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courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’
Today, at long last, you can view your SmarTrip usage history online at wmata.com.
That is, assuming your card is recent enough to have a 9-digit serial number. (Pad the beginning of the number with zeros if not.)
And assuming you remember both the zip code and phone number you used when you ordered it 8 years ago. If you didn’t buy it from a machine. (How old IS that SmarTrip card, anyway?)
But if you can manage all those things… my friend, you are now able to view, online, all the places you’ve taken Metro to! In case you weren’t paying attention when you took Metro there!
So of course now that you see your card balance, you’ll want to add value. Except that you can’t, because that feature, the extremely advanced and complicated one one where you give them a credit card number to make a purchase, hasn’t been added yet. Let’s try that again:
So, now that you see how low your balance is, you can leave the office a little bit early to accommodate the amount of time you will STILL be spending in line at the one functioning SmarTrip machine at your Metro station of choice, because one isn’t working and the other is occupied by some tourist ignoring all the farecard machines and using the SmarTrip machine to buy precise-value paper farecards for the whole family using the bag of change he was keeping in the minivan. A nickel, a quarter, another nickel, wait, he dropped a dime… Aren’t you glad you left early?
Thanks for the useful information, Metro!
Edited to add: For maximum hilarity, watch your neighbors try and fail to use the new SmarTrip registration via the magic of Twitter Search.
Tiffany Baxendell Bridge is an Internet enthusiast and an incurable smartass. When not heckling the neighborhood political scene on Twitter, she can be found goofing off with her ukulele, Bollywood dancing, or obsessing about cult TV. She is That Woman With the Baby In the Bar.
Tiffany lives in Brookland with her husband Tom, son Charlie, and two high-maintenance cats. Read why Tiffany loves DC.
Interesting; mine was already registered but it didn’t give me any guff about needing to remember that old data. It just asked me if I wanted to edit that old info or replace it with the new stuff I’d provided.
The info is pretty useless, though just being able to check the value has some, um, value. We keep a few extra cards for when we have out-of-town visitors and it’ll be nice to be able to tell which ones have what amounts on them.
It asked me for the phone number and zip code my SmarTrip was originally registered with. So I provided my best guess- the zip code of the apartment I first lived in and the cell phone number I had at the time. Apparently that was not the correct information, but I don’t remember the landline number I never used, and the company I worked for the time has long since moved to Knoxville, TN.
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