Nobody Rides for Free The passing of paper transfers marks the end of a great fraud.
(Darrow Montgomery)
In January, Metro will eliminate the bus transfers that have become a fixture of local commutes. One of the reasons for the move, says Metro, is to end the assaults that drivers have sustained after fighting with passengers about paper slips.
One driver, who asks not to be identified, is thankful for the change. During his time behind the wheel, he has had passengers cuss him out and spit on him. In September 2007, the operator was driving downtown, near Metro Center. He picked up a guy at 15th and G who presented him with a transfer, a piece of low-grade paper that gives users a free ride if they switch to another bus within a two-hour window. This particular rider attempted to stretch that time frame considerably—his transfer had a time/date stamp from the previous May.
“I told him he couldn’t use it, and he wanted to get belligerent,” remembers the driver.
The driver says the man got up in his face, so he threatened to call Metro Transit Police, then removed his seat belt and started to stand up. Next thing the driver knew, the would-be passenger swung at him.
“He punched me in the chest and ran off the bus,” the driver says. “I felt it,” he says of the blow, but he kept driving his route.
In another month, the driver will no longer have to worry about that scenario playing out again. Check out any bus shelter in the city and you’re likely to see a red sign announcing the switch: “Beginning January 4, 2009, Metro will not issue or accept paper transfers. To get the rail-to-bus discount or to transfer free from bus to bus you must use a SmarTrip card.”
Cathy Asato, spokesperson for Metro, says there are several reasons behind killing the paper transfer, including making better use of technology and collecting more fares. But an important basis for the policy is reducing the hassle factor for drivers. “We hope to see disputes between riders and operators about transfers go away,” Asato says.
The new policy’s break-in period could indeed be rough: Though Metro is going all-out to advertise the change, there’ll certainly be some heated exchanges come early January. Riders, after all, have always been resourceful in working their way onto the bus without paying, and the transfer has often been their vehicle. “They fold them in half, crumple them up, stick two together,” says the driver who was assaulted last year.
Another driver, who operates in Southwest, says that at one point, many drivers just stopped worrying about the time constraints altogether and opted to hand out transfers good for way beyond the two-hour limit. If you tried to follow the rules and hand out transfers that expired in two hours, riders would just vex the next driver, claiming the last guy shortchanged them and their transfer was actually still good. So why bother?
“They will argue—sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re not,” says the driver, who also requested his name not be printed, citing Metro policy. He estimates that about 15 percent of his riders get on the bus with invalid transfers. And he can’t check them all. “If you have a line of people [waiting to get on], you can’t always look,” he says.
And within that band of Metrobus inefficiency—of leniency, almost—rested an unspoken aspect of commuter justice. For all of those who’ve endured the No Exit–style hell of a Metrorail delay due to track maintenance, or sought an answer to the question of just why no trains were arriving, or sat shivering on a bus with a dead engine waiting for a replacement from the bus barn to take them to work, maybe Metro owed them the occasional free ride. Or even the frequent free ride.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the agency that oversees Metro bus and rail, has a long history of money problems. User fees don’t come close to meeting the agency’s budget, and local jurisdictions don’t cover the gap. Metro needs $11 billion in the next 10 years to handle infrastructural repairs and other upgrades necessary for increased ridership.
And so the agency is trying to get out of the business of providing free bus trips.
Under current Metro policy, the transfers aren’t tracked. If you’re getting off the bus and no longer need your transfer, you can pass it to someone else so that person can avoid the base fare and ride for free. Metrobus hustlers will give up a good transfer only if they get a cigarette/quarter/stick of gum/sports section in return. The courteous will pass one along once they’re through with it.
Army veteran and Capitol Heights resident Clarence Miller rides the U2 Metrobus (Minnesota Avenue–Anacostia Line). He pays $1.35, the normal cash bus fare, and gets a free paper transfer. Many times, Miller will ask the driver for two transfers: One he keeps for himself, the other he gets just so he can give it away, in case he comes across a friendly stranger or a buddy who is short on cash and trying to get to the VA hospital. And when he’s done riding the bus for the day and no longer needs his own transfer, he gives that one away, too.
