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In January 2018, plans for the station in Dallas were released as the preferred location identified by the Federal Railroad Administration in their Draft Environmental Impact Statement.
In February 2019, Texas Central announced that it had contracted Resource Environmental Solutions (RES) for ecological mitigation services to help protect and enhance natural ecosystems and the environmental throughout construction and operations. Also that month, Texas Central named Citi and MUFG as its financial advisers to spearhead its capital-raising efforts. The Federal permitting the Record of Decision was due by March 27, 2020, and a $5.9 billion construction deal was awarded to Renfein in February 2020. FRA regulatory approvals came in September 2020, with construction expected to commence shortly thereafter.
The right-of-way to be acquired from private property owners is a significant factor for the project. Ranchers living along the proposed route have challenged the company's attempts to survey and construct the line, questioning their right to eminent domain. Grimes County has opposed the project.
Texas Central Railroad filed a lawsuit against a landowner that refused to allow survey crews onto his land. The railroad filed for summary judgment in the case, "Texas Central Railroad and Infrastructure vs Calvin House", arguing that it was entitled to require private landowners to allow land surveys for possible future eminent domain purchases under Texas state law. However, in a December 2016 ruling, the Harris County, Texas court denied the railroad's petition for summary judgment.
In February 2019, a Leon County District Judge ruled that Texas Central is not a railroad company and therefore does not have the right to conduct surveys on private land.
In July 2019, Texas's 14th Court of Appeals in Houston reversed a previous decision by a lower court which granted summary judgement and issued a permanent injunction in Grimes County's public-nuisance suit against Texas Central and Pacheco Koch Consulting Engineers, Inc.
In May 2020, Texas's 13th Court of Appeals in Leon County ruled that Texas Central Railroad and Infrastructure, Inc. and Integrated Texas Logistics, Inc.) are both railroad companies and interurban electric railways.
The case "James Fredrick Miles v. Texas Central Railroad and Integrated Texas Logistics, Inc." is currently on appeal to the Supreme Court of Texas. The Ellis County commissioners' court, and other counties along the proposed route which oppose high-speed rail, filed an amicus brief in support of the challenge to the project.
On July 16, 2020, the federal Surface Transportation Board ruled that Texas Central Railroad is part of the interstate rail network based on its through-ticketing with Amtrak, and therefore subject to the STB's jurisdiction.
The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-240; ISTEA, pronounced "Ice-Tea") is a United States federal law that posed a major change to transportation planning and policy, as the first U.S. federal legislation on the subject in the post-Interstate Highway System era.
The Act presented an overall intermodal approach to highway and transit funding with collaborative planning requirements, giving significant additional powers to metropolitan planning organizations. Signed into law on December 18, 1991 by President George H. W. Bush, it expired in 1997. It was preceded by the Surface Transportation and Uniform Relocation Assistance Act of 1987 and followed by the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) in 1998, the (SAFETEA-LU) in 2005, and the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) in 2012. ISTEA also provided funds for the conversion of dormant railroad corridors into rail trails; the first trail to be so funded was the Cedar Lake Regional Rail Trail, built in 1995 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
ISTEA §1105 defined a number of High Priority Corridors, to be part of the National Highway System. After various amendments from other laws, this is a list of the Corridors:
The legislation also called for the designation of up to five high-speed rail corridors. The options were studied for several months, and announced in October 1992. The first four were announced by United States Secretary of Transportation Andrew Card, while the last was announced by Federal Railroad Administration head Gil Carmichael.
However, there was not significant funding attached to these announcements: $30 million had been allocated to several states by 1997 to improve grade crossings, but that was a very tiny amount in comparison to the billions required for a true high-speed network. Aside from a few places in California and the Chicago–Detroit Line, most areas outside the Northeast Corridor continued to be limited to until $8 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was distributed in January 2010.
Jeff Morales one of the principal drafters of this bill, is currently serving as CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is currently constructing a high-speed rail line along the route originally proposed in this bill.
