The increase brings the highest fare to $3.25 for a peak-time ride that crosses Seattle city limits. 
 
 Fares increase by 25 cents on King County Metro Transit starting Sunday, the agency’s fifth boost since 2008. 
 
 That brings the highest fare to $3.25 for a peak-time ride that crosses Seattle city limits. Fares to ride Sound Transit’s Link light-rail trains are being adjusted slightly, to more closely match Metro bus fares. 
 
 However, low-income residents, whose households earn less than double the federal poverty level, can pay a flat $1.50 fare by obtaining the new ORCA LIFT farecard. (Metro’s ceiling is $23,340 for a household of one person, or $47,700 for a family of four.) About 1,000 people have gotten an ORCA LIFT card so far in February, and officials think as many as 45,000 to 100,000 transit users may qualify. 
 
 ORCA LIFT is good for a discount on Metro buses, Link trains, the Seattle Streetcar, and the King County Water Taxi. 
 
 For more information and a map of signup locations, click here. 
 
 Below is a chart of Metro fare categories and the new rates, which include increases in senior, youth and disabled categories, and a 50-cent increase for Access paratransit. 
 
 2015 Fare Changes ||||| Ms. Jama, 27, an immigrant from Somalia who is raising two young children by herself, earns less than $25,000 a year after taxes from her full-time job cleaning office buildings in downtown Seattle at night. She enrolled last week in the first wave of sign-ups for the ORCA Lift reduced-fare program, which transit administrators said could reach perhaps 100,000 people. (ORCA, or “one regional card for all,” is King County Metro Transit’s name for its fare card.) 
 
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 ORCA Lift is run by King County Metro Transit, but the discount will apply to all passenger public transit in the county, including that of other agencies, like Sound Transit. 
 
 The program hinges on smart-card technology, an aggressive outreach effort by King County officials to people like Ms. Jama, and a liberal political establishment that believes the region’s economy is unbalanced and vulnerable in its growing divisions of poverty and wealth. Politicians and voters have raised the minimum wage based on that argument, with an increase to $15 an hour, more than twice the federal level, approved by voters in SeaTac in 2013 and by the Seattle City Council in 2014. 
 
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 The reality of public transportation in America is that almost all of it is heavily subsidized by government, no matter how rich or poor the riders are. And those budgets, not least in Seattle, have been under severe stress. More than 70 percent of the nation’s transit systems cut service, raised fares or both during the recession and its aftermath, according to the American Public Transportation Association, a trade group. King County Metro Transit has raised fares six times since 2008, including an increase of 25 cents that kicks in on Sunday. 
 
 But income-based pricing is logistically complicated, which is partly why it has rarely been tried on any large scale, transportation experts said. San Francisco, which many in Seattle see as a kind of big brother to the south — sometimes to be emulated, other times to be scorned — got there first with a fare program called Muni Lifeline, which started in 2005. But after 10 years, Muni Lifeline remains tiny, with fewer than 20,000 card holders in a system that serves about 350,000 people a day. 
 
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 Smaller, tentative experiments are underway elsewhere. Greene County, Ohio, near Dayton, recently started a program for low-income riders, with social service agencies buying travel vouchers and distributing them to their clients. In other places, like western Pennsylvania, nonprofit groups have jumped in to provide bus service to the poor. 
 
 But at least for the moment, all eyes are on Seattle, transportation experts said. 
 
 “What Seattle has done is what others might consider,” said Art Guzzetti, vice president for policy at the American Public Transportation Association. “Everyone is watching.” 
 
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 The distinctions start with scale and ambition: King County has about two and a half times San Francisco’s population, and in aiming for enrollment numbers San Franciscans could only dream of, it is relying on what transit experts say is the most innovative idea of all: tools honed by the Affordable Care Act. A countywide system of more than 40 health clinics, food banks, community colleges and other sites run by nonprofit groups was put together to enroll residents in health insurance, and those partners were re-enlisted in the last few weeks to start registering people for ORCA Lift. 
 
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 That is how Ms. Jama got her little blue card. She went to a health clinic here in SeaTac on Tuesday morning to have a doctor look at one of her children. While she was there, a worker for a nonprofit called Global to Local — a member of the ORCA Lift team tasked with connecting residents to health and social services from a kiosk in the lobby — asked Ms. Jama if, by chance, she was a transit rider. 
 
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 Ms. Jama said yes. She also happened to have a recent pay stub in her pocket, verifying her income. Fifteen minutes later, she had the card in her hand. 
 
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 Though it works like a regular transit pass, the card will remove only $1.50 for a fare. It is good for two years without the need for users to reconfirm their income. County officials said they did not anticipate big wage increases. 
 
 “What’s the trick in it?” Ms. Jama asked softly, glancing down at the card and up at Amy Samudre, the program manager at Global to Local who had processed her application. 
 
 “No trick,” Ms. Samudre replied with a little shrug. 
 
 The discount ORCA Lift provides might sound trivial to some, but for Ms. Jama, it is clearly not. The $10 or more a week that she will save on commuting represents a raise of almost 2.5 percent in her take-home pay. She said she might use the money for a special treat. 
 
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 “That’s like taking my kids to McDonald’s,” she said. “Two Happy Meals is $9.” ||||| Once you qualify for the ORCA LIFT program, you'll receive an ORCA LIFT card registered to your name, with the same features every ORCA card has. You can load an E-purse value on your card to pay for trips one at a time, or load a discounted monthly pass that lets you take unlimited trips for an entire month. But what makes ORCA LIFT special is you have all the power and convenience of the ORCA card system at a fraction of the cost. 
 
 With the ORCA LIFT card, income-qualified riders can save up to 50 percent or more on: 
 
 Metro Transit buses 
 
 Kitsap Transit buses 
 
 Sound Transit Link light rail 
 
 Sound Transit Regional Express buses 
 
 Sounder Trains 
 
 King County Water Taxi 
 
 Seattle Streetcar 
 
 How to get the ORCA LIFT card
– A Somali immigrant outside Seattle took her child to the doctor this week and left with something unexpected: a card that lets her take public transit for more than 50% off. "What’s the trick in it?" asked the 27-year-old mother of two, Basro Jama. "No trick," said the guy processing her card. It's part of a new program in King County, Wash., enabling low-income people to ride ferries, trains, and buses at more affordable rates, the New York Times reports. "I would characterize this as a safety valve," says county transit executive Dow Constantine. In short, he says, officials learned that most county residents are either rich or poor—and if suburban people can't afford to commute into Seattle, where a tech boom has sent costs soaring, the economy will choke. "It’s people doing really well, and people making espresso for people who are doing really well," says Constantine. Enter the ORCA Lift program, which lets people living on up to double the federal poverty level travel for just $1.50 per ride. It's part of a bigger issue in US public transit, which is hugely government-subsidized but has still cut back services and boosted fares since the recession (King County just raised fares by 25 cents today, the Seattle Times reports). San Francisco and places in Ohio and Pennsylvania have already created low-fare programs for those in need. But why, you ask, did Jama get her card at the doctor? Because organizations and health clinics that enrolled people in ObamaCare were brought in to enroll for ORCA Lift. "What Seattle has done is what others might consider," says an analyst. "Everyone is watching."