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It just got easier to ride Metro — if you’re willing to use the transit system’s new “Tap. Ride. Go.” feature.
“Look, we’ve all been there,” said Matt Letourneau, Metro board member and Loudoun County supervisor. “You show up at a Metro station, there’s a group of tourists standing around, everybody’s crowding the thing, they don’t know how to do it.”
Letourneau described the common frustration at the Dulles International Airport Metro Station, where the first transit passengers used the new contactless credit or debit card feature at the faregate.
“From this point forward, you just pull out your credit card, you tap it, and you — and that’s it,” Letourneau said.
There’s no need to sign up or register to use the new Tap. Ride. Go. feature. Only cards with the contactless symbol — which looks like four parentheses within each other — work when tapping into and out of the Metrorail system.
Riders can still choose to use SmarTrip cards.
Metro suggests tapping one specific card on the turnstile pad, rather than tapping an entire wallet, to ensure the intended card is used. Charges will show up on a credit card statement as Metro.