The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 also mandated that passenger automobiles and light trucks built after September 1, 1998 to have airbags installed as standard equipment for the driver and the right front passenger.
The Nevada High-Speed Rail Authority (NHSRA) is a Nevada state agency established pursuant to the Nevada High-Speed Rail Act (S.B. 457) to develop and implement high-speed intercity rail service, such as the Brightline West project, and to find contractors to build the line. The bill was first introduced on April 7, 2015, and was passed into law on May 20, 2015, by a vote of 40–1.
The High-Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-220, 79 Stat. 893) was the first attempt by the U.S. Congress to foster the growth of high-speed rail in the U.S. The High Speed Ground Transportation Act was introduced immediately following the creation of Japan's first high-speed Shinkansen, or "bullet train" and was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson as part of his Great Society infrastructure building initiatives. Johnson's remarks upon signing the bill included the following:
In recent decades, we have achieved technological miracles in our transportation. But there is one great exception.
We have airplanes which fly three times faster than sound. We have television cameras that are orbiting Mars. But we have the same tired and inadequate mass transportation between our towns and cities that we had 30 years ago.
Today, as we meet here in this historic room where Abigail Adams hung out her washing, an astronaut can orbit the earth faster than a man on the ground can get from New York to Washington. Yet, the same science and technology which gave us our airplanes and our space probes, I believe, could also give us better and faster and more economical transportation on the ground. And a lot of us need it more on the ground than we need it orbiting the earth.
So I hope this meeting this morning will provide a platform for us to get that kind of transportation. We must do it. We must start getting it now. In the past 15 years, travel between our cities has more than doubled. By 1985--only 20 years away--we will have 75 million more Americans in this country. And those 75 million will be doing a great deal more traveling.
So, we must find ways to move more people, to move these people faster, and to move them with greater comfort and with more safety.
This bill is a first step toward accomplishing some of those objectives.
One product of the bill was the creation of regular Metroliner service between New York City and Washington, D.C., at speeds which averaged 90.1 miles per hour (145 km/h), faster than even Acela Express trains operated between the two cities in 2012. The bill also resulted in the creation of the Office of High-Speed Ground Transportation in the Department of Commerce.
Senator Claiborne Pell was thanked by President Johnson for his persistence in pushing the High-Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965 through congress and repeatedly bringing the issue to the president's attention.
The High Speed-Ground Transportation Act received broad bi-partisan support with only 23 out of 432 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voting against the act.
Later attempts to build high-speed rail in the U.S..
President Barack Obama repeatedly asked Congress for funding for high-speed rail projects. However, no high-speed rail projects had been completed by the end of his second term in 2016.
Brightline West, formerly known as XpressWest, is a proposed privately run high-speed rail route between Las Vegas and Victor Valley, in the high desert area of Southern California. The project is intended to provide an alternative to air and automobile travel between Southern California and Las Vegas, a popular vacation spot for many living in the region. Construction on the route is expected to begin in spring 2021 and enter service in 2024.
The line was developed starting in 2005 as DesertXpress and has passed through several developers and investors. In September 2018, the project rights were acquired by Fortress Investment Group, which owns Brightline in Florida, the only privately run inter-city rail route in the United States.
Las Vegas is a gambling and tourist destination for the Greater Los Angeles area with Interstate 15 being a direct route between the two regions. Travel by automobile takes around four hours while Greyhound buses cover the route in between five and seven hours. The highway carries heavy traffic on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday which causes significant delays and bumper to bumper traffic jams. Motorists heading back to Los Angeles on Sunday can create a backup. Airlines have direct flights but traffic and security at the airport add time to the short flight. Las Vegas lost its last passenger train service in 1997 when Amtrak cancelled the "Desert Wind".
The original plan under the name "DesertXpress" was to provide an alternative to automobile travel and airline travel between the Los Angeles area to Las Vegas along Interstate 15. The city of Victorville was selected as the location for the westernmost terminal as extending the train line farther into the Los Angeles basin through the Cajon Pass was considered to be prohibitively expensive. The station would include free parking and through-checking of baggage straight to the Las Vegas Strip resorts. A future extension would have included a new link to the California High-Speed Rail station in Palmdale.
