Friday, July 23, 2004

I heard this nutty news on the radio this morning and had a good belly laugh.

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.

The level of incompetence with the leadership at Metro is astounding. What adds to the ridiculousness of this story is that the SmarTrip card came about because of the parking attendant thefts.

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.