As the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) commemorates half a century of Metrorail’s existence, District leaders are celebrating a milestone in their efforts to help young people navigate public transit free of charge.
NaTaya Bond recently participated in that celebration at Fort Totten Metro Station, where D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, WMATA General Manager/CEO Randy Clarke and several others highlighted WMATA’s overall distribution of 450,000 Kids Ride Free SmarTrip cards.
“My best part [of the Metro experience] is that it’s free for students because it’s reliable. We can use it and a lot of people don’t have it,” NaTaya, a junior at Calvin Coolidge High School in Northwest, told The Informer. “So [WMATA] giving this to us for free is actually a lot of help. It opened up the city for me. It allows me to travel, see new things that I want to see.”
As NaTaya gears up for the future release of a SmarTrip card featuring her artwork, she said she’s proud to be among those benefitting from the more-than-a-decade old program. In her remarks at the March 30 Kids Ride Free milestone event, NaTaya shouted out her classmates while reflecting on her travels along the Red Line.
“Shoutout to my fellow Red Line colleagues,” NaTaya said. “Students like me are grateful for free and reliable transportation that helps us show up every day as scholars, athletes, artists, and part of [the] D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) community.”
She later acknowledged the Kids Ride Free program as a critical resource for District families.
“If you needed a ride but your parents couldn’t help you, you got free Metro,” NaTaya told The Informer. “You can still get there. It still allows us to still have a life without having to travel by car or using money.”
Looking Back: A Celebration of Safety and Reliability
March 27 marked the 50th anniversary of Metrorail, which started solely as the Red Line between Rhode Island Avenue Metro Station and Farragut North Metro Station. Construction of the 83-station system was completed in 2001 with the launch of the Green Line.
On Monday, NaTaya joined a lineup of speakers that included Bowser, Clarke, WMATA Board Chairwoman Valerie Santos, D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT) Director Sharon Kershbaum, DCPS Chancellor Dr. Lewis D. Ferebee and Sage Small, an eighth grader who attends Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Northeast.
Santos, who will soon enter her third year as WMATA board chair, extolled the Kids Ride Free program as a mechanism in supporting young people’s extracurricular pursuits.
“Every day, thousands of students depend on Metro to get to school, to their afterschool programs, to jobs, and to get back home safely,” Santos said. “This program succeeds because families trust that Metro will be there when students need it.”
In the post-pandemic era, WMATA, like other institutions, weathered the storm of budget deficits spurred by expiring federal COVID funds. June 30 will mark the end of a fiscal year where, in the absence of fare increases, WMATA has implemented its Better Bus Network design and increased Metrorail frequency.
For Santos, safety and reliability are top priority.
“Parents should feel confident that when their child taps their card, they are stepping into a system designed with safety in mind,” Santos said. “And delivering on that promise takes continuous investment, which includes strengthening our workforce of operators and frontline staff, modernizing our infrastructure and vehicles, and using real-time data to improve service performance.”
The Bowser administration reported that the Kids Ride Free program funded more than 60 million trips on public transportation. The program, which initially covered only Metrobus rides for D.C. students, expanded under Bowser’s mayoralty to include Metrorail. Throughout much of Kids Ride Free’s existence, DDOT has spent $15 million per year via its administration of the program and collaboration with District public schools, public charter schools, and private schools.
On average, each family saved $810 per year in public transportation costs, according to Bowser administration officials. Programmatic upgrades in recent years allow young people to tap their phones for free rides on the Metro transit system — all part of what Bowser calls the full manifestation of her vision.
“Some of you know that this has been a priority of mine since I was on the council of the District of Columbia. At that time, going [from] neighborhood to neighborhood, door to door, I heard stories from families about how expensive it was for them to get their child to school,” Bowser said Monday. “Some kids going across town, some kids in their own neighborhood, some families with one child, some families with more, paying for cards to get their kids to school every day.”
With this year’s MySchool DC lottery results out, Bowser stressed the importance of Metrorail access for young people.
“We are proud of the robust system of choice in schools that we have in our city,” she said, “but it also means that we have to have a robust system of ways for them to get there.”
At Least One Young Person Voices Concerns
Per DDOT, students can request a 2025-2026 Kids Ride Free SmarTrip card from administrators at their school.
District residents between the ages of 5 and 21 who are either in the care of the District, or enrolled in a local elementary or secondary public, public charter, private or parochial school are eligible for the program.
Much to the chagrin of one District high school student, young people riding Metrobus or Metrorail are still required to pay regular fare for their trip when they don’t have a Kids Ride Free SmarTrip card.
“I don’t think you should need the card to transport if you’re clearly underage,” said Atrayu Lee, a senior who attends Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter School (PCS) in Southeast. “It feels disingenuous to what the program is meant to be.”
In the absence of a Kids Ride Free SmarTrip card, Atrayu said that WMATA officials should accept alternative methods of entry for young people.
“If you show your student ID, you should be able to go through,” Atrayu told The Informer. “If I’m with a friend of mine, and he doesn’t have his Kids Ride Free card, but he’s with me, and he has his student ID, if I tap him in, he should not have to go back around.”
Atrayu, Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS’ senior class president, said he’s benefitted from the Kids Ride Free program since its launch. The card, he told The Informer, has become a vital tool as he takes on more leadership opportunities, on and off-campus.
“I don’t have to worry about loading up my card to pay for things,” said Atrayu, who’s currently pursuing a cybersecurity certification at the Ward 5 Advanced Technical Center. “Honestly, I don’t know if I would be able to pay out of pocket to ride the train.”
Even with its advantages, Atrayu said a Kids Ride Free SmarTrip doesn’t quell the anxiety of seeing members of the National Guard on Metro platforms.
“They’re just there, and that’s not normal,” Atrayu said. “It makes it feel uneasy to know these people from Republican states…are sitting here with the mindset that D.C. is a dangerous place that they need to protect — and they’re armed with war weapons.”
At the beginning of the academic year, DDOT sent a supply of new SmarTrip cards to D.C. public and public charter school students. This happened amid President Donald J. Trump’s evocation of Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act, which federalized the Metropolitan Police Department. Soon after, in what became a high-profile situation, Metro Transit Police Department officers, working in an emergency curfew zone, violently arrested an activist accompanying youth at Metro stations.
Seven months later, amid local-federal law enforcement collusion, officers and young people continue to clash at emergency curfew zones. For advocates, this raises the question of how to ensure peaceful engagement between law enforcement and young people on the Metrorail.
Bowser said there are already systems in place to hold both parties accountable.
“All of our officers are equipped with body-worn cameras, so we know what’s happening, and there’s a lot of camera footage in all of these incidents, including from the children who are engaging in this activity,” Bowser said. “So, there is a lot of oversight over these issues when they’re on the Metrorail, when they’re on the Metro bus, they’re also being filmed, so we know exactly what is happening in these situations.”
