This story about a New York City bus driver who was stabbed to death over a bus transfer. Horrific. You can be sure plenty of people will complain and struggle against the new SmarTrip-only transfer regime about to be put in place on Metrorail and Metrobus, but if it prevents even one incident like this in our city, it will have been worth the growing pains.......

Metro hasn't yet formally announced the sale of a special edition SmarTrip card commemorating the impending inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama, but this image was circulated at this morning's regular Board of Directors meeting, along with details on their production schedule and cost. Metro spokesperson Steven Taubenkibel confirmed that the commemorative SmarTrip cards should be available for sale in early January, while special paper Metro farecards marking the inauguration will be sold somewhat earlier,......

WTOP and Infosnack are both reporting that Metro's Board of Directors will consider a proposal this week that would allow CVS to sell SmarTrip cards. CVS would sell the cards for $10 (they'd be preloaded with $5 on them), and at no cost to Metro. In exchange, CVS and Metro would come to a cross-promotional arrangement. Infosnack calls the move a "win-win for Metro, CVS and riders." We're all for making SmarTrip easier to buy......

Michael Perkins of Infosnack Headquarters emailed us last night to let us know that he discovered something interesting while listening to last week's Customer Service Operations and Safety Committee board meeting. It seems as if Metro's $5 price point for SmarTrip cards might be slightly profitable for the agency. Certainly, this isn't a total bombshell. But it could be a bit of a prickly matter since Metro decided to eliminate paper bus transfers come January,......

We knew this was something WMATA had been considering for some time, especially with the agency's big push toward emphasizing universal adoption of SmarTrip cards, but today it's official: Metro is eliminating paper transfers in January. Beginning January 4, 2009, only bus riders using SmarTrip cards will be able to take advantage of free bus-to-bus transfers and discounted rail-to-bus transfers. Bus drivers will no longer hand out paper transfers, and machines that dispense paper rail-to-bus......

The notion that we'd all like to do more with our SmarTrip cards isn't new - we've been calling for such improvements for quite some time. So, it was understandable that we were encouraged by reports released last winter which indicated SmarTrip cards would be able to be automatically reloaded like E-Z Passes by the end of 2008. In hindsight, we probably should have been more pessimistic. The Post reported earlier this week that the......

We've got to hand it to WMATA for coming up with plenty of fun, low-budget ways (in some cases, extremely low-budget) to encourage Nationals fans to take Metro to the new ballpark. Among their various efforts, listed on WMATA's special Nationals page, Metro is currently selling a limited supply of Nationals-themed SmarTrip cards. The two designs, one with the team logo and the other with an image of the new ballpark, are available for $5......