When they wave you off, usually it's because the machine is broken (besides SmarTrip card they accept bills and coins, and those mechanical bits are the parts that most often jam or break).

Is just one of the many things that can be broken on a bus but not prevent it from covering its route. Heat is broken? Bus drives. Farebox is broken? Bus drives. Axle is broken? Bus does not drive.

in addition to the other comment, sometimes buses are trying to catch up to their schedule and they just let people on without paying to save time

Protip: if you convert your card to be on your phone, bus drivers will wave you on 90% of the time, cause the bus fare boxes really hate phone payments. And the bus drivers dgaf.

I mean, you can pretty much just walk into buses for free anyway, but this way you can get the karma for attempting to pay.

While waiting for the bus I asked a bystander how much the fare was and he said it’s free and I spent the next two weeks travelling on buses without paying until my sister asked me why I wasn’t using my metro card on the bus 😅

They're not free, people are evading fare.

I'm running a neutral karma build this playthrough, but thx anyway.

I wonder this about the MARC train on my way into DC too. Sometimes they just don't check for tickets 🤷

It's not fare evasion if the driver tells you "nah, go ahead" when you try to pay.

The machine that scans cards is broken

There’s a specific time period where if you transfer onto a bus from the metro, or from another bus, the fare is waived. 15 minutes I think?

I’ve even had a bus journey show up as zero on my Apple wallet smarttrip card without transfers, which struck me as odd!

You have until 2 hours to transfer free between bus/bus or rail/bus AND that is only with a SmartTrip card. Mobile payments count as a SmartTrip too. However, if you transfer from a DC Circulator to Metrobus then you still have to pay the fare difference. DC Circulator ($1) vs Metrobus ($2). I think RideOn is the same price as DC Circulator so that is another one too.