Miller says that right or wrong, many people couldn’t ride the bus if it weren’t for discarded or donated paper transfers.
SmarTrip stands to ruin this street economy fueled by hustlers and by good Samaritans like Miller. As of Jan. 4, those who plunk down the minimum SmarTrip card buy-in fee of $5 will be able to transfer between buses for free once they pay a $1.25 base fee. Paying cash? Boarding a bus will run you $1.35 each time, whether you’re transferring or not.
Riders like Francis Chapman of Laurel, Md., who often rides the D8 and C18 buses, must reconcile empathy for riders who depend on free transfers with anger over the fact that those who abuse paper transfers, whether because they have to or merely want to, have been immune to fare hikes that rule-abiding riders have endured.
“It’s because of that,” Chapman says, equating paper-transfer fraud with lost profits and lost profits with the reason Metro is doing away with paper transfers altogether.
“But some people won’t have money to catch the bus,” he adds. “It’s gonna be rough.”
Marshall Proctor, an A12 rider from Seat Pleasant, Md., says he will miss the days when stumbling across a discarded transfer was as good as finding $1.35 in cash lying on the ground. “Now if I don’t have [bus fare], I might find a transfer on the ground,” Proctor says. “You’re not gonna find one of those cards on the ground.”
And Proctor is one of those riders who, if presented with a couple of transfers, expired or not, will figure out a way to use them to get on the bus. “I can tape two together,” he admits.
Sheliah Hester, a B2 and D6 rider who lives on Capitol Hill, say she’ll miss how excited fellow riders get when she gives away a transfer, no strings attached. Hester says she’s been offered change or a smoke in exchange for her transfer, but she tends to turn such offers down. “I usually just tell them they can have the transfer,” she says.
“There’s always somebody decent standing out here you can help,” Hester says. “And that dollar they save, they can eat their lunch with that.”
Hester says that she just doesn’t get why a big entity like Metro would begrudge someone down on his luck the relief of an occasional free ride. “Why are they worrying about someone helping someone else? It’s charity—why is a billion-dollar corporation worried about it? Metro is not giving nobody no breaks.”
Sure, all that community building among strangers—or covert, sneaky behavior, depending on your perspective—has led to a constant stream of fare hikes that seem to come closer and closer together, but wouldn’t Metro have found a way to make us pay more anyway?
Out in the bus-riding world, people have theories as to why Metro is bagging the transfers. Some think it must be because city trash workers have complained that they’re tired of picking up the little newsprint strips with red lettering that are strewn all over the city. Other riders think Metro has decided that dispensing and checking paper transfers slows down drivers and, by extension, buses. A few posit that Metro is just ready to move into the future with its SmarTrip cards and leave paper behind, but the majority think Metro is tired of getting bested by folks who use paper transfers to get something for nothing.
Metro says it’s all of the above.
“There are several reasons,” says Asato. “One, it will save Metro money. Not including fraud, just in printing and maintenance of transfer machines, we will save $350,000 next year,” she says.
“Also, we want to encourage people to use SmarTrip,” Asato continues. With a
SmarTrip, riders can transfer buses for up to three hours for free, compared to just two hours with a paper transfer.
On the fraud front, Metro Transit Police recently apprehended someone for selling books of stolen transfers, says Asato. Still, no one has ever been pinched for the act of passing a single transfer off to a fellow rider, to her knowledge.
Asato recognizes that it’s an act of kindness that one rider has been able to extend to another for as long as the paper transfer has existed, but she’s not sorry to see it go.
“It is a courtesy, but it’s still a form of fraud that we’re trying to curb,” Asato says.
It’s also a form of fraud that riders will endeavor to extend. “We’re gonna figure that out soon,” says Proctor of cracking the SmarTrip system. “Trust me. The younger generation will figure it out.”
To hear bus drivers tell it, they already have.
