My daughter and I plan to visit the area later this week. Will probably stay in the Fairfax VA area…maybe futher west. I see that the Vienna station is the furthest west. Any tips on using metrorail to get into the city from there? We will probably make two if not three trips.
I see that you can get a daily pass for $9 but I’m not clear on any limitations re rush hours. It looks like three daily passes is still cheaper than a weekly pass.
I’m also wondering about driving into Reagan Airport instead. We are not under any time constraints at all so we can avoid busy times of day.
Metro’s one-day passes do not allow you to ride during morning rush hour, so you would need to leave after 9:30am. There is no limit on the evening rush hour. If I were you, I wouldn’t leave until later in the morning, anyway. Vienna is on the Orange Line and it is insanely crowded during rush hour. You probably want to let all the commuters do their thing before you head downtown.
How many stations are you planning to go to and what time are you planning to ride? If you’re going to make one ride in and one ride out per day, I would highly encourage just buying a farecard with the amount you need loaded onto the card, rather than buying a one-day pass. Off-peak fares are not that bad. But if you’re going to be riding between a bunch of stops all day and you think the fares will total more than $9, then yeah, go for the one-day passes.
Off peak hours are between 9:30am-3pm. The price difference is significant. For example, I commuted from Silver Spring to Stadium-Armory all spring, and during rush hour it was $3.90 one way, in the middle of the day it was $2.15.
Can you clarify what you mean about driving to Reagan instead? Do you mean instead of taking the Metro to and from your flight? Reagan is extremely easy to get to and from on the metro, although you will need to switch from the orange to the blue line if you are heading from the Vienna metro station (easy to do though).
Ditto the recommend on considering a farecard for the week; just less hassle and less dependance on Metro’s often-broken machines.
I’m not nearly as familiar with the Orange line, but I can tell you all about the Blue and Yellow:
If you’re looking to park and ride, there is a big parking garage at the Springfield/Franconia station, $5 for all day, though it can fill up by 10 or 1030 on some weekdays. There’s another one at Huntington on the Yellow. Or you can park at the Springfield Mall for free and walk ~4 blocks to the station (wave as you walk by!). It’s about a 45 min ride from Springfield/Franconia to downtown. There’s also lots of parking at Eisenhower, but I’ve never used it.
Driving into Reagan and parking there is a possibility (Assuming you’re driving in around 930-10 … do not try 95/395/495 during rush hours), but it’d be much cheaper to park at the Pentagon City Mall – you can connect right to Metro from the food court, which is also a handy place to grab a meal. Fair warning, though: every school group in America knows this trick, and you’ll be sharing the food court with whatever Junior High groups are in town this week.
A friend of mine lives out near Dulles, and warns you can never rely on finding parking anywhere near the Orange line. Whenever I visit I find a shuttle lineand take it either all the way into the city, or to a suburban Metro stop.
It seems like you’re thinking about driving to National and taking the Metro from their into the District rather than just Metro’ing from somewhere near your hotel out west. Don’t.
The ride in to the airport is OK (although I-66 can have traffic at any time of day), but you’re not saving anything by doing it this way. It will be substantially quicker to Metro in to town, and cheaper too. If your daughter is young and you’d rather have access to the car, you can just drive downtown – parking garages are around for $15-20/day depending on location. But if the train is in your plan, you should just ride it the whole way.
Oh yeah – parking at Metro stations until recently required a SmartTrip card to get out (which was a fuckin’ scam, but that’s neither here nor there). Most parking facilities now accept credit cards, but make sure that’s the case (you can ask the station manager, or you might see the banner with the woman who looks like a young Margaret Cho advertising that you can now pay with credit).
If that garage doesn’t yet accept credit cards, then you’ll need to buy a SmarTrip card at the station – it’s a small machine near the fare machines – before you schlep back to your car. They don’t sell them near the garage exits.)
One other note – Metro’s been running much more slowly (MUCH) on weekends recently, as they’ve been doing a ton of track maintenance. Weekdays, it’s probably the best way to travel. But if you’re going downtown on a weekend, you should probably drive.
You aren’t kidding about that last part. The off-peak schedule is less frequent, but where it used to be about 7 minutes between trains, it is now 15 at a minimum. I had to wait over 20 minutes for a Red Line train at Gallery Place on a Sunday a few weeks ago thanks to single-tracking.
This means that not only are you waiting, but more and more people are stacking up at each station between trains and thus the trains that do go through are incredibly crowded.
Oh, and OP, SmarTrip cards cost $5 just for the piece of plastic, without any money loaded on it. Just something to keep in mind. They are great for commuters, not much point for tourists who won’t be using them regularly. I would say you are highly unlikely to be able to find parking at any Orange Line station during the week anyway. The stations at the ends of any Metro lines are usually the first to fill the parking lots because everyone who lives farther out not near a Metro station goes there in order to start their commute in order to avoid driving all the way in or taking MARC or VRE.
The parking garages on the Orange Line set aside a certain number of reserved spots for commuters who pay extra to use them, but they are only reserved until 10 am. After 10, anyone can park there. Those spots also may fillup quickly, but if you can be at the garage right at 10, that’s an option for you.
That said, lately the West Falls Church garage has generally had unreserved spaces still available at the top of the parking deck as late as 9 am.