fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3109 ]

[ SECRET POST #3109 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3109 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Sense8]

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[Gatchaman Crowds]

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[Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog]

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[Twin Peaks]

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[Blue Beetle]

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[Metroid]

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[God, the Devil and Bob]

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[The Cell (2000)]

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So, my sis and I are working on our trip to NYC and DC. Can someone who has experience with the metro give me some advice?

We will be there for 4-5 days. We will be using the metro at least twice a day. We have a strong candidate for our hotel picked out if that info would help.

You can buy a 7 day card for $60. Would that be cheaper than just adding money to a card and using it that way? Are you just charged when you get on/off no matter the distance or does fare change based on distance?

My sis and I have never used public transportation. :/

My sis and I have never used public transportation.

Never? Ever? Not even a bus?
:| what are you.

I've never been to NYC or DC so I'm just going to spam you with some general tips that apply to just about any city with a tourism economy and public transport system.

If they're anything like oyster or opal cards, it might work out cheaper to buy the 7 day one. I find that when I'm in a new city I get ideas for what I want to do when I'm already out the door and it's nice not to worry about topping up. If you know where you'll be going you can check if their system is zoned (meaning you can travel from A to B for $4 but if you're going from A to C which is only the next station, it's going to suddenly be $15) and if express trains or peak hour trains cost more and see how much you're likely to spend.

If you'll be doing multiple trips a day, it adds up pretty fast!

The hop on - hop off tour buses are annoying to sit on sometimes, but if you're looking to do all the major tourist attractions and not get a 7 day pass for the train, you could have a day of sightseeing with transport that takes you directly to the monuments and parks for fairly cheap if you get an all day pass. That way you can spend as much time as you like at certain spots and jump on another bus, or just stay on and keep going past stuff you're not interested in. The buses usually run pretty often during the day and they're fairly tourist-proof because the guides and drivers are paid to be helpful to you.

When I'm in a city I haven't been to before I book my first day on the bus and get familiar with the area and get any stupid questions out of the way with people who are nice and friendly. I don't have to listen to the touristy information if I want to put my headphones in and tune out and I'm not panicked about getting lost. I think my London pass cost me about $25 in my own currency because my hotel desk was great at getting discount stuff and it included walking tours and a ferry pass, plus a book of discount coupons for all the paid attractions. To see everything I saw using the tube would have cost me much more than that and involved a lot more walking and probably standing with my face in the armpits of strangers during peak hour. Ugh.

If I'm travelling with my best friend though, she considers herself above such touristy things and would rather stress and get lost and yell at me for not having memorised maps or magically known where to get good food or nice clothes. By the end of our Europe trip she got on a bus the first day in Spain without a single word of complaint.

Most places in America don't really have functional, widely-used public transit. It's quite rare. Outside of New York, Boston, DC, Chicago, the SF Bay Area, Portland... I'm forgetting more than a few I'm sure, but once you're outside of the big cities it's really just not common. For a lot of economic, historical, political, public policy, geographic, and cultural reasons.

Wow, okay. I knew that the population distribution was different to here (where nobody wants to live in the middle because desert), but we have local bus companies that are contracted to cover our public routes even if we're not allocated city buses, and a regional link to the main train network that's over an hour away.

Tbh we only have a train line because we are a coal town and the city wanted our coal. Otherwise they wouldn't have hooked us up at all and we'd be like Canberra.

Well, I'm probably exaggerating somewhat - it's worth pointing out that bus lines are significantly more common. They just tend to mostly suck, for a lot of reasons. And on a regional (rather than a municipal) scale, it trends towards nonexistent.

Yeah. The buses aren't exactly amazing. Our town's bus route had two stops and was only ever serviced by two bus drivers: Barry and Hitler.
They were also the same company contracted by the school service to do the north bus. So our school bus drivers were also Barry and Hitler.

da

wait, one of your bus drivers was literally named Hitler or was that just a nickname?

Well it was a nickname, but he had a very neat moustache and a very shitty personality:

We didn't have separate buses for the disabled and my friend used walking aids and he told her if she couldn't get up the stairs without help she couldn't ride the bus.

If anyone lost a bus pass (even before swipe cards) he wouldn't let them on even though he knew where they lived and they had no other way of getting there/home.

We didn't have a bus shelter so if it was pissing down rain (tropical summer storms) we'd stand under the fruit shop roof (clearly visible from the road) but if we weren't on the footpath when he was at the top of the hill, he'd rev the bus and drive past us. If we chased it, he'd honk to tell us "yes I see you and I don't give a shit". We'd have to walk to the train station and buy tickets or get on illegally ($200 fine) to get to school.

I could go on. That fucker was the worst. He was a nasty racist too, and he made lots of comments about different kids who had to take the bus.

To this day I still flip him off if I see him driving around.

Wow, what an asshole. I don't understand what would drive someone to be like towards anyone much less a bunch of kids.

No idea. I hope someone gets him doing shit like this on a camera phone and it goes viral.

Barry was the complete opposite. He used to give people free rides if they were going to friend's houses or if it was raining and they lived in the exclusion zone for free passes. If I see him around town I always give him a wave. Top bloke.

ewwwwww. I hope he gets fired.

