More Compass Card Stats and Opinion

Last month, I posted some statistics about the Compass Card roll-out. I wanted to provide a brief update on those statistics. As of mid-April:

-800,000 customers using a Compass Card on a regular basis.
-94% of journeys on our system are made with a Compass Card or Ticket.
-More than 1.3 million taps are recorded every weekday.
-149,000 people loaded an April Monthly Pass to their Compass Card.
-Approximately 363,000 Compass Cards are registered (46%).
-Approximately 91,000 customers have signed up for AutoLoad.

The Compass Card rollout has been rapid, and having only 6% of all trips using other forms of payment in such a short time is impressive. The remaining 6% of trips are using cash on the bus, or old FareSaver tickets on the bus.

One of the original concerns I had was that people wouldn’t have as rapidly adopted the Compass Card, and would run into issues transferring between bus and SkyTrain. In the US, similar transit cards have taken longer to roll out. This could be due to the fact that other transit agencies tried to maintain compatibility with their older fare media during the transition. TransLink didn't maintain backwards compatibility at the faregates. TransLink’s marketing on buses, at bus fare boxes, and at transit exchanges really helped. The clear message was you need a Compass Card if you want to use the SkyTrain.

There are two goals for the Compass Card: making it easier to use transit, and allowing the operation of faregates to reduce fare evasion.

A tweet about TransLink revenue since the introduction of Compass.

TransLink’s new CEO Kevin Desmond says that transit revenue is up 7%. It will be interesting to see the full financial breakdown of this in TransLink's financial update later this year. For example, is the new one zone fare on buses encouraging people to use more transit? It will also be interesting to see if the combined capital and on-going operational costs of the Compass Card/faregate program will have a financially positive or negative impact on TransLink’s bottom line.