Photo by Cary Scott

In the slow-but-steady quest to make life just a little easier for Metro and Metrobus commuters, WMATA has made two new improvements for Metrobus riders who use a SmarTrip card.

The first will make it easier to add money to your SmarTrip card by reducing the number of “taps” it takes to add a value to your card by one. From a release:

On the first tap, passengers can add value. On the second tap, the farebox will add the value to the card and deduct the bus fare in one step. Metro has added a safeguard feature so that riders are not overcharged if they accidentally tap their card after adding value, or if they pay their fare first and then add value on board.

Secondly, WMATA has added a new tone that will sound if your SmarTrip card has less than $1.60 on it. So you’ll know that you need to add value before fumbling to do so while boarding a bus and holding up the line.