Washington, DC's Metro ~ Pricing Themselves Out of Business?

(or, how to visit DC on the cheap?)

If you’ve read my resolutions for 2012 (“My 2012 Resolutions ~ As “Tweeted”) you know that one of them is to visit DC more. Everyone in the region knows that DC is full of great museums, most of which are free. Those same people know that most of the cost of a visit is in transportation, parking and food and that those can add up rapidly.

Back in the ‘80s it was common for my family to simply drive into DC, find a parking space and hoof it around the mall. Worked well. But over the years that morphed into using public transportation more and more. My favorite way to journey into town is to go to Point of Rocks in the morning, catch the MARC train, transfer to the Metro, enjoy the day and head back home on the train at night. Good times.

In recent years though, especially for weekends when the MARC doesn’t run, we’ve been driving from Leesburg to Vienna to catch the subway there. Kinda of fun as we don’t use the subway that often and it still retains some novelty. But it is time consuming, it can take two hours from our home in Leesburg until you walk through the doors at Air & Space.

Until recently though, it wasn’t ridiculously expensive. That is changing though. We went down last month to see the Botanical Gardens and National Christmas Tree, got off the Metro and found that $5.25 had been clipped from our tickets! For a ride I know usually costs $2.50-3.00.

Let’s say that really went against the grain of my frugal nature. Then, we hail a cab to go see the Tree, I ask the driver to take us to the Ellipse and guess what, he didn’t know where the Ellipse was!

But we had a really fun evening and all was forgiven.

Until I heard about the rate increases Metro has planned.

For occasional users like my family, the ones who buy the paper tickets, Metro is planning to charge $6.00/ride! It doesn’t matter if you ride to the mall from the suburbs, or just go from one stop to the next to save some walking, it’s gonna cost $6.00! 

Let’s say you have a family of four, you come to DC and you make three trips on the subway to get around during the day.  Metro just got you for $72.00!!!

Forgiveness retracted.  I’m not going to have a poorly managed group pick my pocket (unless I am choiceless).

So for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day my wife and I decided to go see the Smithsonian Museum of American History the old-fashioned way ~ drive in and park. It was easy, it was cheap. We left Leesburg at 10:30am, had lunch, toured the museum, were home just after 5:00pm.  Spent just under $35!

Here’s how we did it:

10:35am ~  Left Leesburg, got on the Greenway ($4.75), continued on the Dulles Toll Road ($1.50) to I-66 and arrived DC on Constitution Ave.

11:26am ~ Pulled into Ronald Reagan Building Parking Garage ($13.00/day weekend rate, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave)

11:44am ~ Split a tuna sub combo from Subway at the Reagan Building food court with Bev ($9.35)

12:10pm ~ Walked one block from Reagan Building to the American History Museum.

1:13pm ~ Took a soda break in the museum café, split a $3.47 coke (yikes!).

4:00pm ~ Walked back to the parking garage, departed garage at 4:16pm.  Constitution Ave to I-66 to the Toll Road ($1.50), got off at Rt 28 exit ($.75) to save the Greenway fee.

5:05pm ~ Arrived home.

Good times… 6 ½ hours door-to-door, $34.32 including lunch. Okay, I didn't count gas but we'd use about the same amount getting to the Vienna Metro.

Now, if you’re traveling with a family of four, your food costs go up of course, but transportation/parking remains the same. Going to a free DC museum is much more affordable than it might be in six months when the subway fares go way up.

So there you go, I hope this helps when your summertime guests arrive and want to see DC!

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