Students at Catholic University and Georgetown University's Capitol Campus can ride Metro buses and trains for about $1 a day starting this fall.

Metro announced on X on Aug. 31 that the two schools are joining its University Pass program, which bundles unlimited Metro Bus and Rail rides into tuition at a steep discount. Without U-Pass, a student's equivalent daily transit cost is about $7.20, according to Metro board materials from the February vote.

The expansion brings in Catholic University, which reported about 5,100 students in fall 2024, in the Brookland neighborhood. The school has its own Red Line stop. Georgetown's downtown Capitol Campus near Capitol Hill houses the Georgetown University Law Center, the McCourt School of Public Policy and a residence hall with more than 450 students. The announcement specified Georgetown's Capitol Campus only, not the main hilltop campus.

Metro's board voted Feb. 26 to overhaul U-Pass pricing and open the door for more schools. The updated structure offers two models: a Universal option at about $1 per student per day requiring 100% participation among eligible students, and a new Opt-In option at about $1.75 per day with a minimum 33% participation threshold. Which model each new school selected has not been disclosed.

The program launched in 2016 with American University as the sole participant. By fiscal year 2025, it served more than 35,000 students across 43 eligible colleges and universities and generated roughly 4.6 million trips, according to Metro's announcement of the board vote.

Randy Clarke, Metro's general manager and CEO, said in February that the changes were about "…opening the door for more institutions to participate, giving more students affordable, reliable access to transit every day."

The modernized program also allows universities to customize which students can enroll, including part-time, community college, undergraduate and graduate students. As of the February board presentation, none of the region's roughly 60,000 part-time post-secondary students were eligible for U-Pass.

Neither Catholic University nor Georgetown has publicly confirmed enrollment details or how students will activate their passes.