by Jared Goralnick
The recent fare hike by WMATA (DC Metro) further irks me with regard to how they handle parking–both in terms of a failed ideal and poor application of technology. Many of Metro’s incentives are in the wrong place and their technology could be applied to fix it. Parking during short trips and late nights is expensive but overnights and week-longs stays can be free. What makes this particularly frustrating is that it wasn’t always this way, and SmarTrip cards could have improved the situation.
Let’s look back at how things worked before the SmarTrip cards (at least in College Park, which after my researching seems fairly similar to the overall system). If I wanted to metro into the city in the evening (departing after 7), the parking lot was free. If I wanted to take a short trip during the day, meters were available to me. All parking was paid for by cash.
But a lot has changed since those days–Metro made a number of improvements:
- Metrorail operating hours were extended on both weekdays and weekends
- SmarTrip sped up the process of moving through stations and exiting the parking lot
- Many stations have added garages
- (And though unrelated to this article, the electronic time indicators (and many online systems) improved the trip time estimating process (despite Metro’s decline in timeliness))
Two prime reasons for these changes were:
- To make it easier to park (before it was harder to get a space, and it took a long time to check out)
- To provide a safe way home for people (i.e., mitigating drinking and driving)
But it now costs me $3.70-$6.60 + $4.25 for a trip downtown–$7.95 to $10.85, depending on rush hour. My average trip costs $9.40 because one leg is usually during rush hour. By the way, rush hour is 5:30 – 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 – 7 p.m.–so good luck avoiding it. As a contrast, any DC destination is within 10 miles, making my gas price roughly $2-3.
So you’d probably counter that parking in DC is expensive. But it really isn’t for someone like me–I frequently have lunch appointments (2 hour meters) or head in for the evening (parking is easy after 6:30, especially if you’re familiar with it).
Why can’t I shoot into the city for lunch ($3.70 for the ride portion) and have a less expensive parking option? Why, when the garage is nearly empty in the evenings, do I have to pay the same as people who were there during the busiest hours of the day, and stayed all day? And why is it that if I stay over in the evenings or into the weekend I don’t have to pay for parking?
Metro, here’s what you should do: require that riders tap their SmarTrip card when they come into the parking lot and leave. This will accomplish the following:
- People could no longer beat the system by parking as long as they want and leaving when it’s free
- People would be required to use Metro parking for Metro riding (right now they can park at a Metro station and do as they please), or at least have a larger charge for such cases
- Short trip parking would cost less, maybe even less during off-peak hours, which would increase ridership–especially during off-peak times when the car is a more compelling alternative
- Parking for evening trips would be charged less, also increasing ridership, which would help to curb drinking and driving
- WMATA would have far better reporting about how people are using the parking, which would lead to better application of fare adjustments (like the recent hike)
I would love to use the Metro for lunches and dinners, but right now it’s prohibitively expensive to take the Metro for those trips. I think that better use of SmarTrip for parking would save people money, increase ridership, and allow the Metro to make more intelligent rate increases or adjustments going forward.
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