[Photo by Flickr user welcometoalville]
Sure, paper farecards are fine for visitors, but for residents, they represent a morning of forgetfulness and snooze alarms and they ultimately end up ripped on a station floor or crumpled at the bottom of a purse. Well, it turns out Metro isn't so keep on them either. In an effort to go completely paperless, Metro will be upgrading 500 machines so that they only dispense SmarTrip cards. After all, that's how 90% of Metro trips are paid for anyway. This change won't be immediate, though. Those upgraded vending machines won't appear in Metro stations until next year.
· Upgrade to fare vending machines puts Metro on path to eventually eliminate paper farecards [WMATA]