Despite being overwhelmingly in favor of getting rid of paper transfers, the Southwest area bus driver says the new hustle is that people scan a depleted SmarTrip against the card reader on his bus and then feign ignorance when it doesn’t work.
“They say, ‘I just added money! Something is wrong with your machine!’” The driver says that, in these cases, he usually gives the benefit of the doubt, or at least decides not to call them on their ploy.
Therein lies the false hope of the switch to SmarTrip—a switch that could mean even more mayhem for drivers. Think about it: The bus is the first transportation option for the city’s neediest citizens, in part because of the ease of gaming paper transfers. Now these folks, many of them penniless, will be required to come up with $5 before boarding a bus, and another $5 after their card is charged four times. That simply won’t happen, and the result will be more desperate passengers simply breezing past the driver, perhaps not even bothering to pass a zeroed-out card over the scanner. Any driver that seeks to enforce the rules faces a clash.
One driver doesn’t understand why people go to such lengths to get a free bus ride, when there is a really simple way to get from points A to B when you’re short on cash.
“I understand that some of my co-workers have attitudes, but most of us don’t,” he says. “If someone says, ‘Mr. Bus Driver, I don’t have any money, but I need to get somewhere, can you let me ride?’ most of us would probably do it,” he says.
That’s a fine sentiment from an empathetic driver. But it misses the point of the whole transfer transaction, and that’s saving face. No one—not the lowliest of bus riders—wants to tell an entire busload of people that he doesn’t have five quarters and a dime to rub together.
It’s why the bus transfer in D.C. has become the mass-transit equivalent of sticking a beer in a brown paper bag: If you went to the trouble of waving a strip of paper—even an ice-cream sandwich wrapper or a corner of the Giant food circular could work—a bus driver would likely allow you to board, no questions asked. With a transfer, you don’t have to shred your dignity by pleading poverty or trying to sneak in through the back door as other passengers disembark. In return, the driver gets to keep his eyes and mind on the road instead of playing transit cop and social worker.
Although bus transfers and the shenanigans surrounding them are a bit of old-D.C. grit in an increasingly sanitized city, transfer conning isn’t a good thing. But it’s our thing. It’s not unlike when we had a basketball team named for gun ammo or a mayor who smoked crack—it fosters community in some unplanned way. Like the people who’ve taken advantage of it, the paper transfer has character and a purpose far beyond getting from downtown to Capitol Hill. Nothing of the sort can be said of swiping a generic plastic card.
Dec. 4 - 10, 2008 (Vol. 28, #49)
Comments
9:44 am
I find it strangely difficult to feel empathy for fraudsters. I imagine the author also thinks its cool to steal music on the Internet, too.
The real issue may be that some people are illiterate. How on earth are they going to update a SmartTrip card?
10:27 am
There exist endless studies, by fine institutions of higher learning, which point out the impact that the lack of dependable and affordable transportation has on the working and underemployed poor: Latch key children, and its impact on education; extended commutes, and its impact on productivity; and, financial decisions impacting health care decisions, nutrition, and more.
Should they walk to work?
While one cannot justify fraud because of it, this squeeze on the pockets of the poor is a more resounding commentary on the state of this nation's economy than any car manufacturer's decision to take a $1 a year salary (with many undisclosed benefits) in exchange for billions of dollars of tax payer money to keep their shops open.
11:48 am
At least as important as the loss of money, eliminating paper transfers is a backhanded, cowardly means to “encourage” riders to use cashless media such as the SmartTrip card. For every bus transaction, the bottleneck is always at people who pay cash. In Chicago four years ago, they created a powerful incentive for riders there to adopt the equivalent of a SmartTrip or cashless medium (The Chicago Card;) the fare was raised to $2 for a Chicago Card transaction and $4 for a cash transaction. With adequate notice and publicity, there was a definite advantage to using the Chicago Card and relatively little hassle among the ridership. Back in October 2007, as part of the proposed fare increases, WMATA proposed a similar fare structure for bus trips, with $1.35 for SmartTrip rides and $2 for cash rides, but the WMATA board wimped out and took the smarmy path of slightly increasing the cash fare and eliminating paper transfers after a yearlong “transition period.