Me too. We reported him to the school but I don't think they did anything about that, or the P.E. teacher who used to walk into the girl's change room to "hurry us along". Fuck that place.

ugh ugh ugh

I had a creepy PE/health teacher in middle school but not THAT creepy

how is that acceptable in any stretch of the imagination

Nah, you're not really exaggerating. I live in Indianapolis which, while not nearly as big as the places you listed above, is still a substantial city, and public transit sucks ass here. I think I've ridden the bus maybe twice? The town I went to college in actually had a better bus system but I only used that because it was convenient to campus and free for students.

Seriously, public transit in the US is awful. It's kinda sad. :/

I've never used public transportation either tbh. I live in Texas and my town literally has no public transportation (the larger cities around me do, but that doesn't help me much). Almost everyone I know has a car because they wouldn't be able to get around well otherwise

You are missing out. How can you appreciate life unless you've accidentally sat in the still-damp urine of another human being!?

Yeah, cars are still pretty essential here. The train and the bus will get you from town to town, but only in a straight line. If we're talking land area that isn't covered by public transport in my state, it would be close to... all of it.

For scale:
NSW (my state!): 809,444 km²
Texas: 696,241 km²

Nope! I've only lived in two towns and both were really small. The closest they had to public transportation was like one taxi service.

Thank you for the advice though. Neither my sister nor I have done much traveling and especially not to big cities!

Be prepared to hate your life on the train. People tend to use them as beds/toilets/places to make out. They get too comfortable there. Just try not to make eye contact and ignore the fuck out everyone and you'll fit right in!

You're going to have so much fun! I did a fair bit of domestic travel in high school because I had friends to stay with and bands to see, and it's definitely the good kind of scary. Being in a new city is always exciting and kind of liberating. It's pretty much the feeling of going to a different McDonalds as a kid and discovering their playground is bigger.

tripadvisor.com has reviews of attractions, hotels, restaurants etc. and there are a few other websites like that too that have personal reviews. When I let a tour group book my hotel once I ended up not having a working shower and there was a support column in the middle of my room. I had to walk around it to get to to the door, bed, and bathroom. It was like a tiny human roundabout of evil.

It's been a long time since I've been in DC, but it sort of depends. Times and distances do make a difference.

Peak SmarTrip® Fares (in effect weekdays from opening to 9:30 am and 3-7 pm and weekends midnight to closing)
$2.15 minimum + a $1 surcharge if a paper farecard is used
$5.90 maximum + a $1 surcharge if a paper farecard is used

Off-Peak SmarTrip® Fares (all other times)
$1.75 minimum + a $1 surcharge if a paper farecard is used
$3.60 maximum + a $1 surcharge if a paper farecard is used

Discounting the paper farecard: Using the bounds of 2*4*1.75 = 14.00 and 5*5*5.90 = 147.50, 60 is a good deal if you think you'll tend toward the upper bound. Averaging mins, maxs, peak, and off-peak gives you a fare of 3.35 (2*4*3.35 = 26.80 and 5*5*3.35 = 83.75).

Is there anyway to determine how much it will cost before you get on? So my sis and I can do some math. I didn't see anything on the main site about that.

Yes. But you have to know the station you'll get on at and the station you'll get off at. If you go to the station (http://www.wmata.com/rail/stations.cfm) click on that station, you'll get to a page that has a pull down menu of the other stations, select one and click the Get Fares button and it will tell you the different fares and what lines serve it (or you can go with the All Other Stations on the pull down menu to get them all). Or you could use the map (http://www.wmata.com/rail/maps/map.cfm) to get a rough idea, just remember if a station is on a different line, you have to go to a Transfer Station (like if you get on at the Bethesda station (Red Line) and want to go to Arlington Cemetery, then you would go to Metro Center station and get on the Blue Line).

Been a long time since I've been to DC, but looking over the pricing schedule, it really looks like it depends on where you'll be taking the metro from, since the fare does depend on the distance. If you're only there for 4-5 days, it probably would be cheaper to just pay cash fare.

That said, I sometimes find that the convenience and lack of worry of buying a pass is worth it even if monetarily the value doesn't quite work out. But that can obviously vary.

Ah. We'll just have to figure out how long we will be there.

Though, considering how panicky my sister can be, the pass might be for the best.

Hi! DC native here so I hope I can answer some of your questions.

Whether or not the 7 day card would be cheaper honestly depends on how much traveling you're going to be doing while you're here. If you plan on riding Metro a lot, I would say get the 7 day card, because Metro fares can add up pretty quickly if you're doing a lot of hopping on and off. Also, you don't have to worry about having to load more fare onto the card, which can be kind of a pain to do if you're in a hurry.

The way it works is that it reads your card when you go in and then charges you when you get off-- the fare changes based on distance and whether it's peak or off-peak hours. Do you mind if I ask which hotel you're looking at and where/how much you plan on traveling?

Also, if you have any other questions about DC in general, feel free to ask me! I've lived here my entire life so I'm very familiar with the city. :)

Our strongest contender is the Hilton Garden Inn Bethesda. It looks like it is fairly close to everything (and cheaper than staying in downtown). We will be going into the city every day for 4-5 days (still figuring out how long we will be staying). We plan on going to the zoo and some of the Smithsonian museums. We are also going to spend one day going to all the monuments.

The fare changing based on distance is the one thing I was unsure about! I figure that will be the hardest thing for someone who has never on there to determine.

Um, right now we are just looking at places to eat at and to visit. Do you have any recommendations? :D

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[ SECRET POST #3109 ]

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