Starting Sunday, March 6, Metrorail faregates accept SmarTrip only and will no longer accept paper farecards, a key milestone on Metro's yearlong phase-out of the outdated fare media. Customers with paper farecards may transfer the value to a SmarTrip card by using the brown vending machines at Metrorail stations or at any Metro sales office through June 30, 2016.
Since December 2015, Metro's 450 blue fare vending machines have been dispensing SmarTrip cards rather than paper farecards, and today, paper farecards account for less than 0.5 percent of all Metrorail transactions.
SmarTrip is faster, more secure and more durable in several ways:
- More secure. Unlike paper farecards, SmarTrip cards can be registered online to protect your value. If the card is lost or stolen, any unused value can be transferred to a new card.
- More durable. Moisture or demagnetization can easily destroy a paper farecard, resulting in a loss of value. SmarTrip cards do not have these issues.
- Faster entry and exit. When all customers use SmarTrip cards, there are fewer backups at the faregates.
- More reliable. SmarTrip technology uses no moving parts, unlike the highly mechanical and maintenance-prone equipment needed to process paper farecards.
- Transfer benefits. SmarTrip is the only way to take advantage of cost-saving transfer options between Metrobus and Metrorail.
- Set it and forget it. Metro’s Auto Reload feature gives SmarTrip users the convenience of having value automatically loaded to their card anytime their balance drops below $10.
