Rider's SmarTrip money temporarily vanishes

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Rider's SmarTrip money temporarily vanishes

by Michael Perkins • March 21, 2013 1:58 pm

A Metro rider, Barbara, wrote in to Unsuck DC Metro about a problem where she added funds to SmarTrip online but then still couldn't go through a faregate. What's going on is one of the unfortunate consequences of the 1990s-era faregate systems WMATA is still using.

Photo by London Permaculture on Flickr.

I had added funds online on March 4. I didn't use my card before March 18, and when I did, I had to realize that there was still only 20 cents on my card, and the $50 I had added at the beginning of the month were nowhere to be seen. ...
I couldn't use them for riding because the funds wouldn't load, and I couldn't even go through the turnstile with them. So, what I did was use my credit card to add $20 to my card (I didn't have any cash on me), entered Foggy Bottom, exited at Ballston and: voilà! there were $68 on my card all of a sudden.

This is obviously frustrating to infrequent riders who load up funds ahead of time for when they ride, or use automatic loading to ensure their card is never low on funds. But the automatic or remote loading may not work.

This happens because of the way the (fairly outdated) SmarTrip system works. When you add funds to your SmarTrip card online or automatically, the funds don't appear in your Smartrip account immediately because your balance is actually stored encrypted on the card rather than on a computer.

Adding funds online sends an instruction to the SmarTrip system to watch for your card. The next time a faregate or bus farebox reads your card, it will have information about what you added, and will load the funds onto your card.

The load instructions get copied to faregates and bus fareboxes throughout the system, but because these machines are not in constant communication (like bus fareboxes), it may take several days for the instructions to reach a farebox you use.

But Barbara waited more than a few days. What happened? She wrote:

I called SmarTrip, and they didn't have a plausible explanation: All I learned was that this could happen "with infrequent use of the card." What the heck does that mean? It shouldn't matter how frequently I use the card—it's my money on there, it's just not in my bank any longer, it's on their card!

Here's what's going on. The faregates have their list of SmarTrip cards that are waiting for new funds already loaded online. Unfortunately, the outdated faregates have limited computer memory (that fact restricted peak-of-the-peak, for example). They can only store so many load instructions.

Spokesperson Dan Stessel said:

Each target [the SmarTrip computer system in the faregates] can hold a maximum of 85,000 auto loads. When that number is exceeded, the system has to localize, meaning the system will send your auto load purchase to every station you've used in the past month.

Furthermore, based on the SmarTrip customer service response, it sounds like if you load online but then don't use the system soon after, newer load instructions may crowd yours out.

Either the Ballston gate had the instruction and Foggy Bottom did not. (Barbara said that she lives in Arlington, so Ballston is probably the station she uses most.) Alternately, once Barbara loaded her card at a machine and then entered the rail system, the central system retransmitted her load instruction to the faregates. Then when she exited, the gate at Ballston knew to add her funds.

This whole mechanism of getting the load instruction onto the faregates ahead of time is fairly messy. It would be better if, when you went onto the system, the faregate could just check your balance with a central server, but the faregates don't have a high-speed, always-on connection to a central server to accomplish this.

WMATA is studying new fare payment systems. Any new system ought to fix this irritating problem, but it may be quite some time before a new system actually comes on line.

Meanwhile, it might make sense for more infrequent riders to use the vending machines, especially if they let their cards get very low.

27 comments

Tags: Metro, SmarTrip, technology, WMATA

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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So let me make sure that I have this right.

Buses, which by definition are mobile and not connected to any wired infrastructure can maintain realtime communications with WMATA.

However, faregates (which don't move) can't?

Seems like that's completely backward to me.

by Ryan S on Mar 21, 2013 2:07 pm • link • report

Is a "fargate" sort of like a stargate?

by LOL on Mar 21, 2013 2:07 pm • link • report

I had this happen to me and thought it was just a glitch - now I know it is bad/outdated design.

I wonder, though, what prevents them from adding memory to the faregates...

There is a simple solution from a communications perspective - let people know when they reload online that they may still have to pay 1 fare before the amount is credited to the card.

by gooch on Mar 21, 2013 2:29 pm • link • report

Ryan S: Buses, which by definition are mobile and not connected to any wired infrastructure can maintain realtime communications with WMATA. However, faregates (which don't move) can't?

