Fare caps are here to ensure you always get the best price possible for your transit travel.
Fare caps ensure that you never pay more than the amount for a day pass (if you live in Edmonton) or a monthly Pass (all regions). Once you hit the fare cap, you ride for the rest of the day or month for free! Fare caps differ between regions.
If you are in a special customer group (for example, seniors) you are eligible for a discounted fare cap. To receive a discounted fare cap, you will need to register your Arc account. Otherwise, you will receive the Standard Fare cap.
When you use your Arc card to tap on and off the bus or LRT, you will be charged a flat rate fare based on where you are travelling. Once you hit the maximum cap for the region you are travelling in, you will no longer be charged for that time period. For example, if you travel in St. Albert, you would contribute to a St. Albert monthly fare cap. Every trip, you would be charged the same fare. Once you reach the amount that a monthly pass would cost, you ride for the rest of the month for free! For more information on Cap Contributors, please click here.
If you have less than $4 in your account and have reached a monthly cap, the Arc validators will give you a yellow warning letting you know you have low funds in your account. You can still board, but the validator will continue to flash yellow until you top up your account. You'll need to top up your account before the next day or month starts depending on which fare cap you reached. If you have less than $0.99 in your account and have not reached a monthly cap, the Arc validators will give you a red warning. You will need to top up your account before tapping again.
In order to serve passengers, Arc allows for different fare caps for each transit agency and passenger type. Depending on whether you are an adult, youth, student or eligible for a subsidy program, your trips will contribute towards a different priced fare cap. To find out the flat fare rates for each agency, please click here.
To find out your fare cap, please select your passenger profile. At this time only Standard profiles are in effect, but discounted fare options will become available at a later date.
Once you reach the fare cap in your region (either a regional commuter cap or the ETS local cap), you will not be charged for transit until the next month starts. For example, if you travel enough on Beaumont Transit to reach their $80 commuter monthly cap and then you take a trip on ETS, that ETS trip will be free.
In order to properly calculate your fare, the Arc system needs to know where you started and ended your trip. This means that you must tap on and tap off the bus or LRT. If you forget to tap off, instead of being charged a flat rate fare, you will be charged a Missing Tap fare. A Missing Tap fare will still contribute to your fare cap, but it may be more expensive than the flat rate fare.