Capital Metro to launch free fare program to serve riders experiencing homelessness

Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority is preparing to launch its new fare program for individuals experiencing homelessness in Austin.

The HMIS Pass program will distribute passes to unhoused Austin and Travis County residents who are receiving services through the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition’s Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS.

Capital Metro is currently finalizing pass parameters and internal procedures for the new program. Pass distribution and enrollment is expected to start in October. The Capital Metro Finance, Audit and Administration Committee learned about the organization’s progress at its meeting on Aug. 14.

Last year, advocates including the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance argued that Capital Metro didn’t go far enough in its efforts to reduce fares for low-income Austinites and called for a free fare program for individuals experiencing homelessness.

Cheyenne Krause, chief of staff for the transportation authority, told committee members on Monday that the community response prompted Capital Metro to begin a comprehensive review of transit access needs for individuals experiencing homelessness and the service providers that currently connect many of those people to bus passes.

“We heard loud and clear from the community that the existing program we had set up with the Transit Empowerment Fund wasn’t working for them,” Krause said. “It was creating some unnecessary and unintentional burdens and barriers to entry for both the service providers but also for the clients they were serving – which were mostly very low-income, sometimes unhoused individuals in our community.”

As a stopgap measure over the past year, Capital Metro used an emergency program to give no-cost bus passes to service providers who would in turn distribute them among unhoused individuals.

“This allowed us to gather some data, but also to figure out what is the path forward for this program,” Krause said.

Krause called the emergency program “hugely successful.” Since starting, it has provided direct access for thousands of Austinites by distributing more than 38,000 passes. More than 24 local organizations participated. The program also allowed the city to collect data on usage and made time for the Transit Empowerment Fund to determine a sustainable way forward for a program that is also compatible with community needs.

However, Krause said, staff also learned the structure of the emergency program is not sustainable in the long term due to the time necessary to distribute the passes, the manual data interpretation required and the fact that it strained the Transit Store pass inventory for all customers.

The new HMIS program is designed to solve those issues. It is based on a smart card that that’s free and lasts for two years.

Krause said, “This is in line with what other transit agencies that have a similar program are doing.”

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.