Ten METRO staffers joined the University of Houston in its Commuter Green Fair, signing up hundreds of students on the main campus for a METRO Q® Fare Card. "Here at the university, we have challenges, and we struggle with accessibility, as far as parking," said Emily Messa, assistant vice president for university ...

      In January 2008, METRO achieved something no transit agency had done before: It changed the way riders paid, and it restructured the fares simultaneously. Today, at the 2009 Fare Collection Workshop in Houston for industry professionals, fare revenue experts nationwide learned more details of METRO's conversion to the ...

  University of Houston students are going green with METRO, as hundreds signed up for student Q Cards. It was all part of the University of Houston's 10-week "green campaign." This week,  the university staged its first "Green Commuting Fair," encouraging students to go green by commuting. Yesterday,10 ...

  A year ago, we launched the METRO Q® fare card - a smart card which passengers tap against an electronic reader to deduct a fare from a preloaded balance. So far, the METRO Q® has been working great, says Jeff Linton, director of revenue at METRO.   "Seventy percent of our customers are using the Q Card," says ...

  Recently, I received an e-mail from a gentleman who purchased a Q Card from a Kroger but discovered he couldn't reload it at the point-of-sale machine on one of our Park & Ride lots. "They can be reloaded at Kroger (and I assume on-line), but the most convenient place for me to reload the card is at the P&R since I pass ...

  Several of you have written in on the blog, asking how the garage at Cypress Park & Ride works. Drivers must tap their Q Card to raise the gate and enter the garage. At that time, $1.50 is deducted from your full-fare Q Card to pay for parking. When you exit, the gate opens automatically. When you board the bus, tap your card again. ...

Nine days ago, we did something so rare in the industry that other transit agencies nationwide are touting METRO as a model. We completed the switch to a smart card called the Q Card, and we completed our fare restructuring – at the same time!   Last week at a national conference in Boston of the American Public Transportation ...

Now that it’s been six weeks since we’re officially launched the Q Card, here are a few pointers about using it.   First, please try to use one Q Card exclusively for your travel. Some of you are picking up a Q Card at Fiesta, for example, putting $2 on it, and then picking up a second Q Card at another retailer and adding ...

  As a former resident of Boston, I used to buy tokens to ride the T - the nickname for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's century-old system with the nation's oldest subway tunnel (dedicated by President William McKinley in 1897), a $1.4 billion annual budget and 1.14 million riders a day. Last week I was in Boston ...

  Want to be a trendsetter and use the Q Card before all your friends do? Here's your chance. We're recruiting more Q Card Boosters - 2,000 more. You'll get a chance to help us test the system and work out any glitches. And you'll get a $10 pre-loaded Q Card and five free rides for every 15 rides you pay for during the ...