A Post about the DC Metro that will make no sense to you.
Most of you who read my blog don’t live or work around D.C. Some of you do. The one’s that do understand and completely comphrehend the utter Joy of the Smartcard. And, when I say Joy, I mean it hurts less than someone smacking you in the face with wood. But, it still hurts. Metro fares are going up because the Metro is out of money, just like the rest of us. But, using a Smartcard saves you some cash with getting on the bus and using the train. And there is the added benefit of not looking like a complete moron when you try and put money into the bus machines. (Seriously, everyone hates you when you do that.) However, there is some drama going down with the cards. This is the geeky, weird money shit that I promised myself that I would never, ever care about. As of right now, when you buy a Metro card, you can have a Negative balance. You have to afford to get on, but if the fare is more than what is on your card, you can have a negative balance. You just have to pay it before you use it again. Here is where it gets geeky.
The WMATA Board asked for the SmarTrip price to go down to $2.50 to make them more affordable for poorer riders. However, officials started to worry. Someone could buy a SmarTrip for $2.50 (at a commuter store or sales office) with $0 value, immediately take a $4.95 long-distance ride or $6 airport bus trip, and throw away the card, basically cheating Metro out of up to $3.50. Their best guess was that this could cost $1 million a month in lost fare revenue, plus quickly deplete the existing stock of SmarTrips.
The author of this post believes that people wouldn’t game the system. I’m sorry, but people would. Everybody would, all the time. That is what we do. This is America. If you don’t game the system, you aren’t doing your American duty. The Metro is working on some reach-arounds. I mean work-arounds. But know this, people: If it is weird, complex, and almost completely boring, I’m going to write about it. It is what I do. It is what I love to do.