DesertXpress Enterprises, LLC was founded in 2005 to develop, construct, own and operate the high-speed rail project. 70% of the company were held by Anthony A. Marnell II of Marnell Corrao Associates through his "DX, LLC" company whereas Gary Tharaldson and François Badeau held 20 and 10%, respectively. The preparation of a first Federal Railroad Administration-Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was started in 2006.
The total cost of the link between Apple Valley and Las Vegas was expected to be around US$5 billion. In March 2010, project planners said they could obtain the full funding amount through exclusively private investors, but had also applied for a $4.9 billion loan through the federal Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing program. As of October 2011, the start of the project was contingent on receiving a $6 billion loan from the federal government, the approval or denial of which was expected in mid-2012.
A preferred design was identified with the release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement on April 1, 2011, which began a public comment period that ended on May 2, 2011. The federal government approved the design on July 8, 2011, and the planned route was approved by the Surface Transportation Board on October 26, 2011. The trains were to be self-propelled, all electric multiple unit (EMU) trains with maximum speed of .
The train would travel at speeds of up to averaging and making the trip from Victorville to Las Vegas in about 1 hour 24 minutes. In March 2010, executives with the project said they expected construction to begin in 2010. In October 2011, construction was planned to begin in the last quarter of 2012, with completion in the last quarter of 2016, subject to funding.
In June 2012, the developer announced the new plan to build a network of high-speed rail for the region by expanding to Arizona, Utah and Colorado. The initial phase was to include high-speed tracks, Las Vegas to Apple Valley and Apple Valley to Palmdale.
The link between Las Vegas and Victorville was designed to be double-tracked which is dedicated for the high-speed trains. The costs of this section was estimated at $6.9 billion. The developer would put up $1.4 billion in private investment and the rest of funding would borrowed under the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program provided by the Federal Railroad Administration.
Future plans include a link between Las Vegas and Phoenix, Arizona, and another from Las Vegas to Salt Lake City, Utah and Denver, Colorado. The project was subsequently rebranded to "XpressWest" to reflect the expanded mission.
In February 2013, the federal loan remained unapproved and construction was not expected to start until mid-2014 at the earliest.
Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), the chairman of the House Budget Committee and senator Jeff Sessions(R-AL), the ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on the Budget were the main opponents to the federal loan application of XpressWest. They argued that the project represented high risk to the taxpayer. They wrote to then-Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in March 2013 and recommended the administration to reject the loan application. The letter indicated that the total cost was estimated to be $6.9 billion. The $1.4 billion would come from the private sources and the remaining $5.5 billion would come from the federal loan. The letter cited a taxpayer risk analysis report as a basis of their recommendation.
In July 2013, there were reports that loan was indefinitely suspended, which were later confirmed by the federal government, which said that it had been suspended in part due to the failure of the application in regard to the "Buy America" policy which required applicants to use American-made products. Despite the indefinite suspension of the federal loan application, which was viewed as a denial of the application, the developer indicated that the XpressWest project would proceed without providing the details on financial plan.
In 2014, Nevada Senator Harry Reid mentioned that the federal loan request may resurface, but little had been seen so far of the project's continued viability. In 2015, the Nevada High-Speed Rail Authority was proposed to look into the feasibility of high-speed rail into southern Nevada from California, possibly XpressWest. The bill was first introduced on April 7, 2015 and was passed by the legislature on May 20, 2015 by a vote of 40–1, and was approved by the Governor on May 27, 2015.
On September 17, 2015, XpressWest and the newly formed China Railway International USA (a consortium of Chinese rail industry companies) announced a joint venture to design, build, and operate the service between Las Vegas and Palmdale, with construction planned to begin in September 2016.
