I'm going to explain how the Metro fare system works and answer some of your questions about Metro.
HELLO! welcome to Trip Hacks DC. My name is Rob.
I'm a tour guide here in the nation's capital.
If you're coming to
Washington DC and looking for the best tips, tricks, and hacks for exploring the city, make sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the
bell notification icon so that you don't miss anything. And if you're interested in having me personally show you around when you come,
head on over my website TripHacksDC.com afterwards to see the tours that I offer. In this video
I'm going to answer four questions about Metro that you have asked me
since I posted my original How to Ride Metro video. If you haven't seen that yet,
make sure to click over afterwards to see my 10 Do's and Don'ts for riding on the Metro. And if you have any more questions
about Metro that I haven't yet answered, leave a comment on this video so that I can save them for the next
Metro Q&A. With all of that said, let's get started... Question number one:
How do metro fares work and how do I know how much I'm going to pay? It seems like a really confusing payment system.
OK, so the basic answer to this question is what you pay depends on how far you travel and whether it's peak time or not. The
longer the distance, the higher the fare. Peak periods roughly coincides with rush hour. It's from 5:30 to 9:30
in the morning and 3:00 to 7:00 in the afternoon
every weekday. And it's worth noting that this applies to when you tap into the system, not when you tap out.
This is often why you'll see people standing around at say 6:55 in the afternoon.
They know that if they wait another five minutes
they can save some money. To help you understand this a little bit more clearly
I made a
visualization that
hopefully sheds some light on it. Say you're starting at Metro Center during an off peak hour and riding the Silver Line towards
Virginia. If you ride one stop to McPherson Square
you'll pay the minimum fare:
$2.00. In fact you can ride as far as Rosslyn and still only pay the minimum fare. Then the fare starts increasing,
$2.10 for Court House, $2.25 for Clarendon,
and it keeps going up until you hit the maximum fare of
$3.85 at McLean, and then you pay that for the rest of the way.
So you can go all the way to the end of the line for $3.85.
But of course that's only during off-peak hours. If you ride during peak hours then the price goes up
across the board, as high as $6.00 if you ride all the way to Wiehle.
It's a good idea to avoid peak hours if you can,
but I also understand that they make up about 40% of a total weekday,
so it's not always completely reasonable to avoid them entirely. Question number two is:
Should I buy a 1-day or 7-day Metro pass?
Wouldn't it be cheaper than paying every time I ride? In my How to Ride Metro video
I suggested not buying a pass, but I never really explained why. For a typical tourist your options are: a 1-day pass for
$14.75, a 7-day unlimited pass for $60.00, and a seven-day short ride pass for
$38.50, which only covers you for rides of up to $3.85 each, which is basically all non-peak fares and short
peak fares. So unfortunately there is no universal answer to this question and you need to evaluate your own situation, figure out
how many days are going to be spending in DC, and how often you're going to be planning on riding Metro.
The 1-day pass is almost never a good deal for anybody.
But the 7-day pass could be a good deal if you're going to spend a decent amount of time in town
and you're going to be riding the Metro at least twice every day. Otherwise,
it's just easier to pay per ride and top up your SmarTrip card as you need to. Question number
three is: Should I order my SmarTrip card
online before my trip? The answer to this one is "no" with a few exceptions that I will get into in a moment. In the
past you could only buy SmarTrip cards at a limited number of Metro stations from a limited number of vending machines or you had
to go to a place like CVS or another retail store to get one. It was a real pain. Now,
you get a SmarTrip card at any Metro station
so the
transnational pain is mostly gone. If you buy a SmarTrip card online you have to order it far enough in advance to make sure
that you receive it before you leave for your trip; but if you buy it too far in advance
and then forget that you have it and don't pack it,
then you basically just bought an expensive
souvenir. I said there were a few exceptions. The first is if you want a commemorative SmarTrip card
then you should buy it online. They have these, for example, for the inauguration every four years,
when a new museum opens and I have my favorite
Washington Nationals commemorative SmarTrip. The other exception is if you want to use it to ride the bus
but don't really think you're going to be riding the Metro. So for example if you want to ride the MetroBus from Dulles airport
Oor BWI, and you don't want to mess around with cash, then yeah,
you could order your SmarTrip online and have it loaded up and ready to go. Question number four:
How do I know which side of the station to stand on to catch my train? I'll admit
This is actually a harder question to answer than it really should be,
because there's no hard and fast rule. What you need to know is that every Metro line
terminates at a station. For example, on the green line it terminates at either Greenbelt or at Branch Avenue.
So if you're at Gallery Place and you want to ride to Southwest Waterfront, you need to get on the train
that's on the Branch Avenue side. Now,
if everything is running normally when the train pulls in it will clearly say on the front: Branch Avenue.
Problem with that is that Metro is always under construction and sometimes stations are closed.
So for example, a train might pull in and say: Naylor Road.
That's the train you want but how are you supposed to know that? What I suggest doing is looking at the sign
that's in the station across from the tracks.
It will say the station name where you are and the final destination, and since those aren't going to change,
you'll always be able to reference it. But another problem
Is that not every station looks like this!
So in some stations you have to reference a separate sign
that references a list of stations where trains on that side of the platform are going. If you're in a station like Dupont Circle
with side platforms you need to check the signage on the mezzanine level to make sure that you're going down
into the right place. And I know that this is still probably very confusing to a lot of people,
so if all else fails,
just ask somebody! As long as you didn't already upset everybody by standing on the left or committing some other Metro faux pas,
people will be more than happy to help you. And that's it! Thanks for watching this video. If you found it helpful
you can subscribe to this channel by clicking on the Trip Hacks DC logo
which is popping up right now at the bottom of the screen. And if you're coming to Washington DC
and you want to sign up for a private tour with me, you can click on the Capitol dome on the left side of my
head. That'll take you over to my website TripHacksDC.com where you can see the tours that I offer. Enjoy your trip!