At least once a week, Mia Rich (SFS ’28) uses the D.C. metro to explore the city with friends, go on dates with her girlfriend, or attend special occasions with her family in Maryland. Thanks to the Hoya Transit program, her trips have always been on Georgetown’s dime.
However, this semester, she was not selected to receive the same benefits. Now, costs for transportation must be covered out-of-pocket.
“I didn’t realize how much I was really spending but then I started paying for it by myself,” Rich said. “$2.25 seems like a small amount but when you’re hopping from place to place, it definitely adds up.”
Rich is not alone. Each semester, the Hoya Transit program operates on a lottery system, in which only 3,200 students across all campuses (around 20% of the student population) are selected each semester to receive a monthly $50 Metro credit.
In an effort to expand the Hoya Transit program, the university told the Voice that Georgetown is now in negotiations to participate in the Metro U-Pass program, which would offer undergraduate students unlimited rides on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) system. The program is currently used by other D.C. universities, including George Washington University (GWU) and American University (AU), as well as several other colleges with satellite campuses in the District.
“While we have not made a decision related to U-Pass at this time, we understand the interest from our student body and are currently talking with WMATA to understand their updated program,” the spokesperson wrote to the Voice. “We are also working through internal analysis to explore potential opportunities for the Georgetown student body.”
GUSA President Darius Wagner (CAS ’27) hopes that the university will have a pilot program available to students in the fall of next year.
Negotiations with WMATA began in February after they announced changes to their U-Pass program, shifting from their universal model that requires 100% of the student body to have a U-Pass to a new “opt-in” model that only requires a minimum student participation level of 33%.
Wagner said that his administration’s early talks with university administrators indicated that WMATA’s original U-Pass enrollment model represented a barrier for Georgetown’s participation in the program.
“It used to be an all-or-nothing approach, and so that would have cost something around $5 million that the university couldn’t afford,” Wagner said.
WMATA currently charges a fee for schools to use U-Pass, which is included in the cost of tuition for students at participating schools, typically equivalent to $1 per day. Students at GWU and AU pay a $115 and $136 semesterly fee, respectively, according to GUSA Chief of Staff Ignacio Loaiza Sandoval (CAS ’28).
Sandoval said that Georgetown told him that they do not want students to cover the fee, meaning that under the “all or nothing” model, the university would have had no choice but to cover passes for nearly 16,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students across all campuses, regardless of how often they use the metro.
The idea to expand Hoya Transit has long been supported by the student body, as shown in a 2021 student referendum, which passed with 84% of voters in favor of joining the U-Pass program. According to Sandoval, the university launched the Hoya Transit program in response to the results of the 2021 referendum, providing a less expensive alternative to U-Pass, while collecting ridership data and student feedback.
Sandoval explained that the main goal for GUSA is getting as many Georgetown students on public transit as possible.
“The thing that’s very important to us is financial accessibility,” Sandoval said. “We have seen through American University, which is the first university to enroll in U-Pass, that it launched their ridership once you remove the barriers and the burden of people to be able to access Metro.”
Wagner expressed interest in a “tier system” for the launch of the program to determine which students might be selected. Wagner said the program should prioritize low-income students who need financial support for consistent metro usage, like for internships or exploring the city, so they can take advantage of the benefits to the fullest extent. The current Hoya Transit program does not consider financial need when selecting students through its lottery.
After Rich was denied the Hoya Transit program for the semester, she realized she would have to reevaluate her metro usage. She hopes to have an internship and explained that, while she would prioritize an internship over the financial cost of transportation, the cost would be a factor in planning the rest of her semester if denied the program again.
“I would definitely have to sit down and be like, ‘How much am I spending per trip, per day. Is it worth it?’” Rich said. “I would also budget other parts of my life around remembering that I have to spend $2.25 to get to and from work every day.”
Rich explained that having travel benefits encouraged her to travel into the city more without a significant financial barrier. She said that if Georgetown opts into the U-Pass program, it will extend this opportunity to more of the student body.
“People say we get trapped in the Georgetown bubble, and I think that’s very true,” Rich said. “Part of that is the accessibility. I feel like [U-Pass] gives us a greater chance to get out in the city. I came here not just to come to Georgetown, but just to be in D.C. as well.”
