The Transportation Museum Andrew Mancini, Director
Metro Bus
Metro Rail
Even in the nation's capital, there still is a great transit system, linking tourist hotel areas to sights in downtown, plus northern D.C. and Virginia. Also, the transit connects you from both airports -- Dulles and Reagan. (From Metro's website)
Metrorail provides safe, clean, reliable transit service for more than 700,000 customers a day throughout the Washington, DC area. The system is the second busiest in the United States, serving 86 stations in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
The Metrorail system has five color-coded rail lines: Red, Orange, Blue, Yellow, and Green. The layout of the system makes it possible to travel between any two stations with no more than a single transfer.
Metrobus provides more than 400,000 trips each weekday serving 11,500 bus stops in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia. Metrobus is the sixth busiest bus agency in the United States, with a fleet of more than 1,500 buses operating on 325 routes.
Using WMATA to get around the city couldn't be any easier. If you're traveling there, click here to see the pdf file of Metro's pocket guide for tourists, which gives more information on fares. Plus, it shows a system map of Metro Rail, and a list of all the stations and what to do at the station.
A SmarTrip® card is a permanent, rechargeable card used to pay Metrorail and local bus system fares. It's plastic, like a credit card, and is embedded with a special computer chip that keeps track of the value of the card.
Using a SmarTrip® card is fast and easy. Instead of inserting a farecard through the Metrorail faregate slot, you simply touch the SmarTrip® card to the circular targets on top of or inside station faregates. Likewise, you can tap the SmarTrip® farebox on Metrobus to pay your fare with SmarTrip®.
Sightseeing