Sounds like the pretty common IT situation where you have some legacy system (the faregates' internal computers) that would cost too much to replace at once so you have to come up with some half-baked workaround to add new functionality, whereas deploying an entirely new system (the SmarTrip terminals for the buses) gives you the chance to engineer something reasonable in from the beginning.

by iaom on Mar 21, 2013 2:29 pm • link • report

Thanks for the post, Michael. I know WMATA is in the process of implementing a new, more flexible fare system. I hope the new fare system goes region-wide like the exisitng SmarTrip system (Ride On, DASH, Fairfax Connector, ART, etc...) but is more up-to-date and flexible like the system Chicago seems to be implementing at this very moment, called "VENTRA." http://www.transitchicago.com/ventra/

by Transport. on Mar 21, 2013 2:31 pm • link • report

The SmarTrip terminals on the buses are old, too. The online load info only goes into them when they are in the garage.

What's going on is there is a 20-year-old legacy system that isn't able to communicate in realtime, on buses or trains. More recently, they added NextBus GPS transponders which report real-time location. Those are actually imperfect too and need to be replaced because they only report location every 2 minutes which isn't often enough.

So WMATA has to replace the old faregate and bus farebox technology, and when it does they will work better, but just because they added some new piece of technology more recently doesn't change the fact that the faregates and fareboxes are really old now.

by David Alpert on Mar 21, 2013 2:32 pm • link • report

I tried to load a bus pass twice (thought the first time was a fluke somehow) at $16 a pop. Never loaded on my card despite using buses and Metro daily. WMATA never responded to my emails... My only consolation is that the bus fareboxes malfunction often enough that I get a couple of free rides on metro buses each week.

by Alan B. on Mar 21, 2013 2:35 pm • link • report

Is the update gap specific to fare gates, or does it happen on the fare-adding machines as well? In other words, if you just touch your Smartrip to the fare add machine as a query of how much is on there, will it update that way? Or do you have to add new value to the card to push the value added online onto the card?

by Ben on Mar 21, 2013 2:59 pm • link • report

I had this happen as well. Ended up adding additional money to the smartcard and when I exited, there it was. A little frustrating.

by Andrew on Mar 21, 2013 3:00 pm • link • report

It seems like the system knows enough to push your reload to the front of the queue when you use your card to enter the system. Then the issue is that the system won't let you enter without the minimum fare - right?

by MLD on Mar 21, 2013 3:06 pm • link • report

I'm an infrequent rider also and I have tried to save time by loading $ on my card in advance, but it never seems to work out. I gave up on that and now only load up at a machine using a credit card. I always got good wmata response when I emailed them however.

by spookiness on Mar 21, 2013 3:17 pm • link • report

Three weeks ago on a Tuesday I had over $1,100 on my SmarTrip card. That Friday I tried to pass through the fare gate at Farragut N. and was told I had 30 cents on my card. I emailed Metro Twice, called once and didn't hear anything back from the 3 attempted contacts. I ended up putting $20 on it the next week to make sure that I had something there in case I needed to use Metro. Last week, exactly $1,000 appeared on my card. No explanation, no nothing, and still short of what I had on my card before. I'm not even bothering to deal with them over that 100 some odd bucks.

by thump on Mar 21, 2013 3:42 pm • link • report

I thought the maximum value that could be stored on Smartrip was $300 - not over $1,100??

by Rider on Mar 21, 2013 4:00 pm • link • report

I also thought the limit was $300, why on earth would you have $1100 on your smartrip card?

by MLD on Mar 21, 2013 4:05 pm • link • report

I think the $300 limit is how much you can put on at one time... although I also can't imagine why you'd want a $1000 on your card.

by Alan B. on Mar 21, 2013 4:23 pm • link • report

My reading of it is that there's a $300 maximum for what you can load onto your SmarTrip yourself, but if you have SmartBenefits that roll over from month to month, your transit and parking purses can each go up to $4,045.

by Gray on Mar 21, 2013 4:27 pm • link • report

Yeah, my employer was adding money each month, but I wouldn't use it all as I began to bike more. The problem happened after we stopped the benefits so we wondered if that money had been returned to my employers account.
I was told by a station manager that there are 3 "pools" on the smartrip card, commuting benefits, parking, and personal(?). I had a couple hundred dollars of personal money on the card before I started receiving the commuting benefit. It just added up to over $1,100 by the time I lost it all.

by thump on Mar 21, 2013 5:41 pm • link • report

Speaking of the faregates; are the ones in the new Silver Line Stations new (as in new technology) or just the same.

by kk` on Mar 21, 2013 6:37 pm • link • report

"Meanwhile, it might make sense for more infrequent riders to use the vending machines, especially if they let their cards get very low."

