It's nice! I know there were talks about having an express train to Dulles that skipped a lot of the local VA stops, but it was determined that wouldn't save much time since you'd be limited by the next train at a point with the lack of express tracks :(

Riding it recently, I was thinking they should continue tracks in the median of 267 next to Tysons between 123 and route 7, so an express train could skip local Tysons stops and leapfrog a train there. It would be very little track to add and would probably make a significant difference in travel time. Unfortunately, it'll never happen that way though

In what world is is this tiled view of America better than a normal map

People love to say this, but I take the metro multiple times a week and have very few complaints. It gets me where I need to go, including the airport. Is it a little less comfortable than being in a car? Maybe. Is it much easier and cheaper than literally any other option (for the airport)? 100% yes

Yeah I've been really toying with the idea of getting rid of my car for your reasons haha

Well, I guess my logic is that I'd own the car whether or not I drove to work. I do agree that driving to work increases maintenance costs though, but it's hard to quantify. Would my $500 dollar fix to my engine last month have been necessary if I hadn't been driving to work two days a week like I was doing? Hard to say

Yes, parking is free at my work. And yeah, if I had bought a car to commute to work, it would be a lot more expensive, but I've had this car for several years (fully paid off) before I moved to the area

Yeah my commute is $7.50 a day on the metro, and when I estimate how much gas if I drive to work it comes out to about $3.50 a day. So, big difference actually. I take the metro most days though since it's much less stressful

And the zone system seems to punish those coming from DC from the suburbs more, which is where a lot of the traffic is already coming from and where we want to incentivize higher public transit usage

I bet it also has something to do with the space available between the toll road that was left for them when it was built

Well, it's a $50 Uber vs probably a ~$5 metro ride (or $2 on the weekends), so I know I'd be willing to spend a little extra time on the metro to save that money