If WMATA really wants to encourage SmartTrip use, they should act aggressively to do exactly that. SmartTrip cards should be given out for free instead of at a cost of $5. WMATA could give a SmarttTrip card for free to anyone who is willing to register it, instead of forcing riders to pay $10 for as card pre-loaded with only $5 If people choose not to have their personal information recorded along with a SmartTrp card, then they can still pay $10 for a card, but they will not get the many other benefits of a SmartTrip card, such as free replacement of the value of your card if it is lost. Once the SmartTrip software is upgraded (promised by 2010) riders will be able to take advantage of bus to rail discounts, and design oversights such as overland transfers between Farragut West and Farragut North stations
11:49 am
This is a great story.
3:09 pm
That last line about the paper transfer being something holy where the Smartrip isn't is kind of ridiculous.
3:26 pm
Timely article since a New York bus driver was killed over a transfer just a few days ago, but I'll miss one of the best deals in town. I don't ride the bus often, but the free transfer was great for running quick errands. I'll sorely miss paying one fare for a quick round trip between Dupont Circle and Mt. Pleasant when I don't feel like walking.
4:33 pm
I've been a metro rider since '82/'83 back in HS. May have used an expired transfer maybe twice and that was by mistake. I don't see the big deal. Pay and keep it moving.
6:48 pm
Great story.
I'm a huge advocate of public transit and a former D.C./Silver Spring resident.
The eliminating of paper transfers is really fascinating. I suppose it was only a matter of time.
But let's not forget that the someone (the "criminal element," perhaps, though I'm reluctant to call it that) will always find a way around a system, no matter how safeguarded or new it is. That's what I draw from Mr. Marshall Proctor comment in the story.
Unlike a previous commenter, I agree that some "old-D.C. grit" is lost symbolically with the elimination of paper transfers. I'm not so sure D.C. is being "increasingly sanitized" more than any other big city, though. This isn't Guiliani-era New York City, folks.
And I also agree that it "fosters community," as the story says, but is that really a good enough reason? Is community really worth dark spots of lurching squalor on WMATA and thoroughout D.C.? That depends on your values but if you ask me, and I've been mugged in the District, I don't think it is.
Community is fostered just by being there on the bus or train and talking to people about the issues of the day, joking around and discussing your personal experience of the very transit system you're on (which, I've got to point out since no one else has, has to be the most consistent topic of discussion on any mass transit system).
So in that vein...
Paper bus transfers are gone, fine, but what about rail-to-bus transfers, the tiny white slips you have to get from your departing metro station that saves you a bunch over a period of time? Are these the next to go?
If there is a long-term plan for this, will the surrounding county and transit municipalities start accepting the SmarTrip card as well, folding into this new transfer system? That would be awfully nice. But how do the politics and economics of that work out?
Also, while I'm at it, I have to ask when will one be able to load/re-load unlimited short and long trip passes on plastic cards? Some of us don't like wasting the paper every week-- keeping up with a flimsy paper card that blows away with the wind and could easily be ripped is awfully haphazard for such a key investment in your daily life.
And what of monthly passes in addition to weekly ones?
Even MARTA in Atlanta, closer to where I live now, has these features I've named above.
10:44 pm
Metro - whether bus or train - is in deep financial straits and must become less wasteful if it is to survive. The author seems to celebrate this theft of service as something due those that steal. Nonesense.
If you ride the bus, you need to pay.
9:28 am
Anything to save money in operating expenses for Metro is a good thing. Plaster the buses and trains with ads, hell put tvs on them airing ads, I don't care! I just want the fare to stop going up while service goes waaay down. SmarTrip rules, cash sucks.
11:35 am
I use a SmartTrip card and am fortunate enough to get metrobenefits through my job. A couple of things that people fail to mention is that cash, and smartrip cards are not the only methods for riding the bus. DC subsidizes the cost of kids from low income families to ride the bus, their parents just have to complete the application and pick up the tokens. They also haven't stopped selling bus flash passes. There will always be excuses about what is fair and what isn't. What it boils down to is that WMATA is a business and just like any other they need to run more efficiently and doing away with paper transfers will help some.
