What this site is
metrowashington.org is an independent guide to the DC Metro, the Metrorail system run by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. It is not WMATA’s website and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by WMATA: we do not sell fares, we cannot add value to a Smart Trip card and we cannot handle a refund or a complaint about your trip. Our complaints page explains how to take one to WMATA, which is the only body that can act on it.
What we do is put in one place the six lines, a page for each of the 98 stations, fares and a fare calculator, hours, parking, the trip from both airports and a live service status board, written to be read on a phone on a platform.
What the October 2026 review found
On October 10, 2026 we went through every station page against WMATA’s own data. The worst error was one of ours, and it was mechanical. Four interchange stations appear in WMATA’s data under two station codes, one per platform level, and our generator added up the entrances listed under both — so the same doors were counted twice. Metro Center showed 16 street entrances; it has seven. L’Enfant Plaza and Gallery Pl-Chinatown showed eight; each has four. They are now counted once, from WMATA’s station entrances data.
Some names had gone out of date. The stadium by Morgan Boulevard has been Northwest Stadium since 2024, not FedExField; the arena at Congress Heights is CareFirst Arena; and the DC Circulator, which a station page still recommended, stopped running at the end of 2024. One page used the old name of Hyattsville Crossing, renamed in 2022.
And there were slips in station order: the Silver Line pages wired Ashburn, the western end of the line, next to Minnesota Ave on the other branch; National Airport was placed north of Crystal City when it is one stop south; and Union Station told riders to change at Gallery Place for the Blue, Orange and Silver lines, which do not stop there. All of it is fixed.
Fares and parking: Tariff #49
Fares come from WMATA’s Tariff #49, in effect since July 1, 2026: $2.25 for the first three composite miles and $0.45 for each additional composite mile, up to $6.75 on weekdays until 9:30 pm, and never more than $2.50 late at night and on weekends. The fare for each pair of stations is WMATA’s own figure, taken from its published station-to-station table, not a calculation of ours.
Parking follows the same tariff, including the rule that matters most: the cheaper rider rate only applies when you pay for parking with the same Smart Trip card you used for the train. