Metro officials are working to develop a payment system that would allow riders to use their debit or credit cards, pre-loaded cards or the current SmarTrip cards to pay for their trips on Metro buses and trains.
Metro Board Chairman Peter Benjamin said Thursday at the transit agency’s board meeting that implementing the “open payment” system was one of Metro’s top priorities.
“The same card you would use to buy groceries, the same card you would use to buy clothing, is the card you would use to ride transit,” Benjamin said. “At the end of the month, you’d get your credit card bill and there would be a line for Metro charges.”
Metro officials said recently that the computer chip used in SmarTrip cards was no longer being manufactured, and that Metro staff had bought the remaining supply of cards — enough to last roughly two years.
The announcement prompted questions about the transit agency’s plan to address the limited supply of SmarTrip cards.
Benjamin said Metro would be able to buy SmarTrip cards, but the cards wouldn’t use the same computer chip as past versions.
“It’s not like at the end of this supply we’ll be in deep trouble because we won’t be able to produce SmarTrip cards, we’ll just have to produce them with a different chip and a different way of reading them,” he said.
Board member Jeff McKay said Metro likely would send out a bid request for the open-payment system toward the end of the year. But, he said, the new system would not replace SmarTrip cards — at least not yet.
“It’s not a replacement system at this point,” McKay said. “It’s a customer convenience system that would operate alongside the current SmarTrip system and, in the long run, could be used as a replacement system.”
Chief Financial Officer Carol Kissal said she has met with transit officials in New York, where an open-payment system is being tested. Chicago and Philadelphia also are moving to the open-card system.
Benjamin said the new payment system could be in place in the next one to two years.
