Archive for August 14th, 2013

King St-Old Town to McPherson Sq: Fare is Fair

August 14th, 2013 7 comments

Metrorail charges you the lowest possible fare, even if other trips that seem longer are less expensive.

Recently a Twitter user asked a simple question:  when traveling from King St-Old Town why does it cost more to travel to McPherson Sq than to Metro Center?  As a straight shot on the Blue Line, McPherson Sq is closer than Metro Center, so why is the trip to Metro Center cheaper?

We recently described how Metrorail fares are calculated.  However, the previous post  failed to mention is that when there are two or more routes to travel between any pair of stations Metro uses the least expensive one.

For the example above, there are a few routes to travel between King St-Old Town and McPherson Sq.  The shortest trip when considering the miles on the railway is to take Yellow to L’Enfant Plaza and then transfer to Blue or Orange, which results in 8.12 miles and a peak fare of $3.65.  The fare to Metro Center is only $3.55, because it is only 7.82 miles from King St-Old Town via L’Enfant Plaza.  For a rider taking the Blue Line to McPherson Sq, it might seem unfair that customers traveling one additional stop pay $0.10 less. Read more…

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