In June 2016, XpressWest announced that the joint venture had been called off. The biggest reason cited for the termination of the joint venture was a federal regulation requiring the manufacture of the high speed trains inside the United States. XpressWest said that they are "undeterred by this development and remains dedicated to completing its high-speed passenger rail project."
On September 18, 2018, Fortress Investment Group, which owns an inter-city rail route in Florida called Brightline, announced that it would acquire the XpressWest project from Marnell, indicating that it would begin construction of the rail line in the second half of 2020 with expected completion in the second half of 2024. The project is expected to generate around 18,000 jobs at its peak. Although Los Angeles County finished an environmental assessment for the project in 2016, the exact date the project is supposed to start is unclear; however, by October 2019, design plans were almost 30 percent complete and construction crews were being hired. In September 2020, the line was rebranded once again to Brightline West, and is being called "a Brightline affiliated company."
A high speed line following the Palmdale–Apple Valley–Las Vegas route was included in the 2018 California State Rail Plan as part of the 2040 timeline of projects. Subsequently, the state of California issued tax-exempt, private activity bonds to XpressWest in order to partially fund construction.
In September 2019, it was announced that California would assist the project in funding. In October 2019 California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank approved $3.25 billion in bonds and in April 2020, California government officials signed off on issuing $600 million in tax-exempt private activity bonds for XpressWest. The state of Nevada allocated the company an additional $200 million in private activity bonds in July 2020.
Cofounder and co-CEO of Fortress, Wes Edens, estimated the cost of construction at $8 billion in 2020. In September 2020, up to $3.2 billion in the tax-exempt, private activity bonds were offered. In November, it was decided to let the rights for the sale of the bonds lapse. A bond sale is planned for 2021 as continued progress has the bonds made more attractive to investors.<ref name="VVDP 2021/01/19"></ref>
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is also considering re-programming around $2 billion in Measure M funding slated for the High Desert Corridor, a proposed freeway between Victorville and Palmdale cancelled in October 2019, to instead create a development plan for an extension of the XpressWest route between the two cities.
The tracks are planned to be laid within the median strip of Interstate 15, and sections would pass through federal land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service. The line is not planned to stop at intermediate cities, and would take 84 minutes to complete a one-way trip between Victorville and Las Vegas. While plans at first called for a fully double-track railway along the route, moving to the highway median led Brightline to revise the project and instead operate largely as a single track with passing sidings.
In 2009, XpressWest estimated that it will carry around five million round trip passengers in the first full year of operation, with the company charging fares of around $50 for a one-way trip between Victorville and Las Vegas. In 2012, the round-trip fare was planned to be around $89, with trains were expected to run every 20 minutes on peak and up to every 12 minutes as demand requires. , the stated frequency is 45 minutes between departures.
The 2011 project outline had several options in Las Vegas near the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino or Downtown. One potential Las Vegas station location was approved as the site of Allegiant Stadium, but in 2020 the Las Vegas station was revealed to be located on the empty plot of land bordered by Interstate 15 and Las Vegas Boulevard, between Robindale Road and El Dorado Lane. The Victorville train station will be northeast of the city near I-15 and Dale Evans Parkway, just north of the unincorporated community of Bell Mountain. A maintenance facility is also planned be located in the Victor Valley.
An extension into the Greater Los Angeles area could connect to the Rancho Cucamonga Metrolink station and provide a link to the Ontario International Airport. An extension to the Palmdale station would connect to both the future California High Speed Rail and the existing Metrolink service into Los Angeles.
The company entered into an agreement to lease the state-owned Interstate 15 right-of-way from Caltrans, in June 2020. The 50-year lease is in the amount of $842,000 per year starting in 2020, adjusted according to the consumer price index every three years.
Additionally, Brightline entered into a memorandum of understanding with the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority to build a spur from Apple Valley to Rancho Cucamonga, providing connectivity within the Inland Empire. Metrolink also approved a memorandum of understanding to study linking the project to Rancho Cucamonga and Palmdale Metrolink stations.<ref name="Forb 2020/08/22"></ref>
The service is planned to utilize Siemens Velaro rolling stock.
