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D.C.-area commuters no longer need a SmarTrip card to use the Metro system. As of Tuesday, all bus fares and rail rides can now be paid with credit cards.
It’s the latest step in Metro’s efforts to become more accessible for both commuters and visitors from out of town. Metro has been working on these changes since late last year and first rolled out credit card payments for Metro rail in May.
Lack of a card or money on a card “could be a barrier to some people. Now that barrier is gone,” Metro General Manager Randy Clarke said at a press launch Tuesday morning in downtown D.C. “Take out whatever card is in your wallet — I guess not your library card, any card that has money related to it — and you can just tap, ride, and go.”
Riders can now transfer between bus and rail if they use the same credit card, with the same benefits as a SmarTrip card. Metro’s next target is expanding credit card benefits to parking at stations and possible discounts for taking the system to sporting events. Mascots for the Commanders, Nationals, Spirit and other teams appeared at Tuesday’s event.
In September, Metro says about 8 percent of all rail trips were paid with credit or bank card taps — 7 percent during the week and 13 percent on weekends. But credit card payment is particularly useful on buses because they lack vending machines for adding money to a SmarTrip card, although cards connected to online accounts can be refilled digitally.
Metro leaders have made clear that they see bus, not rail, as the mode with the most potential to gain new riders and connect more parts of the region. Bus ridership now exceeds pre-pandemic levels, while rail ridership still lags behind. Bus service can also be improved at a fraction of the cost of a new rail line.
“The bus is the foundation of public transportation in the DMV,” Clarke said Tuesday. “We want to move hundreds of thousands more people on bus in this region, and we’re going to do it together.”
This summer Metro overhauled the local bus system, rerouting lines and eliminating stops. Without any extra funding, painful cuts were made in some areas. Clarke is trying to get buy-in from local governments for expanded, integrated bus service and more bus-only lanes and priority traffic signals on major streets.
Clarke said he is optimistic that the ease of payment will put a dent in fare evasion on buses. Currently 68 percent of riders do not pay, Metro officials said. “There are people that don’t want to pay fare, and we’re going to keep working on that, and that’s a larger societal issue, but it’s our job to make it easy to use our system, and between rail and bus, this is another way to really make it frictionless,” he said.
Many jurisdictions, including the District, have debated getting rid of bus fares altogether on the grounds that most bus riders are low-income and it would speed up boarding. It was a major point of debate in New York City’s recent mayoral campaign. Prince George’s County and Montgomery County made their buses free earlier this year in part because officials calculated that upgrading fare boxes to accept credit cards would cost more money than it would bring in. The District made fare evasion a civil fine rather than a crime in 2018, and for years Metro largely stopped trying to prevent it.
That changed when Clarke took over in 2022 and began having officers issue citations. Last year, the D.C. Council made it a crime not to comply with fare enforcement, making it easier to arrest people who refuse to identify themselves. On the rail side, installing higher gates has brought fare evasion down from roughly 15 percent to under five percent, according to Metro data. Enforcing fare on buses is more difficult and often controversial. Along with stopping people for not paying, Metro is trying to crack down on adults using the free cards their children are given for getting to and from school.
Clarke cites local and national surveys showing customers of all income levels would rather have more frequent and reliable bus service than have it be free, and emphasizes that anyone who receives food assistance gets half off rides.
“It’s a public transportation system, and it’s only as robust as the community supports it,” he said.
