Premium Service at a Local Price

Beginning January 8, Capital Metro did away with the Premium fare level and transitioned to just two fares: Local and Commuter.

• The Local fare is $1.25 for a Single Ride ticket. A Day Pass will run you $2.50, and if you want to get a week's fare or buy a 31-Day Pass, that'll cost you $11.25 and $41.25, respectively.

• For now, yes. We stopped selling the passes in January but riders can still use their remaining Premium passes. However, we will no longer accept those passes beginning January 7, 2018. So, please use any leftover Premium Passes before then.

• It means that you now have an easier time figuring out which ticket to buy when you want to ride a bus. Enjoy more routes at the same Local price so you can travel to more destinations and easily transfer without having to buy a different pass. And, if you're a regular MetroRapid or Flyer route rider, then you now save a bit of money.

• It's simple. If you want to ride MetroRail or take one of our MetroExpress buses, then you purchase a Commuter fare. For literally everything else, you buy a Local fare.

• Well, pretty much everything else. We offer a lot of services, and there are different fare structures for MetroRideShare and MetroAccess. But, for every other bus service we offer, you pay the Local price.

• Well, the Local fare has always covered most of our bus service, routes that take you to work or over to your friend's place. There are dozens of them, and they're great. With this fare change, though, we added MetroFlyer routes that take you to the airport or from the edges of the city into downtown with fewer stops, meaning you get to your destination faster. There's also our MetroRapid lines, which operate frequently, every 10 minutes on weekdays and 15 minutes on the weekend. They travel north and south along Austin's busiest corridors: North Lamar to South Congress and Burnet Road to South Lamar.

• The decision came out of the Connections 2025 process. That's the latest version of our 5-year planning study. It will transform our bus system to make it more frequent, more reliable and more connected. We also wanted to make it easier to use all of our services and for riders to transfer from one service to another. The removal of the Premium level results in an easier-to-understand fare structure and a simpler-to-use transit system.