Or go back to the system where you can enter with a negative balace. Would that trigger the alert?

(Again I'm sure there is large number of indivduals buying smartrip cards, riding the 5a or out to the furthest stations, and throwing the cards away to save a dollar, but perhaps you just limit it to selling one card at time)

by charlie on Mar 21, 2013 6:55 pm • link • report

In London (where I am now), Oyster uses a slightly different system wherein you have to choose a station to pick up your balance or Travelcard the next day. The Oyster network does this by loading all products purchased online during overnight hours to their intended pick-up stations, since it wouldn't be possible to do this during the day when barriers are in use. For pay-as-you-go, which I don't use, my understanding is that Oyster auto tops up at the end of a journey under where the user goes below his or her minimum threshold. Doesn't this obviate Metro's anticipatory problem?

by Phil on Mar 21, 2013 8:39 pm • link • report

I am not sure where they are in the replacement process for the faregate system, but I remember a few years back there were constant articles on this site as well as others where somebody was saying that metro was unable to get more cards.

This seems to be an issue of the past, and the solution may be an indication of the future.

The cards you can purchase now (with a half-blue back) now have a different kind of RFID tag in them, much like contactless credit cards. The nice thing about this kind of RFID is that it is Read Only, which indicates that they are looking for a centralized solution to the problem of value loaded on the cards.

by BradK on Mar 22, 2013 9:42 am • link • report

Phil: You can already use the WMATA site to automatically top up based on a threshold, but I think it doesn't fix the problem that the load instruction can't actually get put on the card immediately because the faregates don't use online balance checking.

by jhr on Mar 22, 2013 9:55 am • link • report

The "no more SmarTrip cards!" thing was precipitated by a vague communication from WMATA during a board meeting that was then misinterpreted by a bunch of people. Cubic stopped making the cards with the specific SmarTrip technology (since SmarTrip is old it has pre-standard tech). WMATA upgraded the card readers so they can read several types of cards. I just got a new card (my 6 year old one has a crack and works intermittently) and these ones may have new tech.

Here's a good overview:
http://transport.kurtraschke.com/2010/09/wmata-smartrip-imbroglio

by MLD on Mar 22, 2013 10:05 am • link • report

[This comment has been deleted for violating the comment policy.]

by Matt S on Mar 26, 2013 9:02 am • link • report

Just had this stupidity happen to me. My card broke and I had them transfer my benefits over to the new one. If you look on the web it shows the product was created on the 21st. I used the card on the 22nd (on the bus and at the Metro) and they didn't get picked up. Then I went out of town for a few days and didn't use my card until the 28th - I've used it on the bus 3 times on the 28th and today and the benefit left over still hasn't transferred.

I called customer service and not only is it not possible to just use the TVM to force the auto-load (like you used to have to do every month) but I was told not to go down and use the Metro or the TVM because it would "reroute the signal." Amazing. Have fun waiting for me to reload my card on the bus, people, because there's only 20 cents left!

by MLD on Mar 29, 2013 8:50 am • link • report

Well, at least now I know the mechanics behind the embarrassing situation that occurred to me this weekend. My five out of town guests were unable to use the Smart Trip cards I purchased and preloaded for them... and were forced to pay out of their own pocket to add more value to their cards. It took six taps (three entry/three exits) before the pre-purchased amounts finally loaded to their cards.

by Chris on Apr 2, 2013 11:28 am • link • report

Ben from March 21 - Won't work either way. I had 5 cards that I registered; waited 2 business days; went to my station, added money - no luck.

Called WMATA - very nice lady told me I had to make a complete round trip through the faregates. So it is going to cost me another $15 or so to get the things working.

by erick on May 2, 2013 3:35 pm • link • report