Avelia Liberty is a high-speed passenger train built for the North American market by French manufacturer Alstom and assembled in the United States. Amtrak has ordered 28 trainsets for use on its flagship "Acela" service along the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., via New York City and Philadelphia.
It is part of the Avelia family of high-speed trains, which also includes the Avelia Horizon designed for the TGV, but adapted to conform with North American railroad standards, including U.S. Federal Railroad Administration crashworthiness standards. Amtrak says that compared to the prior generation, these trainsets would allow for improved frequency and greater capacity on the "Acela" service.
, two prototype trainsets were undergoing testing and construction of the other trainsets was ongoing. The first trainset is expected to enter revenue service in early 2022, with all trainsets in service by late 2022, resulting in Amtrak retiring its current Acela trains by the end of the same year.
In August 2016, Amtrak announced a $2.4 billion loan from the United States Department of Transportation for the purchase of new high-speed trainsets for the "Acela" service from Alstom. Alstom will also provide long-term technical support and supply spare components and parts. These next generation trainsets would replace the 20 existing Bombardier-Alstom trainsets that were nearing the end of their useful service life.
Amtrak said that the Avelia Liberty trainsets would allow for improved frequency and greater capacity on the "Acela" service. The 28 trainsets ordered (compared to the 20 older trainsets) would allow for more frequent service on the route, including half-hourly peak service between New York City and Washington, D.C. Each of the new trainsets will also have 378 seats and 8 wheelchair locations for a total capacity of 386 passengers (25% more than the current trainsets), allowing for greater passenger capacity.
U.S. assembly of the trainsets is taking place at Alstom's plants in Hornell and Rochester, New York. Initial construction of car bodies and major components began at Hornell in October 2017. The first prototype set was sent to the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) in Pueblo, Colorado in February 2020 for testing on the high-speed test track. During the nine months of expected trials, the trainsets were tested at speeds up to . A second prototype was delivered in March 2020 to Amtrak for testing along the service tracks in the Northeast which began in May 2020. The first test run up to Boston South Station occurred on September 28.
The first trainset is expected to enter revenue service in early 2022, with all trainsets in service by late 2022, at which point Amtrak will retire the previous "Acela" fleet.
Each Avelia Liberty trainset has power cars at each end of the train, and (initially) nine articulated passenger cars. An additional three passenger cars can be added if demand grows. The power cars include a Crash Energy Management system to help meet Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) standards while allowing a 30% reduction in train weight. These trains will also have USB ports, power sockets, Wi-Fi, accessibility features, and other conveniences.
The trainsets will be equipped with an active tilt system, dubbed Tiltronix by Alstom, that will allow higher speeds on curved portions of the corridor track at a maximum tilt angle of 6.3°.
The new trainsets, along with track and signaling improvements, will allow for an initial improvement in maximum regular service speed to on some portions of the route. Many investments into track and signaling upgrades are currently underway or completed.
The National Maglev Initiative (NMI) was a research program undertaken in the early 1990s by the United States Department of Transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Energy, and other agencies which studied magnetically levitated, or "maglev", train technology, operating at speeds around . The effort was created in April 1990 and released a report in 1993. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) authorized $725 million in funds for maglev research, pending the results of the NMI study, but an appropriation of funds was also required, and it's not clear if that ever occurred.
The initiative identified several corridors, each extending hundreds of miles, across the country that might benefit from high-speed maglev trains. They correspond significantly with the high-speed rail corridors identified in October 1992 following the ISTEA legislation, but were generally more extensive and had other differences.
Maglev technology has largely stagnated in the U.S., with no real revenue deployments. Meanwhile, the longest maglev line in the world used for revenue service is the Shanghai Maglev Train in Shanghai, China, which is less than in length.
Some related legislation and government efforts in the United States include:
The Chicago Card and the Chicago Card Plus were contactless smart cards used by riders of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and Pace to electronically pay for bus and train fares in the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA and the surrounding suburbs. On June 1, 2014, CTA and Pace stopped accepting these cards as part of a transition to Ventra.
