Metro's SmarTrip card is a must-have for any local commuter, and it will soon cost less to purchase one. more ›

Presenting DCist's patented SmarTrip Swiping Style Guide. What type of swiper are you? more ›

After completion of a pilot program which included 150,000 customers, WMATA announced today that all riders will now be able to reload their SmarTrip balance online. more ›

Need to put some more money on your SmarTrip card? You might want to do it tomorrow -- over the weekend, a number of SmarTrip functions won't be available as WMATA conducts software upgrades. more ›

This afternoon, WMATA General Manager/CEO Richard Sarles addressed his agency's Board of Directors and announced specifics on several long-awaited initiatives, touting the transit agency's "change in culture." more ›

A pilot program which will allow 5,000 randomly selected users to add money and passes to their SmarTrip cards online has gone live. more ›

It's been a bit of an up-and-down day for Metro news -- let's swing back to the positive side, shall we? The Post's Dana Hedgpeth reported earlier this week that Metro riders will soon be able to reload their SmarTrip cards online. more ›

Good morning, Washington. After enduring rainy weekdays, we get a pretty nice weekend. Today and tomorrow, temperatures will surge into the high 50s and low 60s. We also get to spring forward this weekend, another sure sign the warm weather will soon be here to stay. more ›

Faregates were down and most customers were being allowed into the Columbia Heights Metro station through an emergency gate during rush hour this morning, leading to some confusion when riders attempted to exit at other destinations. DCist art critic Pat Padua noted that station managers "were letting SmarTrip passengers (which seemed to be everybody) go through the emergency gate." DCist contributor Catherine McCarthy, meanwhile, said that she saw the fare gates go down inside the station around 8 p.m. last night. A request for comment from Metro regarding the faregate issue has yet to be returned -- we'll certainly update if and when we hear what precisely caused the problem. more ›

WMATA officials took another step towards an all-encompassing SmarTrip card yesterday by putting to sleep the use of weekly paper passes on Metrobuses. Starting today, the Seven-Day Bus Pass, a popular choice among daily commuters, has been fully transitioned to the sturdier SmartTrip card, as well as adding a few useful features. more ›

Even though the Metro board spent a lot of time debating potential reforms to SmarTrip administration this year, it's no secret that Metro will run out of the cards at some point in 2012, possibly ending the 12-year reign of the ubiquitous pieces of plastic. Curious about how nearly 1.8 million Washingtonians will pay for their daily commute once that happens? You're not alone -- and a request for proposals released by Metro this morning gets the ball rolling on that very issue. more ›

WMATA's board of directors held committee hearings this morning, and, yet again, discussion about controversial SmarTrip reforms has been tabled and will be revisited further at a future date to be determined. It's another delay in a series of postponements in the debate surrounding whether or not to alter the price of SmarTrip cards and possibly eliminate negative balances. more ›

It was probably silly to assume that there would be any groundbreaking news revealed about the future of SmarTrip cards at yesterday's meeting of the WMATA Board of Directors. Indeed, the same old script was trotted out: WMATA's thinking about linking electronic balances to credit cards once the agency runs out of SmarTrip cards in a couple of years, but there's still plenty of debate about how that linking should be done. more ›

Following up on this morning's news that WMATA will need to procure a new manufacturer for SmarTrip cards within a couple of years, Adam Tuss reports that Metro board chairman Peter Benjamin told him that new technology would let riders use their credit cards as SmarTrip cards. Obviously, there's a lot of details which would need to be hashed out -- for instance, what happens with SmartBenefits and whether there would be inequities between different cards offering linking or not -- but the obvious plusses (like being able to set up automatic withdrawal from your card to fill your SmarTrip) make it an intriguing development. more ›

During a finance committee meeting this morning, WMATA board members and officials discussed controversial reforms which would have reduced the cost of SmarTrip cards to $2.50, but also would have prevented riders from leaving the Metrorail system with a negative balance. WMATA's board is now considering scrapping the reforms after it was reported that the change could potentially eliminate nearly a million dollars per month in revenue -- not to mention the fact that nearly everyone thought it was just a terrible idea. (A big tip of the cap to Adam Tuss and Greater Greater Washington for both live-tweeting the meeting.) As it turns out, we're just going to have to wait a little longer for an official decision -- perhaps until the scheduled WMATA board meeting on September 30. more ›

If there was one thing we knew for sure about the proposed reform which would have forbidden riders to exit the Metrorail system with a negative balance on their SmarTrip card, it's that pretty much everyone thought it was a terrible idea. There were questions about what was wrong with the current system, how riders were supposed to exit if they carried a negative balance if they weren't carrying any cash for the cash-only in-station fare machines, long backups at said fare machines during rush hour -- there was even one person who suggested that the change might even push people back to using paper farecards so that they knew they weren't dipping into the negative. The idea was derided from Glenmont to Franconia-Springfield and everywhere in between. more ›

