Georgetown students can blog, text, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and video chat with the best of them, but they seem to be largely in the dark when it comes to one simple technology available right here in D.C.: Metro’s SmarTrip cards. Judging by the long lines of Hoyas fumbling with their paper farecards on the way to the basketball game last Monday, a surprising number of Georgetown students have yet to purchase a SmarTrip card. Metro’s permanent, rechargeable farecards are embedded with a chip that tracks your balance, so that adding money is a breeze and it just takes a bump up against the turnstile to pay for your ride. In the upcoming months, Metro will be instituting changes that will make the already convenient technology even more necessary. So, if you haven’t bought a SmarTrip card yet, now is the time to pick one up.
The biggest change will come in January, when Metro eliminates paper bus-bus and rail-bus transfers. SmarTrip cards, already ten cents cheaper for several different fares, will become the only way to get a free bus-to-bus transfer or to pay the 35 cent rail-to-bus transfer fare. The inconvenience of using paper farecards might not mean much to Hoyas who don’t get out into D.C., but even those whose experiences in the District outside the Georgetown neighborhood are limited to the student section at the Verizon Center can save time and money by purchasing a SmarTrip card.
Georgetown has been working with Metro to begin embedding SmarTrip chips in GOCards in the near future, a promising initiative. But you would probably do well to take it upon yourself to buy a card instead of waiting on the slow-turning wheels of Georgetown’s bureaucracy.
SmarTrip cards can be purchased in the Metro Center station for $10 ($5 for the card, which comes with a $5 fare credit) or online at www.wmata.com. Metro is likely to begin selling SmarTrip cards at CVS pharmacies across D.C., too. So, the next time you’re having a burger at Five Guys on Wisconsin and or picking up some Natty at Towne, stop by CVS to pick up a SmarTrip card and say goodbye to the days of faded paper farecards and long turnstile lines.