12:23 pm
WMATA took a page from the Metro (LA) playbook, but unlike LA, DC Metro still provides free bus-to-bus transfers with the SmartCard so consider yourselves lucky, WMATA bus riders.
Also, to be fair, all those luckless poverty-stricken bus riders in DC still have the option of buying an $11 weekly bus pass, which provides them unlimited bus rides within the week.
Although I do understand how handy a transfer can be, and have occasionally gamed the system myself, I also understand that most metropolitan mass transit agencies are feeling some major cash squeeze, so I'm just glad they're not shutting/cutting down service altogether. I also have no shame, and have begged bus drivers to let me ride for free on occasion.
Mass transit is like your feet, or your teeth, no one ever really appreciates them when they're working, and everyone complains when they poop out.
Look out MUNI riders, you guys are next!
12:32 pm
Oh, and Paul, I get the feeling that ALL transfers, including rail-to-bus are being eliminated? Can someone verify?
And you can use your SmarTrip on Maryland's Ride-On, not sure if that's the same with VA mass transit authority...
AND you can load as much $$ on your SmarTrip as you'd like. Some days ago, I exited the Friendship Heights station behind some kid with a $187 balance on his card...no kidding.
I just hope he'd registered it...
12:47 pm
KB - to clear up some incorrect information in your post - Metro does NOT subsidize fare for all chlidren...maybe some kids at some schools/fosterhomes/group homes/kiddie jails...but regular kids like mine who ride bus/rail to school daily PAY for transit just like everyone else. You are correct - there are myraid fare options but they are not free. My son uses tokens to get to and from school. They're cheap and have been around since I was DCPS student 20 years ago. HOWEVER with the elimination of transfers what was once a two token a day trip for him could now be a FOUR token a day trip to school and back home. I feel FORCED to accept smartrip...and that 's the part that leaves a bad taste in my mounth. I mean for the cost of buying a smartrip and loading it with enough fare for him to get back and forth I could buy 3 packs of token. Although I'm all for making advances in technology and opening options lets take a few seconds to consider that doing away with time honored (and proven) fare options is not the answer.
5:00 pm
As a daily bus rider who sees people use clearly outdated transfers all the time, I applaud this change. While plenty of the people who violate this look down on their luck, many clearly are comfortable who simply don't feel like paying. Will people still berate the busdriver when their card is empty? Maybe, but it's certainly a less reliable means to defraud the system.
I really disagree with the overall thrust of the article. I don't think the paper transfer fraud fosters communal warmth. Regardless of their intent, it's parasitic. And it's unfair. If you've got a problem with disparities of wealth, their are much more efficient and just means to address that then to allow a separate fare system for those in-the-know.
Regarding the distribution of smartrip cards: you cannot give them out for free. As long as you are allowed to have a negative balance, the effect of giving out free cards would be to give out free rides (unless the free ones were somehow engineered not to allow a negative balance).
As for rail-to-bus transfers: they may eliminate these, but they are less subject to fraud since the busdriver actually has to collect it from you. Plus, you still have to pay 35 cents (soon to be a lot more once they start allowing bus-to-rail transfers), so the benefit of the fraud is lower.
9:52 pm
Interesting comments on both sides of the issue, but I tend to support Metro's side more. I especially feel for any bus driver who tries to enforce the rules and risks his/her safety in the process. They don't deserve to "clash" with anyone over expired transfers. Overall a good article, except the last paragraph which seemed to romanticize cheating.
10:40 pm
I can't help but to question the potential breach of our Constitutional Right To Privacy. To procure a SmarTrip card, one must complete and submit application and have their personal information entered into a Metro database. This 'not-so-nifty' SmarTrip card which must be swiped on and off every bus we board as well as in and out of every subway station we utilize serves to electronically track our every move. I don't know how comfortable I am with that. I can appreciate the challenges drivers face with the passengers mishandling the paper transfers, but is it such a silly idea to upgrade the fare boxes (which manage not to accept pennies) to also include a device which automatically issues a transfer upon the passenger paying the fare? Perhaps the transfer could have a bar code which is to be scanned upon entry on the fare box (another feature I'm sure could be incorporated). But oh well, right?
