# Youth fares



## BCL (Dec 22, 2022)

Just wondering about it. Pretty much every transit agency in my area has youth fares. But when I went down to the LA and Orange County area I found they didn't really have any on most systems. They might have programs where students in local schools would have free rides using a TAP card registered to the student, but most agencies didn't have youth fares.


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## MARC Rider (Dec 23, 2022)

In Baltimore, children under six can ride free with an adult who pays the full fare. They have a special student program for K-12 students which offers a reduced fare if the student signs up for the program. Otherwise, chilren over the age of 6 have to pay full fare.

Back in the 1960s, I was able to ride the Paoli Local on the PRR at half fare until I was 12. I didn't need to have an adult accompany me. When I would ride the Redd Arrow Lines and the PTC Market-Frankford Line, I had to pay full fare. When I was in high school, the School District of Philadelphia didn't rely on school buses, but it had a deal with PTC (later SEPTA) where we could buy a pack of 10 "school tokens" for 85 cents. (The regular fare was 25 cents.) The school tokens included free transfers, so I could ride all over the city in the afternoon is I had wanted to. If I wanted to ride on the weekends, I had to pay the full adult fare. 

If I rode the Penn Central or Reading commuter trains, or took joyrides on the NEC, I had to pay full fare. However, during the Christmas and Easter school breaks, Penn Central offered a special deal for kids 15 or under on what they called "ladies' days" (Tuesday and Thursday, I believe.) Adult women could ride to New York on a round trip for half fare, and during the school breaks, kids 15 and under could ride for half of that. I did do that once with a friend when I was in 10th grade. We went up to New York for the day, rode the subways and went to the Museum of Natural History to look at the minerals and dinosaur skeletons.


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## BCL (Dec 23, 2022)

MARC Rider said:


> In Baltimore, children under six can ride free with an adult who pays the full fare. They have a special student program for K-12 students which offers a reduced fare if the student signs up for the program. Otherwise, chilren over the age of 6 have to pay full fare.



That's more or less what I was seeing in Southern California. I went on a trip with my child who wasn't a student in their local schools and wasn't eligible for their (non means tested) free rides program.









GoPass for K-12 and Community College Students - LA Metro


With a registered GoPass TAP card, students attending participating schools can ride Metro and other participating transit systems for free.




www.metro.net





I did a little bit more digging, and LA Metro does have youth fares for non-participating schools (or even home schooled kids), but they don't make it easy to find it. And it's only available to students enrolled in a Los Angeles County school or who are home schooled in LA County.



https://tapforce.force.com/resource/1490129095000/tap_student_app_eng_032117

Both K-8 and 9-12 students must be enrolled in an accredited elementary, junior high, high school or home school in Los Angeles County.​
As a kid I remember when public transportation was practically free. San Francisco MUNI used to have a child fare that was 5 cents when adults were $1.


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