Another element of WMATA’s stainless steel future has emerged from behind the plywood: part of the newly renovated Metro Center sales office.

Unlike Metro’s new entrance to the Rosslyn station (now open to the public, with some pictures from Dan Malouff), the sales office is located within the shell of the existing Harry Weese station vault, showing what we might expect from future large-scale interventions to stations. In line with Metro’s stated intentions, the new sales office is heavy on the use of stainless steel:

New Metro Center sales office. Photo by author.

Currently, only the portion of the structure outside of the fare gates is open, featuring four ticket windows. The remaining windows, inside the paid fare area, are still under construction. The design of the sales office mirrors the design of Metro’s smaller sales office at the Anacostia station, which opened in 2009.

New stainless steel of the ticket office contrasted against the system’s standard ‘Metro Brown’ pylon.

The gap between the two banks of ticket windows not only divides the office between the two sides of fare control, but also to wrap around one of the pre-existing ventilation pylons. The juxtaposition shows the contrast between the original palate of Metro Brown against the new look of stainless steel.

Old Metro Center sales office, 2006. CC image from Wayan Vota

Replacing the sales office was one of Metro’s ‘shovel ready’ stimulus projects, upgrading the booth to include a number of new features, including beefed up security complete with armor plating. (!)

At the same time, SmarTrip cards are now available at a wide range of retail locations as well as vending machines in each station. These machines are a stopgap until WMATA’s next-gen fare payment system (dubbed NEPP) is up and running. New fare vending machines like those in use in other systems around the world will combine the roles of the current SmarTrip vending machines and the existing farecard machines.  More and more transactions are automated, including automatic loading of SmartBenefits and automatic replenishment of card value when your balance gets too low. Some older paper passes and fare products are now available on SmarTrip, the NEPP promises more opportunities for this. All of these developments bode for increased automation and less of a role for the old-fashioned sales office.

Nevertheless, you never know what kind of circumstances might emerge to beef up the need for all those ticket windows; perhaps the 2017 Presidential Inauguration will produce the same ‘insane lines’ for commemorative cards as 2009. Maybe.