Metro to offer rail passes on SmarTrip in the spring

Transit

Metro to offer rail passes on SmarTrip in the spring

by Michael Perkins • October 7, 2011 10:42 am

One of the next upgrades to the Smartrip card is coming next spring. Metro says that the ability to add the 7-day unlimited rail passes will be available next year.

Photo by thisisbossi on Flickr.

This should increase rider convenience, encourage people to ride Metrorail off-peak with their unlimited passes, and provide Metro with a steady source of revenue.

However, since some of the transit passes offer a discount compared to a typical commute, the move might lead to a slight drop in revenues. For example, someone who takes 10 maximum-distance peak rides could save $5 per week by buying a pass rather than paying per ride, which is about 10% cheaper.

Currently, the paper rail passes are not very popular because they are inconvenient to purchase and cannot be used to pay for parking or bus trips. The paper rail passes are about 1-2% of Metrorail transactions. By making the passes more convenient, more customers may take advantage of this discount.

The passes will only work for rail trips, and do not allow customers to receive a discount on transfers to or from the region's bus systems, including Metrobus. The Smart Pass proposal would change the pass to monthly, allow customers to choose how much to pay for their pass, and would work on bus or rail flexibly. The amount the customer pays for a Smart Pass would determine what kinds of trips the pass will cover.

Metro recently rolled out to all riders the ability to add value to a SmarTrip card online. Another upgrade still in the works is "autoload," where a rider can put a credit card into the system and have it automatically charged each time the SmarTrip value gets low, like you can with E-ZPass.

15 comments

Tags: fares, Metro, SmarTrip, unlimited passes, WMATA

Rethinking Metro's passes, part 1: Passes today (Dec 15, 2009)
Bring back bus-rail transfers for pass users (Sep 10, 2010)
SmarTrip passes will start with bus (May 6, 2009)
SmarTrip passes, autoload, Web site now coming mid-2010 (Dec 14, 2009)
"Peak of the peak" makes flexible passes more crucial (Jun 16, 2010)

Michael Perkins blogs about Metro operations and fares, performance parking, and any other government and economics information he finds on the Web. He lives with his wife and two children in Arlington, Virginia.

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I think you have your incentives flipped. The pass removes the incentive to ride off peak because there is no per-trip cost.

by michael on Oct 7, 2011 10:53 am • link • report

@michael

Why does it remove the incentive to ride off-peak? Your commute trips are paid for with the pass, and you basically get as much other riding as you want for free. So people should take those trips MORE because they are now free.

Or maybe you're saying it removes the incentive to ride off-peak rather than during peak periods (if you have the option), this is correct but is not the argument being made here. Most people don't have that choice - they have to get to work and leave during peak periods.

by MLD on Oct 7, 2011 11:00 am • link • report

"Most people don't have that choice - they have to get to work and leave during peak periods."

Gosh, if that is true why go peak of peak at all? Oh, that's right. It's to hit federal workers and their subsidy. Sorry.

by charlie on Oct 7, 2011 11:05 am • link • report

some people will never be happy about anything wmata does

by Jerome on Oct 7, 2011 11:11 am • link • report

@charlie

Peak of the peak is separate, it's a shorter time period.

Not to mention the fact that in my own experience it is the federal workers I know who have options like getting to work at 7-8AM and leaving earlier.

by MLD on Oct 7, 2011 11:11 am • link • report

Is it still bound under the after rush hour rule? If so, then it's essentially pointless. This is why Metro NEEDS a zone system to allow unlimited trips and a graduated price. That would increase ridership by at least 15-20%, with the biggest increase within the District itself.

by Phil on Oct 7, 2011 11:28 am • link • report

Why get rid of the transfer when before smart trip, someone with a paper pass could have gotten a paper transfer at the rail station?

by Mike on Oct 7, 2011 11:34 am • link • report

@Mike: I agree with you, but Metro eliminated transfer discounts with the pass when they went to smartrip-only discounts.

Metro's rationale for not providing transfer discounts was that you don't want to provide a discount to riders that are already getting a discount by having a pass. I disagree but until the board decides otherwise that's the policy.

by Michael Perkins on Oct 7, 2011 11:37 am • link • report

I wish they'd let you have an ad-hoc pass; a sliding price scale for a sliding scale of free-trip-value; if it's $32.50 for $3.25 max value trips, maybe $21.50 for $2.15 trips?

Obviously top-ups possible, as per status-quo.

by RM-S on Oct 7, 2011 2:14 pm • link • report

@RM-S: You should really check out metrosmartpasses.org, since that's the exact proposal that I have gotten endorsed by various local groups and politicians.

by Michael Perkins on Oct 7, 2011 2:41 pm • link • report

Will I be able to use SmartBenefits to buy these passes? I don't seem to be able to use it to buy passes at the moment, though I could be completely wrong on that. If I can, it's certainly not obvious how I would.

by Gray on Oct 7, 2011 4:02 pm • link • report

I don't understand how Chicago can implement monthly passes that work on bus and rail and auto reloading of benefits through an online interface yet WMATA struggles with these concepts?

by Kevin on Oct 9, 2011 5:57 am • link • report

I had unlimited passes in Japan 13 years ago. The fare structure, like Metro, was distance based. Thus, for the monthly pass they needed to know where you started and where you ended your commute. From that information, the monthly pass price was computed. You could enter or depart any station between those two stations with the pass. If you entered or exited outside that area you needed to pay a little extra.

Basically, the monthly pass price was different for each person based upon their commute. It seems to me that with today's technology this wouldn't be too challenging to implement in DC.

by Rob P. III on Oct 10, 2011 10:48 am • link • report

I'm looking forward to a time when metro cards are less for metro alone and simply just electronic money. Especially since the banks, retailers, and congress are playing cat and mouse with debit card fees. A metro card could be a payment card for anything in the Capital Region, e.g., vending machines, taxi's, restaurants, etc. I'm sure its in the works somewhere?? (maybe?) Here's and ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suica

Since moving from DC to Tokyo, there's a lot of aspects of transpo and transpo related lessons DC could learn from Tokyo. Like the station maps exit numbers, private and public rail. Use of the underground. Tokyo metro and rails is truly amazing.

by jason on Oct 10, 2011 10:18 pm • link • report

Oh, and Tokyo could learn a thing or two from DC, like bike lanes - densest city in the world and people ride bikes on the sidewalk.

by jason on Oct 10, 2011 10:19 pm • link • report