1:26 pm
FIRST, Eio, the rail to bus transfers are going to be eliminated. The bulletins that Metro has been posting contains that information-- it says that these will be registered to your smarTrip.
I can see very clearly two opposing viewpoints regarding this change. My first thoughts were "Great way to save paper and natural resources!" While some people have to ride the bus, there are others such as myself, that choose to ride the bus in order to lower their environmental impact. Paper transfers have always been very wasteful, and a reusable smarTrip card will eliminate that waste.
I feel like the author made a very good point, though, when talking about using a smarTrip card to board the bus-- how some people will swipe their card and feign innocence when it comes up without a balance. I do feel like this poses a problem to everyone on the bus system. The bus driver will have to decide whether or not to deny them transport or to just let it slide-- the latter will probably result in an abundance of these instances from people who don't want to pay. If the bus driver denies them, then we run the risk of violent passengers, arguments, et cetera.
And this is something that can happen to everybody-- there are times that I've been running late (it is always when you're running late) and unable to stop at the station to charge my card. Then, later, my smarTrip is too low to pay for my bus fare, and there is not a machine for smarTrip charging to be found. We don't all have credit cards to charge things up online.
Everything that people are saying in this forum-- these are all issues that should be addressed by WMATA/Ride On. Was there ever a public hearing on these changes? And if not, maybe that should be suggested to the proper authority figures within the system, so that people can have a say as we go forward with these changes.
This transit is your transit and my transit. We don't have to sit back and watch things unfold before us while resigning ourselves to have no say in the matter. I think that it would be nice to see more people getting actively involved in the changes in our community. People seem to forget that speaking out is an option.
1:53 pm
C'mon everybody. It's the 21st century--things truly are going paperless, and the end of the transfer is just the latest casualty. Personally, since I first bought a Smartrip card a few years ago, I haven't regretted in the least those days when I'd forgotten to get a transfer and had to pay extra.
Goodbye--and good riddance--to paper transfers!
8:23 pm
Just askin- you are not required to register your smarttrip card with metro. The registration is used if your smarttrip is lost, stolen, or breaks so you can get your balance back.
2:57 pm
Now people will just make an excuse about "looking for change" and get someone to let them run their SmartTrip again, which wouldn't deduct any fare for the good Samaritan. If Metro is serious about fraud they should put a timer on the SmartTrips preventing someone from boarding the same bus in the same direction for say 15 minutes.
8:54 pm
Why don't Washingtonians have the option to purchase a monthly Metro pass for unlimited rides? That would help the transfer issue.
1:45 pm
I heard about Metro decision to eliminate paper fare 2 months ago. This isn't the 1st time metro converted a section of their system to take smart trip card. 4 years ago, Metro decided the you need a smart trip card to pay for parking. It was a result of unethical employees stealing money from parking lot fees. I suspect fraud was one of the reasons for the paper transfer elimination. Now, if they can find a way to make reload our cards without waiting at a metro station during rush hour that would be nice.
1:57 pm
I don't feel bad at all about the phasing out of the transfer. Bring on the future! Or pay 1.35 each time, I guess.
10:15 am
The first time I saw the notice about eliminating paper transfers hanging in a bus a few weeks ago, I got a little upset with Metro. I understand that WMATA is business conglomerate and, like most businesses at the moment, it needs to pay excruciatingly close attention to its operating budget and ways to save money, while also streamlining transportation processes. It also needs to heed the comfort & safety of its employees and maintain/improve its ability to handle infrastructural repairs and other upgrades.
That said, there has to be a better way to make this transition. Yes, there a multiple factors in play that contribute to this decision; however, as is mentioned in the second comment in this reply thread, the impact dependable & affordable public transportation has on the working, underemployed, children, & families [particularly, see the Feb. 20, 2008 City Paper article "Missing the Bus"] is exponential.