The blue Chicago Card was a stored value card. Users added value to the card at CTA vending machines or at select retail locations, and turnstiles or fareboxes deducted value from the card. Users usually registered cards with CTA and could receive a replacement in the event of theft, loss, or damage to the card.
The blue-and-gold Chicago Card Plus was an account-based card. Users linked the card to either a credit card, debit card, or employer-provided transit benefit program. The cards could be set up as monthly passes or on a pay-per-use basis. The account reloaded from the linked source either when the monthly pass expired or when a user-defined threshold was passed on a pay-per-use card. Because of this direct link to personal accounts, all Chicago Card Plus cards were registered by their users.
In February 2007, CTA announced that it had settled a class action lawsuit
alleging there were not enough Chicago Cards available to meet demand on January 1, 2006, when the cash fare increase went into effect, but Chicago Card users were charged the old fares.
Benefits of the Chicago Card and the Chicago Card Plus included the following:
The CTA announced it would replace the Chicago Card and other fare media with a new electronic fare payment system named Ventra. There are also reports that the Regional Transportation Authority is planning to require that Pace and Metra adopt that system. The transition to Ventra was completed in the summer of 2014.
The Transit Access Pass (TAP) card is a form of electronic ticketing payment method used on most public transport services within Los Angeles County, California.
It is administered by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), and the card and fare collection systems are manufactured by Cubic Transportation Systems. Metro staff manage the web site and provide customer support functions.
Currently most operators sell passes on the TAP web site, and Metro sells monthly, weekly, and day passes at rail ticket vending machines. Stored value (cash purse) can be added onto the TAP card at rail ticket vending machines, retail locations, and online. Non-Metro agencies may sell transfers on TAP cards, which can be read by Metro TAP readers. For non-Metro operators, TAP cards are sold at their administrative offices, TAP website, or customer service centers.
There are some agencies in Southern California which do not (yet) accept the TAP card. Transit agencies have been allowed to transition onto TAP at their own pace, and it is not a requirement for receiving Metro funding or participation in interagency transfer agreements.
Prior to introduction of the TAP card, a magnetic stripe card called the Metrocard (not to be confused with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority's card) was introduced in 1993 on Culver CityBus, with later expansion to Foothill Transit, Montebello Bus Lines, Norwalk Transit, and Santa Monica Big Blue Bus. The fare card only offered stored value, and was compatible with GFI Genfare fareboxes used by these systems. The program was dubbed the Universal Fare System, or UFS, for future implementation throughout Los Angeles County. Later innovations expanded the magnetic stripe technology for monthly and day passes.
TAP was initially tested by UCLA students, select businesses (A-TAP and B-TAP program) and Metro staff. In October 2007, TAP had a two-month test program limited to the first 2,000 customers. TAP was rolled out to the general public in February 2008 as a free upgrade for monthly pass customers, and on February 11, 2008, to replace the stored value Metrocards for Culver CityBus riders. Santa Monica Big Blue Bus opted out of the Universal Fare System program entirely and in 2006 converted their existing regional Metrocards to operate only within their system. Other agencies, such as Foothill Transit and Norwalk Transit, transitioned from Metrocard to TAP in 2009.
On March 15, 2009, TAP's scope was expanded to Metro 24-hour passes, which are now only sold on TAP, at Ticket Vending Machines and TAP Vendors (although paper 24-hour passes were still able to be purchased at ticket vending machines until 2012). TAP cards were issued for seniors and the disabled beginning January 2009, and all senior and disabled riders were required to obtain TAP cards by December 2010.
In August 2011, all Metro multi-day passes were converted to TAP cards. The existing monthly and weekly passes were converted into 30 and 7 day passes, respectively, with the period beginning on the first tap after the pass is purchased.
Effective September 2012, all Metro Rail fares are sold on TAP, and paper tickets are no longer sold, with the exception of municipal transfers, which have since also been moved to TAP. All EZ transit passes have been converted to TAP. The fee for obtaining a TAP card is $2.
