U-PASS Advisory Board Regular Meeting October 25th, 2016 Present          I.

Hakikat Bains, ASUW Dir. Of Campus Partnerships Alissa Mustre, ASUW Representative Adam Khan, ASUW Representative Anna Wittow, GPSS Representative Cooper Smith, GPSS Representative Lucas Simons, Advisory Board Staff Zachary Howard, Transportation Advisor Naveen Sahi, ASUW Representative appointee Tori Hernandez, Proxy for Sarah Loeffler, GPSS Representative Public Comment Period (Acknowledged)

II.

Agenda approval (Approved 3:01pm)

III.

Selecting chair and vice chair

Lucas mentioned to members that they should think about whether they want to serve as chair. Zack mentions that we’ll vote next week on who will serve as chair and vice chair. IV.

Action Item: Autumn Quarter Presentations to Senates

Adam: Will send message to steering committee to get on agenda. Prior to November 30th budget forecast would be best. Tori will get in touch with secretary to get on their schedule Cooper: what was the content of the presentation last year? Zack: It was an overview of universal U-PASS program, information on student involvement TS can join to answer technical questions. Please let us know as far ahead of time as possible. Tori: How far ahead do you need to know? Our meetings will be on November 2nd and 16th Zack: I’m free on November 2nd. Tori: I’ll work on getting it on the agenda for the second V.

Action Item: Discuss work plan for the year

Lucas: advisory board summary in your binder has items to work on

Zack: these are things we can decide throughout the year don’t need to get them all nailed down now (Lucas passes out ASUW resolution 22-4) Discussion on work plan item: becoming an ORCA Lift retailer Anna: where are we in the process of becoming an orca Lift retailer? Zack: ORCA Lift is a program to provide low income fairs for people who meet income eligibility criteria. Over the past year and half the KC council has done some outreach to education institutions to see how implementation would work. In the general public candidate apply at partner agencies and are given an ORCA Lift card if they meet the requirements. It works like a regular orca card with an e-purse except when they tap the bus the fair is less. It doesn’t work on every transit agency covered by U-PASS but most of them. When it comes to ORCA Lift and U-PASS the implementation issue is U-PASS sends information on all trips taken with U-PASS. We don’t have something that tags each trip to a person. The low income fare program requirements are very specific that the benefits can only be applied to intended beneficiaries. We can’t suggest, for example, that a certain percentage is low income eligible so a certain percentage of the fares should be discounted because it would subsidize the benefits across the program. Last year where we left it was that we’d explore the student database where U-PASS gets its activation. When you register as a student your card number is registered and sent to ORCA. We’d look into collaborating with data base people and with office of financial aid to determine students who are eligible and give them some sort of rebate or grant. The response from financial aid was a strong “no”. With federal funds attached to financial aid comes lots of restrictions. Information attached to financial aid can only be used to determine aid. Even if we did manage to come up with separate rebate program that amount would impact financial aid packages because it counts as income that would have to be considered in aid packages. There were some concerns about tying financial access to records in student database. We tabled discussions at that point. There isn’t a path forward from the UW admin side but on the King County Metro side they’re reviewing their fare ordinance. That is the counties mandate of what they can charge people when they ride transit. King County Metro has never had a student class of fares. That is something on the table this year. In discussions with Metro they’ve mentioned that it would represent a revenue loss to charge students less. I’m not sure if there will be public hearing or public input on that. That’s where we are programmatically in tying Lift to U-PASS. Discussion on work plan item: changing name/location of U-PASS fee on tuition statement Cooper: I think one big thing is people’s consternation about U-PASS being mandatory. I’d love to find a solution to that, but I want it to be transparent. There should be a way to make it clear we’re not just taking your money but this is something providing value to the campus. That would be a tangible thing to accomplish this year. Adam: We should ask whether it could be lumped in with SAF fee. I can talk with Abe MacClenny about making that happen.

Zack: I’d be interested to hear what the SAF committee has to say. For those of you who may not know, SAF is the Services and Activities Fee. If this happened there have been concerns that student committees would be overstepping their oversight role. Cooper: Would it still say U-PASS on your tuition fee? Adam: That’s unclear. Cooper: We should see if we can get an example of what it would look like if they list it under the other mandatory fees but it doesn’t look that way to a student. Zack: Another angle that’s been brought up is changing the name of the fee as it appears on the tuition statement. If people think that can be waived, simply adding the word mandatory might be a solution. May be a quicker fix. Tori: The only two charges on my account are U-PASS and tuition. Maybe the issue is that all other fees are lumped into tuition. Cooper: what is the reason it was separated in the first place? Zack: U-PASSPASS has slightly different timelines that registration deadlines. U-PASS activates 7 days before quarter starts. That’s when it appears on tuition statement. Registration doesn’t finalize till 2nd week of quarter. Within that period you can make changes to your registration. I can find more information about why they are separate. Tori: Further down it has a tuition charge breakdown including SAF. Should U-PASS be there? Cooper and Adam: (agree) Zack: Obviously something worth exploring. (Lucas and Zack say they’ll bring more information on what process of U-PASS name change/location change would look like to next meeting) Lucas: Any clarifications on other work plan items? Discussion on work plan item: Budgeting Adam: I think I was the one who suggested the budget item. Just more information on fee increase, mostly is what we were thinking of. Zack: If that’s something of interest, we have our accounting manager coming [for quarterly updates], but I can talk more about what goes on under the hood to forecast cost increases. I’ll share ridership numbers with you today. [Discussion of U-PASS budgeting] can be built into our discussion on finances. I’m happy to give as much details as you want.

VI.

Update on U-PASS Ridership

(Zack hands out print out of ridership charts) Zack: just want to start conversation on ridership. Since last year we have gotten great updates from agencies on ridership numbers. Every time a U-PASS is tapped its recorded that a U-PASS ride was taken to bill the student U-PASS program. I get these numbers to verify invoicing. We use them for forecasting as well and cycles in student use. There’s less activity in summer. October is the busiest month. This first chart shows all ridership across agencies for last two years. (Zack describes patterns and points in chart) Ridership overall is focused on Metro and Sound Transit. The forecast for the next two years has a lot of uncertainty because of how students have made housing decisions around light rail. Typical Metro fare is $2.75, while light rail ride could be $2.50to over 3 dollars. We don’t know what impact this year will have on costs but just in terms of ridership we expect a continued increase. (describes graphs on back) Student ridership on light rail increased 800% with station opening. Magnitude of increase was surprising to us and to Sound Transit. If there’s any other related information on this I can get you please let me know. This will be important to our plans for fee changes. Cooper: Is the dip [in summer ridership] because of U-PASS not being used in summer? Zack: There’s only about 1/3 of the students who have Universal U-PASS in summer. There’s also reduced demand for transit in summer. I could do some math to see if average trip rate is the same. Cooper: I wanted to connect it to gap quarter to see if there would be a large number of students taking expensive trips. Zack: the gap quarter comes up regularly, that is, how students who are not taking summer classes can continue using U-PASS. The funding for U-PASS is subsidized by the University. Those subsidies would not be available for students not registered. When it comes to how gap quarter would impact costs, it’s hard to say. I hesitate to say it would come from the same budget. I imagine we’d see lower ridership since a lot of students aren’t in Seattle in summer. VII.

Discussion of meeting time for rest of quarter

Lucas: Does this meeting time work for rest of quarter? (Group agrees it does)

Zack: Next meeting would be Nov. 8th, then 22nd and that would be meeting where we discuss projections. Zack: There was some interest in Nightride, I’ll follow up and try to get someone to a future meeting.

Adjourned at 3:45pm