I am not an expert in city planning, allocating public taxes/funds, or operating a business that runs on a ten-year-$11 billion budget, but it can't hurt to think broadly about the impact this has on countless people. Those who are going to be hit the hardest by this change are those that are frequently ignored in decisions like this.
As is mentioned in the "Missing the Bus" article, many people have to allocate the $5 it costs to buy/load a SmarTrip card among 4 children for their daily bus fare, consequently being forced to make a decision of who gets to attend school that day. There is a bigger problem out there, and I don't argue that I have an answer, but perhaps another good samaritan system will emerge.
2:50 pm
not a fan of phasing out paper transfers....what bothers me even more is how there are no options for buying in bulk....i don't understand why no discounts are offered for those who ride metro frequently (i.e. paying $40 actually gets you $50 worth of fares)
4:43 pm
I saw 2 kids trying to share a smartcard for the same bus ride. Doesn't work that way for the bus or the train. One per person.
8:01 pm
Can you pay for another person to ride on your smartcard? If not, then that is a real limitation.
8:03 pm
I agree with Maggie 100%! All these people in favor of Smart Cards couldn't care less about the poor people in the city.
1:35 pm
Kudos to Maggie, Josh, and R. Ellin for their comments. As a former Metro rider I sincerely understand the transfer plight, especially its impact on the poor. With everything, there will be some to take advantage of the system, but I'm not convinced that the 15% of bad transfer passers (as the driver said) justify harming 100% of the riders. I know these are bad economic times, but if the cost savings is only $350K (money that won't go back into salaries or go far in improving infrastructure), why bother. No, I don't have $350K lying around, but for a multibillion dollar company, $350K isn't enough to substantiate this much heartache. It may be enough to buy a few of those aesthetically unpleasing escalator covers (glass archways), but not too much else.
Metro's mismanagement, frequent repairs, delayed schedules, and lack of convenience - especially for folks who live and use the Orange Line east of Stadium Armory left me to driving again...even during $4 a gallon gas prices. All of this AFTER I bought a Smart Card and endured the Parking Lot issue every morning (i.e., Do I have enough money on my card to pay?) and other issues. Like any credit card, it is only a matter of time before the chip will be exploited. All of this after farecards are eliminated and ways to pay cash for Mass Transit will be severely reduced. When they upgraded the fareboxes not to accept pennies, that was the beginning. Soon, prices will be rounded to the nearest dollar when processing coins becomes to expensive. No, these aren't doomsday predictions, but this is slowly becoming gentrification on a public transportation level. Not only that, but you can't tell me that bus driver aggravation won't be up because of this. I've been on buses where riders have given up quarters, etc. so that a person could ride. Kinda hard to do if when someone doesn't have enough credit on their card to ride.
Even with all the efficiency of Smart Cards, I must say that the machines themselves are sometimes cumbersome to use. There aren't enough of them, and for city folks to have to travel to Metro Center to get one is INCONVENIENT. I don't see metro putting technology in the supermarkets where Flash Passes can be purchased, and purchasing them online only exploits the digital divide. How about spending that $350K and giving cards away with a $1.35 balance to encourage them to be used. (that's roughly 55,000 cards if you include the $5 surcharge for the card. 259,000 without the surcharge)
Something like that will be a better incentive for folks to adopt Smart Cards. Another incentive might be to key in a discount for Bus-to-Rail passengers. Smart Cards are already keyed for Rail-to-Bus.
5:41 pm
1. You can add value to your Smartrip on the bus by using cash, or cash/credit card in a metro station. You touch the grey button, touch your card, insert your cash, touch the card when done. Then you have to scan your card again to pay your fare. The driver will help you.
2. You can pay for another person. First you scan your card , then you hit the grey button on the left and then touch it again. It will deduct the full fare both times.
3. You can buy a bus pass for $11.00 which is the best deal unless your employer pays. If you only earn $7.55 an hour, that is less than 2 hours of work to pay for unlimited transportation.