Photo by neverminddtheend.

New features won’t be coming to SmarTrip this year after all, except for the new “bins” for SmartBenefits. In a press release announcing the SmartBenefits change, Metro added this item:

Due to the importance of complying with the federal IRS mandate, Metro has had to delay additional upgrades to make bus and rail passes available on the SmarTrip® card and to allow customers to add value to their SmarTrip® cards online. These features will be implemented by fall 2010. They originally were expected to be in place by the end of 2009.

In addition to these features, the SmarTrip upgrade was going to give Metro the flexibility to add new fare tiers, like “peak of the peak” pricing, if they chose, or to give SmarTrip users a discount on Metrorail as they have on bus. With this delay, Metro won’t be able to even consider these and other potential fare adjustments. They can’t consider “all you can eat” pricing like New York’s. They can’t build the “invisible tunnel” to allow free transfers between Farragut North and West.

Some RAC members tried to get Metro to give a presentation on the SmarTrip delays, but it never happened. I’m going to start pushing on this some more. Why do upgrades for SmartBenefits preclude other upgrades? Typically, with computer systems, you can include multiple new features in one. What’s different here? What happened to the contract already awarded for the delayed upgrades? And why have these SmarTrip upgrades been delayed so many years already?

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Tagged: farragut tunnel, peak of the peak, smartrip, transit, unlimited passes, wmata

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.