Time to TAP

Metro's TAP card, an easier way to pay for your ride

I got home from work today at 10:30 p.m., tired from a long day, but got a boost of energy from a surprise in my mailbox. Inside a fat envelope with a mysterious return address I found my free five-day Metro pass. Yes, I was excited, seeing as how I love anything that's free. (A discount gives me a jolt of happiness too, like the $1 off coupon I used at the Coffee Bean this morning on the latte I paid for with a gift card I got for Christmas. That in a way relates to my blog because I also got 10 cents off because I brought my own travel mug. Savings galore!)

After moving into my new apartment in the fall, I received an offer in the mail from Metro for a free five-day pass. The offer said "welcome to the neighborhood" and asked about my previous experiences using Metro buses and rail lines, as I presume a way for Metro to do some market research.

It has been weeks since I mailed off my offer so I'd actually forgotten all about it. It's a pretty smart campaign on Metro's part. They sent me a TAP card, which you put money on and then reuse over and over again (like a college meal card). When it runs out of money, you just load it up again at a rail station, customer service center or online at taptogo.net. The only drawback for someone like me who doesn't take the train every day is that you can only use it for a weekly or monthly pass, not a day pass. So while I'd seen ads for the TAP since I started taking the Blue Line last spring, I figured I'd never get one. It also seemed like a hassle because I didn't know where to initially get a card. If it involved going to a customer service center or spending extra time at the train station when I'd rather just get home, it probably wasn't going to happen. But now that I have a TAP card, I'll have to see if it motivates me to buy weekly passes and take the train more often.

As for my week of free travel, I think I'll wait to start until next week when I'm no longer on deadline at work and getting home much, much after sundown. It's good timing because I've been terrible about taking public transportation since the fall (hmm, funny how that coincides with the falling cost of gas). I'd been thinking I needed to recommit myself to taking public transporation at least one or two days a week after our deadlines passed. Now that I have my TAP card, I really, really have no excuse not to.