So far, people across the region have submitted almost 1,200 ideas to the MetroGreater contest. If you want the jury to consider making your idea one of the 10 finalists, enter it at metrogreater.org this week. You can’t win if you don’t submit an idea!

Photo by Chris Wieland on Flickr.

Metropocalypse on MetroGreater

Greater Greater Washington is launching a crowd sourced idea contest for small, quick fixes to improve Metro for riding. Check out the latest episode of WAMU’s podcast Metropocalypse to hear David Alpert and Martin DiCaro talk about the contest, why we’re launching it, and how it fits into greater Metro efforts to make a safer, more reliable transit system.

What happens next?

This is the last week to submit your brilliant idea for making a quick, small improvement to Metrorail, Metrobus, or MetroAccess. Starting next week, Greater Greater Washington and Coalition for Smarter Growth will work with WMATA to vet the submitted ideas and eliminate those that would likely cost more than $100,000 or take more than six months to implement.

After that, a jury of transit leaders, experts, advocates, and representatives of WMATA will come together to review the eligible ideas and identify up to 10 finalists. We’ll feature each of the finalist ideas on the blog and give you the opportunity to vote for your favorite. The idea with the most votes will be the winner and WMATA will make it happen it in the following next six months.

The winning ideas

Thanks to Metro and their business partners, owners of the winning idea and runners up will not only get bragging rights, but will walk (or ride!) away with a bounty of goodies made possible by WMATA and their business partners.

To commemorate the overlap with SafeTrack, the grand prize winner will receive a receive a paper weight made from a piece of historic Metro rail removed during SafeTrack. In addition, they will get a personalized $100 SmarTrip card, a pair of tickets to watch the Washington football team, and a Reston Package with tickets to a performance of your choice at CENTER STAGE and a Founding Farmers gift certificate.

Photo by m01229 on Flickr.

The finalists will receive a $25 SmarTrip card, food voucher for the Union Station food court, and one of the following:

  • Pair of Washington Wizards tickets
  • Family four-pack of tickets to the Spy Museum
  • National Building Museum exhibit tickets and merchandise for Icebergs
  • Union Station package including station history book, food court voucher, Big Bus tour tickets and a Swatch Watch
  • Pike + Rose package, including a $50 gift card to Summer House restaurant in North Bethesda
  • Crystal City package, including tickets to Sip and Salsa, Pups and Pilsners, the Synetic Theater, and a $50 gift card to Highline R&R

WMATA will also hold a few extra prizes in case the jury decides there are ideas that weren’t selected as a finalist, but still deserve recognition.

What about the other ideas?

With almost 1,200 ideas and counting, there will be good ideas that don’t make the finalist cut. Some of them will take too long or be too expensive. We hope to be able to highlight some examples of these on the blog and explain why a seemingly simple idea was too complex to implement.

That still leaves a lot of good ideas on the table.

What do you want WMATA to do with the other promising ideas?

Sarah Guidi was Greater Greater Washington's Managing Director from 2015 to 2018. She now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her family.