So, I was a kid in DC suburbs but basically haven’t done public buses since we moved away to the boondocks when I was 12.
I got us tickets for a White House tour early on a Saturday morning coming up in the next few weeks. There’s 5 of us: me, my husband and three boys. We’ll be staying at my in-laws’ house in Fairfax. I spent a while on the Metro website and decided that it will be cheaper to drive in and pay $25 in parking than ride the train in for all five of us.
It will be a doable amble for us to wander down to the museums and go from History to Natural History to Art to Air and Space to American Indian (probably) but by the time we’re done ain’t nobody gonna be up for walking back to where we parked.
But there’s a bus that will pick us up behind NMAI and take us right back to the parking garage! Yay!
You are the last step in my obsessively detailed planning. What will happen when we step on the bus? Do I just say “There’s 5 of us” and hand over $9 (according to site the fare will be $1.80 if paying cash)? Will I need to pull a cord or push a button to ding for our stop (which I will recognize from google Street View.) Will I annoy the driver if I ding when he/she was gonna stop anyway? What pitfalls await the unwary suburbanite tourist?
There is a machine that takes your money. You can go on the WMATA to check the name of the stop, or you can likely tell the bus driver who will usually let you know when to get off. They will not be annoyed if you ding when they were going to stop anyway.
Thanks brickbacon! That’s exactly the kind of thing I wanted to know, it never occurred to me there would be a machine for the money, though now I remember dropping coins in something as a kid. Will the machine take bills? Is it a pull cord to ding?
The machine takes bills. When you step on the bus you will see something to the effect of this (that’s a MoCo Ride-On bus, but the Metrobus is set up exactly the same way; the coin slot would be under Washington’s face on the dollar bill in that photo). As with all buses, you should have exact change. Children 4 and under ride free. 5 and up pay regular fare.
It is, but it sounds like the OP does not live in the Metro area or visits often.
SmarTrip cards initially cost $10 each ($2 for the card, plus $8 in fare), and using it saves 20¢ a ride, but 5 cards for $50 with $40 in fare for 1 ride apiece will leave them with $32 in leftover fare that they may never use. Cash costs them just $9, once.
Yeah the fare system isn’t set up so well for a one-off visit. They do sell $14 day passes IIRC, but again that only makes sense if you’re going to be traveling more.
I wonder how often that day pass is actually a good deal for someone. The highest peak round trip fare is $13.50 if you’re using a paper farecard.
