MBTA Expands Pay- Per-Use Limited Fare Program to Local Employers

Participating employees at Google, Sanofi, City of Boston, and Assembly Row retailers will have unlimited access to Subway and Local Bus with trips fully funded by their employers or by the Assembly Connect Transportation Management Association (TMA) for the duration of the Pay-Per-Use limited fare program initiative.

Today the MBTA announced partnerships with Kendall Square Association (KSA) members Google and Sanofi, the City of Boston, and retailers in Assembly Row to provide employees of those organizations with local bus and subway passes through the Pay-Per-Use limited fare program. During this program, a select number of employees from Google, Sanofi, the City of Boston, and retailers at Assembly Row will have unlimited access to subway and local bus services with their trips fully funded by their employers or for Assembly Row retail employees funded by Assembly Connect for the duration of the Pay-Per-Use limited fare program initiative.

Since 2016, the MBTA has partnered with MIT to operationalize a post-paid institutional fare program that charges the institution based on usage of their employees’ transit passes. The MBTA is excited to extend the fare program to Google, Sanofi, the City of Boston, and retailers at Assembly Row this fall. The Pay-Per-Use limited fare program initiative is expected to run for 24 months, whereupon the MBTA will evaluate expanding it further as we transition to the new fare collection system.

“We’ve been so excited to partner with the MBTA and expand on the proven success of the Access MIT model to provide this service to two more of our KSA members—Sanofi and Google,” said Beth O’Neill Maloney, Executive Director of the Kendall Square Association. “Our members are innovating around their commuter culture, parking assets, and carbon footprint as a part of their commitment to sustainability.”

“Mayor Wu is deeply committed to advancing reliable, affordable, and sustainable transportation across the City of Boston,” said City of Boston Chief People Officer Alex Lawrence. “This work includes making multimodal options accessible to our workforce. Through this pilot program, we will gain valuable insight about MBTA usage that will help us make transit related decisions in the future. We are so excited to partner with the MBTA in early 2023.”

“By subsidizing transit passes for retail employees we’re helping retailers attract and retain essential workers for whom the costs of parking and transportation are often prohibitive,” said David Webster, Federal Realty Investment Trust, President Assembly Connect.

“The benefits and policies that employers offer their employees play a key role in what mobility choices their employees make,” said MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak. “We are thrilled to partner with the City of Boston, Google, Sanofi, and Assembly Connect to support their employees’ use of transit. By studying this limited expansion of the program that Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) helped pioneer, we aim to guide further development of flexible fare programs for employers as we transition to the new fare collection system.”

Many employers in the greater Boston area provide their employees with transit benefits through the MBTA’s Perq for Work program, offering pre-taxed (sometimes fully or partially) funded transit passes to employees. This Limited Pay-Per-Use fare program works with employers and TMAs such as Assembly Connect that want to fully subsidize their employees’ transit trips to incentivize employee use of transit when commuting to work. Participating employees at Google, Sanofi, the City of Boston, and retailers at Assembly Row will have unlimited access to MBTA Subway and Local Bus services with their trips fully funded by their employers or by Assembly Connect for the duration of the Pay-Per-Use limited fare program initiative.