riders can choose to load 20 free rides onto their TAP card, opt to receive 20 free rides automatically each month, or purchase a discounted pass from any of the participating transit agencies in the region such as Antelope Valley Transit Authority, Burbank Bus, Culver City Bus, Long Beach Transit, Montebello Bus or Santa Monica Big Blue Bus, among others.<\/p>\n

GoPass began as a pilot program in 2021, providing free rides to students from participating school districts. It was made permanent in April 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 1 million people have signed up for programs that provide free rides and discounted passes to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":252414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,16055,2961,20597,224,5337,5248,50,522],"class_list":{"0":"post-404873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-metro","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-metro","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-transportation"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115613439821376881","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}