Metro halts SmarTrip card sales

Less than a month after switching to a cashless system that requires commuters to buy SmarTrip cards to pay for parking at Metro lots, Metro officials are temporarily switching back because they didn’t have enough cards on hand.

Metro officials said they will temporarily halt sales of SmarTrip cards beginning Monday because they’re running out of cards.

Officials credit the heavy demand to the switch to cashless parking, the planned deployment of buses equipped with SmarTrip fare boxes, and an unexpected spike in summer in tourism that has pushed ridership to record highs.

On Monday, motorists who do not already have a SmarTrip card will have to purchase a traditional paper fare card before leaving the station for the exact cost of the parking and hand it to a garage attendant on the way out.

At yesterday’s meeting, board members were dismayed that Metro officials were caught off guard by the demand.

Gladys W. Mack, second vice chairman, called the shortage a “tremendous inconvenience” to riders. She stressed the importance of accurately conveying to the ridership why SmarTrip sales would stop so soon after making the cards necessary to park at Metro lots.

“We’re going to have an awfully hard time explaining why we thought the [card supply] would be adequate.” Mrs. Mack said.

Board member Jim Graham, a Democrat representing Ward 1 on the D.C. Council, agreed. “Especially at the height of tourist season, people are going to ask, ‘Could we not have anticipated [the demand for cards]?’ We have to be prepared to answer that question.”

LAZ Parking, the company contracted to run Metro’s parking lots, currently staffs 87 attendants. An additional 48 employees will be temporarily hired, costing Metro roughly $34,000 a week.

“In three weeks, we sold what we had historically sold in an eight-month period,” said Leona Agouridis, Metro’s assistant general manager for communications. “We made projections that we thought were conservative. About 10 days after [switching to cashless parking], we expected to see a plateau, and we didn’t.”

Officials said yesterday that daily cards sales are averaging 4,000. Since 1999, sales had averaged just 8,000 per month.

More than 65,000 cards have been sold since June 28, when Metro converted to cashless parking. The conversion came after an internal audit claimed cashiers hired by former Metro parking contractor Penn Parking were stealing up to $1 million a year.

Without suspending sales, the agency’s supply would be depleted by month’s end, officials said.

A shipment of 10,000 cards is expected by July 30, with 62,000 more by Aug. 23. The agency has sold more than 500,000 cards since 1999.

To help conserve the card supply until the next shipment, officials have stopped Internet sales, promotions targeting non-parkers who ride the rail system and postponed an upcoming promotion of SmarTrip to bus customers that was to coincide with the installation of SmarTrip fare boxes on buses.

Story Continues →