Walter E. Allen of Acumen was a panel member for the Transit Cooperative Research Program Report 237, Fare-Free Transit Evaluation Framework. This important report presents a framework that can be used by transit practitioners to evaluate the potential benefits, costs, and trade-offs of implementing fare-free transit. The framework may also be used by community partners, including staff from related organizations, for instance, municipal departments, metropolitan planning organizations or neighboring transit agencies.
The research team evaluated transit agencies of different sizes across the U.S. and developed 23 case studies with full fare-free, partial fare-free and not fare-free scenarios. The outcomes of this research are available in the full report. Visit the National Academies website for the full report.