Overview: One simple way you can make your building more attractive to tenants is by making transit passes easily accessible to them. Transportation agencies in the Central Puget Sound region have collaborated on a simplified fare collection program – using smart card technology – for bus, rail, vanpool and ferry travel in King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish Counties. ORCA (One Regional Card for All) makes travel and fare payment more convenient for hundreds of thousands of passengers in the Puget Sound Region.
ORCA can help reduce drive-alone commutes among your tenants: With ORCA, your tenants will have multiple transportation options at their fingertips to encourage non-drive alone commute trips. Whether your tenants are hopping on a bus or train, sailing on a ferry or joining a vanpool, ORCA makes riding and paying for transit easier than ever before.
You can promote transit pass use among your tenants:
- Connect tenants with Commute Seattle to learn about ORCA business options, incentives, and tax benefits.
- Fully or partially subsidize tenants’ ORCA transit passes as a building amenity.
- Offer ORCA Business Passport as part of your leasing package
- Incorporate transportation fees into the square foot cost of your lease agreements or add transportation fees as a line item in operating expenses. Use transportation fees to provide subsidized transit passes to your tenants.
- Dedicate a portion of parking fee increases to transit incentives.
- Make bus, light rail, train and ferry schedules easily available to your tenants.
- Provide real-time transit information screens in your lobby
ORCA Business Choice
ORCA Business Choice allows employers to load a dollar amount or monthly PugetPass onto their employees’ ORCA cards at retail pricing on a monthly basis.
Business choice gives the employer the flexibility to subsidize as much or as little of their employees’ transportation costs as they want, for as few or as many of their employees as they want.
ORCA Business Passport
ORCA Business Passport is a deeply discounted comprehensive, annual transportation pass program for employers with 5 to 499 employees in the Puget Sound region.
It includes unlimited rides on all Metro, Sound Transit (including Link light rail and Sounder commuter train), Community, Kitsap, Pierce and Everett transit services, West Seattle and Vashon water taxis, Seattle streetcars, and 100% vanpool and vanshare subsidy. WA State Ferry passes can be added to individual cards.
ORCA Business Passport also comes with the Home Free Guarantee emergency taxi service, providing employees with eight free taxi rides home in the case of an unexpected emergency.
Employers must purchase Passport for all full-time benefited employees, and can cost-share with employees up to 50%.
Connect with a Transportation Specialist to learn more about ORCA for Business.