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SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker and the Transportation Division will propose a long-term Hive Pass program that discounts monthly UTA passes for Salt Lake City residents.
The Hive Pass pilot was launched to help address one of the challenges to riding transit in Salt Lake City by making it more affordable for the typical short trips among residents, according to a Salt Lake City government news release. More than 3,000 residents participated in the Hive Pass pilot program that ran over a seven-month period in 2014, taking 160,000 transit trips.
A survey showed 90 percent of Hive Pass participants had customer satisfaction and a commitment to purchase the pass again, the news release said. Seventy percent of surveyed Hive users rode transit three or more times each week, and pass-holders who were previous transit users increased their use of UTA transit.
“Residents have told us, unequivocally, that the Hive Pass pilot program was a smashing success,” Becker said in the news release. “Now, we’re taking what we learned from that process and incorporating it in a proposal that will keep this deeply discounted pass available to everyone that calls Salt Lake City home, under a sustainable model for both Salt Lake City and UTA. This is a great program that creates new, very affordable access to transit options while making direct, positive impacts on our local air quality, helping people connect with jobs and contributing to a more livable community for everyone in the city.”
Residents have told us, unequivocally, that the Hive Pass pilot program was a smashing success.
–Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker
Under the new proposal, Hive Passes would be available on a month-to-month basis, or for multiple months at a time, for $42 per month (a 50 percent discount from the UTA standard monthly pass,) the news release said. The Hive Passes would also offer unlimited access to all UTA TRAX and regular commuter bus service.
The new long-term program would include a slightly higher monthly fee than with the pilot program — $42 rather than $30 — and would also eliminate the use of Frontrunner service access (which was utilized by less than 10 percent of users during the pilot as shown by UTA automated passenger count data,) the news release said.
The new program would also eliminate the pilot requirement of a one-year pass purchase and allow for month-to-month pass purchases. The Hive Voucher program, where providers of services to low-income residents purchase annual passes for their clients, would remain the same, under the news proposal.
If approved, Salt Lake City, UTA and residents would share in the cost of each pass, with the city contributing 30 percent of the cost of each pass, the news release said.
