Traffic Lab is a Seattle Times project that digs into the region’s transportation issues to explore the policies and politics that determine how we get around and how billions of dollars in public money are spent.

Even if Sound Transit sticks with its plan to build fare gates at some light rail stations, those aren’t scheduled to go live until four years from now.

By then the U.S. should have a different president, tunneling may have begun for West Seattle trains, and fare dodgers can save another $120 million or so, while you keep paying transit taxes.

The transit board voted unanimously last month to earmark $6 million for fare gates design and planning toward an estimated $87 million project to equip 14 stations by late 2029, or more likely 2030.

Should it take that long?

Possibly, considering how many pieces Sound Transit promises to juggle at once, in overlapping phases of engineering, Seattle’s famed public process, retrofitting small station lobbies, and finally the installation.

There’s a new contract to award, and supply chain to establish, before high-tech gates can be installed. New software must be written so paper tickets as well as ORCA farecards will open the gates. Wheelchair-accessible designs must be drafted. Leaders must decide whether to retrain or lay off squads of blue-clad fare ambassadors who rove the lines.

Not to mention the intangibles of winning public acceptance, perhaps the biggest wild card of all in Seattle. Physical barriers will startle some people accustomed to open entrances.

“Four years sounds about right,” estimates David Cooper, founder of Leading Mobility, who studied fare-gate buildouts in North American cities for Alberta’s Calgary Transit.

Vancouver, B.C., TransLink needed five years to retrofit its formerly gateless SkyTrain network in the 2010s, but that was a bigger job involving 53 stations for $172 million.

Bay Area Rapid Transit needed six years from political consensus to execute a 50-station replacement of old gates with taller models. Sound Transit executives toured them this year.

Sound Transit Chair Dave Somers, a fervent fare-gates supporter, cited Vancouver to portray his board’s four-year timeline as reasonable.

“Adding fare gates to an operating system that wasn’t designed for them is a complex undertaking,” he said in a short speech to fellow board members last week. Somers said he welcomes opportunities to accelerate the project.

Sound Transit has operated a modified honor system without turnstiles since opening its first South Seattle line in 2009, emulating Portland and Minneapolis. Transit staff sought to save construction money, and were adamant people would sidestep fare gates by walking into the rails at surface stations.

For years, uniformed fare inspectors canvassed some railcars to request proof of payment, and sometimes issue citations. About 90% of riders paid in the early 2010s. Sound Transit abandoned enforcement as too confrontational during the 2020-21 social justice movement, but sporadic checks are back, using fare ambassadors who largely assist customers needing help or directions. Actual fines are rare and not charged until at least the third violation.

Passengers lost the habit of paying fare, and nowadays only about 63% do so.

“Paying one’s fare — and not paying one’s fare — is in many respects contagious,” wrote WSP in a consulting study.

Sound Transit’s publicity team calls fare gates a sign of becoming a mature agency, rather than a political change of heart.

“Our system has expanded to the point where fare gates make sense,” Meg Cederoth, deputy chief planning officer, told the board. Ridership has reached 175,000 daily passengers on the 38-station, 58-mile light rail system. That’s more chances to gain or lose money.

Sound Transit proposes to gate nine stations from Northgate to International District/Chinatown in Seattle, plus Lynnwood City Center, SeaTac/Airport, Federal Way Downtown, Bellevue Downtown and Downtown Redmond, collectively netting 85% of trips. These exclude the seven surface stations in Rainier Valley, Sodo and Bellevue.

Lynnwood’s station, just 2 years old but narrow, requires the most rework, at $10.9 million, according to the WSP study.

Five standard gates 24 inches wide, plus six 30-inch versions to accommodate wheelchairs and baggage, must be crammed into two small lobbies.

To make room, all four ticket machines must be moved outside. Canopies are required to protect ticket machines and riders from rain, along with fences dividing paid and unpaid zones, and roll-down grates to close both Lynnwood entrances overnight.

After all the remodeling in Lynnwood, people funneling toward entry and exit fare gates would spill into the original 15-foot “surge zones” where others are using escalators and elevators, according to WSP. In other words, more odds of bumping into someone inside Lynnwood and some other stations.

Bay Area Rapid Transit decided in 2019 to replace its shallow gates with taller ones. The physical installation of 715 gates needed only 11 months. Yet, they weren’t finished until September 2025, a six-year project.

“Primarily, it was to get the $90 million in capital funds,” explained Alicia Trost, chief communications officer.

Unlike Sound Transit, BART had to go hat-in-hand asking for money, a time-consuming step. Along the way, a regional commission demanded tougher fare enforcement, as a prerequisite to release California and local emergency funds in 2023, so trains and buses would keep rolling.

Officials learned through trial and error about gate designs.

BART had toyed with fastening metal blades on its waist-high gates in 2019 to make a higher barrier, a foible nicknamed “reverse guillotine” when tested at Fruitvale Station. People vaulted them anyway. Richmond Station experimented by installing a second set of its fin-shaped gates, shoulder-high.

As the budget firmed up, BART scrapped Band-Aid solutions and ordered modern gates that are 7 feet high with clear, swinging doors.

Its original gate lock yielded when pushed, allowing for evacuations, but also easy for evaders to exploit. BART had to order a mechanical lock that would resist pressure, unless there was an emergency alarm, Trost said.

Installation was done four months ahead of schedule. Rather than rush, BART turned on gates in two starter stations, as a final quality checkpoint. Sound Transit executive Brian de Place said he’s leaning toward a similar one-station initial start, to demonstrate the new system before it spreads to 14 stations.

BART executives are raving about less crime, and a 961-hour reduction of minor maintenance and vandalism repair, in the first six months.

Los Angeles Metro hails its new fare gates, added or strengthened in many underground and aerial stations but rarely at surface, as relief for low-income customers who suffer most from disorder. Some 96% of violent crimes were being committed by fare evaders, the agency has reported.

Cities differ, and Cooper’s research found little evidence that new or stronger gates in Boston, Vancouver, or Toronto reduced crime.

How fast Sound Transit acts could be affected by how much leaders worry about forgoing fare income.

BART’s need to collect fares is more urgent than Sound Transit, because BART historically has relied on fares for two-thirds of operating money, and is on the brink of losing routes unless voters pass a tax measure this fall.

Sound Transit’s tax revenues are plentiful by North American standards, until the late 2030s, so it can skip BART’s fundraising phase.

On the other hand, fares from bus and rail amount to less than 3% of the total budget, so it might be politically tempting to slow-walk fare gates, if controversy arises.

Shadowed by a $35 billion long-term shortfall, causing delays in promised lines to Ballard, Everett, Tacoma and Issaquah, Sound Transit board members catch heat from taxpayers who annually pay an average $700 per capita and don’t want to feel like suckers when they see fare scofflaws. Somers is hearing from them.

Calgary Transit has rejected gates as infeasible, and with limited revenue potential, mainly because it relies on a series of street-level stations downtown that would be hard to outfit with fare gates, said Cooper, the Calgary expert.

The potential benefits of collecting more fare income through gates seem brighter in Seattle, where downtown stations are well below the street, he said. Cooper points to L.A. Metro as a role model for Seattle to operate an archipelago of gated and ungated light rail stations.

“Sound Transit has some of the highest fare evasion numbers I’ve ever seen,” he said.