Imagine a couple planning a family trip to the nation’s capital for Independence Day. They book their flight into Dulles and their hotel, and they start to plan their local transportation. They learn that Dulles has gotten a Metro station since the last time they visited, so they do some research.
They read four local news stories about a new feature in the D.C. Metro system: Riders can now enter the system simply by tapping a credit card at the fare gate — no fare card needed!
So the parents and kids land at Dulles, gather their bags, and work their way to the Metro. Dad pulls out his credit card, taps the card reader at the turnstile, and sends little Conor through. Then Susie lines up, and Dad taps again. No dice. The fare gate doesn’t open. Mom tries using her credit card, and it works — Susie gets through. Then, the adults try to tap themselves in. Neither card works.
Confused, they tap away until, eventually, someone explains to them that it’s only one rider per card. Mom and Dad need to head back to the SmarTrip vending machines and buy their own SmarTrip cards.
It’s no worse than it was for such a family last month, but it’s certainly not what they were promised by the Washington news media.
Most of the local coverage of this development — the Washingtonian, NBC Washington, WTOP, and the Washington Post, to name a few — failed to mention that you cannot use the same card to swipe in multiple riders. In fact, these stories implied the opposite: They declared there was no good reason for anyone to buy a SmarTrip card.
“Visitors to D.C. for World Pride, the Fourth of July and other summer events won’t have to line up at fare machines to pay for Metro,” the Washington Post proclaimed.
News4’s Joseph Olmo declared it “the beginning of the end of our beloved fare machines in Metro stations.” But unless the operating system, or the whole fare structure, is changed, this assumes that every single rider will have his or her own credit card. This is a fair assumption if you ignore the riders who are, say, 5 years old.
One owner of a “boutique travel concierge” said of the Tap-Ride-Go system, “I can’t imagine who wouldn’t want it.” I suspect the clients of boutique travel concierges are not carting three kids ages 8 to 12 on the Green Line, so the owner can be forgiven for not considering the existence of children. But the media at least ought to note that if your party includes people who lack a credit card, you’ll need to buy SmarTrip cards or cobble together some combination of cards, smartphones, and Apple watches to distribute to the little ones.
The only news outlet I found that mentioned this detail was the local Fox 5.
I mention this not to complain about WMATA’s change. It’s an improvement. It will work for solo travelers and couples. Also, Washington’s Metro, unlike New York’s subway, charges you by the distance you travel and thus requires you to swipe out of the system. This fact makes it hard, and maybe impossible, to allow multiple riders on the same card. Fine.
It’s the media coverage I’m objecting to. These stories all imagine every Metro rider is a fully autonomous adult. They don’t imagine people traveling in groups, particularly in family groups. They also don’t consider 5-year-olds with no smartphone or credit card, or families of six.
This is something of a pattern in the media. Read a story about how nobody needs a lawn, and you’ll notice that it never even considers the idea of children. Read an article about how one day nobody will need to own a car, and you’ll note again that atomized view of the human person as an isolated, fully autonomous individual.
One way to make America more family-friendly is for our public discourse to think more often of humans as members of families, and to acknowledge the existence of children. Maybe the next step will be building fare-gate systems that accommodate families!