Metro no longer allows negative balances on SmarTrip cards

By Reem Nadeem
January 8, 2018 | 4:55 AM

WASHINGTON — Metro will no longer allow passengers to board a bus or exit a rail station if it would lead to a negative balance on their SmarTrip cards starting Monday.

Riders will have to add money to their card at an exitfare machine just before the exit gates at most stations. Exitfare machines only accept cash.

Negative balances on SmarTrip cards from the last 17 years totals about $25 million, Metro said in November.

The change was announced Nov. 24.

One attack, many Americas: Why 9/11 and its many griefs land differently 25 years later

By The Associated Press
September 7, 2026 | 8:47 AM

NEW YORK (AP) — When the planes crashed and the buildings fell on that sunny September morning 25 years ago, the shock waves of dismay and grief went far past downtown New York City, rural western Pennsylvania and just outside Washington, D.C. They radiated through every part of the United States in communities large and small, tearing at Americans' sense of safety and their place in the world. Hearts were broken across the nation, not just of those who lost their loved ones but among strangers who mourned for them, the Sept. 11 attacks leaving no one unaffected in an unwanted moment of horrifying togetherness. A quarter of a century later, the effects linger. We all live in a post-9/11 world, with its security strictures and surveillance. But here's the thing: Americans don't all live in the SAME one. What the attacks and their aftermath have come to mean isn't a single viewpoint shared by everyone, for reasons chronological, political and personal. It's a tapestry of meaning and grief as varied as the nation in which 9/11 took place.

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