Between June 19, 2013 and June 18, 2014 the faregates at 40 Metro stations were "latched" so they open only with a valid TAP card. To make the faregate system possible, other agencies use TAP-compatible fare media in 2018.
Effective July 15, 2018, paper-issued interagency transfers as well as temporary TAP cards used to transfer to Metro Rail have been discontinued. Passengers must use a TAP card with Stored Value to board the first bus or the Metro Rail/Orange/Silver Line, then use the TAP card to transfer to another bus or Metro Rail/Orange/Silver Line to complete the trip. On Metro buses and rail lines, transfers are free for up to two hours.
TAP is accepted on these services as of July 1, 2015:
While not all of the region's transit agencies use TAP for fare collection, all agencies that offer interagency transfers issue them on TAP-compatible paper tickets. The ticket allows passengers to ride one additional Metro Bus, Metro Rail, or municipal bus line.
Metrolink does not use TAP for fare collection and has no plans to do so, but the agency does use TAP-capable paper fare media. The TAP functionality is only enabled on one-way, round trip, 7 day, weekend and monthly passes issued for trips to or from a Los Angeles County destination, allowing passengers to transfer to connecting services. As of January 2020, Metrolink no longer has TAP enabled tickets to transfer to Metro rail riders scan the QR code on the ticket at Metro rail turnstiles and show ticket on buses.
While the Orange County Transportation Authority does not use TAP, the agency will honor TAP cards when passengers board lines that directly serve Los Angeles County (lines 1, 30, 38, 42, 46, 50, 60, 560, 701, and 721) and at bus stops where OCTA buses directly connect with Metro buses.
The ORCA card (One Regional Card for All) is a contactless, stored-value smart card system for public transit in the Puget Sound region of Washington, United States. The card is valid on most transit systems in the Seattle metropolitan area, including Sound Transit, local bus agencies, Washington State Ferries, the King County Water Taxi, and Kitsap Fast Ferries. It was launched in 2009 and is managed by the Central Puget Sound Regional Fare Coordination Project, a board composed of local transit agencies.
The card is able to be loaded with "e-purse" value, similar to a debit card, and monthly passes. Cards are sold and reloaded at participating grocery stores, customer service centers, and ticket vending machines at transit stations. ORCA cards offer free transfers between transit systems within a two-hour window.
In 2018, the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Sound Transit) contracted INIT (Innovations in Transportation, Inc.) to replace the legacy ORCA system with an account-based, open architecture system known as "next generation ORCA". The next generation ORCA system will offer new payment options including mobile ticketing, maintain customer data security, and provide real-time account management and fare processing so customers can instantly add value to their account at any time. The new system is set to rollout in phases, beginning in 2021.
Central Puget Sound transit agencies have collaborated in a region-wide fare system since 1991 with the introduction of U-PASS and later FlexPass. In 1996, voters approved Sound Move, which called for an integrated regional fare policy for a "one-ticket ride". That goal led to the creation of the PugetPass in 1999, which allowed transit riders to use a single pass for five transit agencies.
On April 29, 2003, an agreement to implement a smart card system between the seven agencies in the Central Puget Sound Regional Fare Coordination Project (Sound Transit, King County Metro, Community Transit, Everett Transit, Pierce Transit, Kitsap Transit, and Washington State Ferries) was signed along with a US$43 million contract awarded to ERG Transit Systems (now Vix Technology) as the vendor and system integrator of the project. The ORCA card was originally anticipated to be operational in 2006.
On Friday, April 17, 2009, ORCA announced a limited rollout of the regional smart card beginning April 20, 2009. The limited rollout allowed remaining technical issues in the system to be resolved. An extensive rollout and public outreach campaign followed in June 2009. Blank cards were available at no charge during the introductory period, but as of March 1, 2010, the card cost $5 ($3 for reduced fare permit holders). Users of PugetPasses, FlexPasses, and other passes were to be gradually transitioned to ORCA.

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