The audience this is aimed at…it’s immaterial because they still wouldn’t use it if the service was free.

The family of 3 or 4 coming to DC for the day or the weekend, don’t have time to waste parking at some far off metro station, waiting for off peak trains every 20 minutes to get downtown (and then back).

As I type this (just checked on Google) it would take you 38 minutes to drive from Shady Grove to the Air and Space downtown. It’s 59 minutes on Metro. Add in all the time for folks to fumble with metro cards for their kids, missing trains, not understanding how to use Metro, what lines to take etc, you are losing a minimum of an hour of your day, and that’s if the system works perfectly.

Now add in the cost. Family of 4, $4 bucks per trip. That’s $16 each way, or $32. That’s not going to break anyone’s bank but people would rather just drive downtown, pay the $20 it costs to park for the day and not have to worry about Metro.

It’s just not a great set up for tourists and we should stop pretending it is.