WMATA just announced that the morning rush hour peak-of-the-peak fare surcharge on Metrorail trips will go into effect on Sunday, August 29. (Of course, this means that August 30 will be the first day the surcharge is actually levied.) The twenty-cent charge will be added to all weekday trips which begin between 7:30 and 9 a.m. WMATA had postponed the implementation of the morning surcharge after it was discovered that the existing faregates needed a memory upgrade to process the additional fare. The afternoon rush hour surcharge has been in place since August 3. more ›

SmarTrip cards will get a little bit cheaper -- but not for another couple of months: WTOP says that WMATA will drop the price of the card from $5 to $2.50 on August 29. It's interesting timing -- as part of the big fare increases, those using a paper farecard on Metrorail will be charged an extra 25 cents. But that fee goes into effect August 1, along with a boatload of other increases. One would think that Metro would have these two alterations line up a little bit better, but hey, at least Metro is actually reducing the cost of something. more ›

WMATA announced Thursday that Metro's board of directors is at last backing a plan to let SmarTrip card holders access their account information online. The board gave preliminary approval to the concept at its regular meeting this week. more ›

WTOP passes along a breathless quote from board member Peter Benjamin, which seems to indicate that riders will be able to scan credit cards at fare gates instead of taking the extra step to use a card to refill a SmarTrip or paper farecard. Or perhaps you'll be able to connect a credit card to your SmarTrip, which will automatically debit your card for your trip. For a feature which will be available in "within the next year to 18 months," it's not really clear how what Benjamin is talking about will work. That aside, it's only logical to add more transactions to a SmarTrip system which already works so flawlessly, right? Pity on the poor individual who loses a SmarTrip card tied to a credit card and has to not only get a replacement SmarTrip from Metro, but also work with their credit card company or bank to remove the card information from the old card and on to the new one. Hope you like hold music! more ›

Metro says it has in fact been granted an extension on implementing required changes to its SmartBenefits program. Last month, the transit agency announced that it would seek a year-long extension on the changes, which have been mandated by the IRS, after some controversy arose over a provision that would have required unused benefits to be returned to the employer at the end of each month, regardless of whether the employee was contributing their own pre-tax salary to it. Today's announcement reported the extension has in fact been formally granted, giving WMATA until Jan. 1, 2011 to implement the revised program, so for the time being, employers may continue to assign monthly benefits directly onto their employees' SmarTrip cards. more ›

Metro formally announced today that SmarTrip users can add value to their cards at select CVS and Giant Food stores. Last year, WMATA made SmarTrip cards more widely available for sale at CVS and Giant, but now customers can also choose to add money to their cards at both chains while they check out. more ›

Pretty great news for those of you who regularly travel between D.C. and Baltimore: transportation officials say they've reached an agreement that will allow SmarTrip users to use the cards seamlessly on the Maryland Transit Administration system in and around Baltimore, WTOP reports. more ›

Just like November 5 saw a run on post-election editions of the Washington Post and New York Times, Metro says it is doing brisk business with their commemorative Barack Obama inauguration SmarTrip card. more ›

It's a big week for SmarTrip cards, leading up to the even bigger week beginning Jan. 4, 2009, when the electronic farecards will be required in order to take advantage of bus-to-bus, rail-to-bus or the new bus-to-rail transfer options within the WMATA transit system. more ›

Metro's Board today approved charging rush-hour fares and parking fees on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2009. more ›

This story about a New York City bus driver who was stabbed to death over a bus transfer. Horrific. You can be sure plenty of people will complain and struggle against the new SmarTrip-only transfer regime about to be put in place on Metrorail and Metrobus, but if it prevents even one incident like this in our city, it will have been worth the growing pains. more ›

Metro hasn't yet formally announced the sale of a special edition SmarTrip card commemorating the impending inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama, but this image was circulated at this morning's regular Board of Directors meeting, along with details on their production schedule and cost. more ›

WTOP and Infosnack are both reporting that Metro's Board of Directors will consider a proposal this week that would allow CVS to sell SmarTrip cards. CVS would sell the cards for $10 (they'd be preloaded with $5 on them), and at no cost to Metro. In exchange, CVS and Metro would come to a cross-promotional arrangement. Infosnack calls the move a "win-win for Metro, CVS and riders." We're all for making SmarTrip easier to buy at more and more locations, but feel compelled to question whether making any purchase at a CVS can honestly be associated with concepts like "ease" or "convenience." Perhaps Metro's board has never been to a CVS? more ›

Michael Perkins of Infosnack Headquarters emailed us last night to let us know that he discovered something interesting while listening to last week's Customer Service Operations and Safety Committee board meeting. It seems as if Metro's $5 price point for SmarTrip cards might be slightly profitable for the agency. Certainly, this isn't a total bombshell. But it could be a bit of a prickly matter since Metro decided to eliminate paper bus transfers come January, thereby leaving bus riders with no other option but to purchase a card. Of course, there aren't any hard figures yet on exactly what percentage of that $5 is profit for Metro - and, as Michael notes, we won't see any until the next board meeting on November 20, if we see any at all. Advocates for lower-income residents will likely be very interested to see what kind of numbers John Catoe and crew bring to the table. more ›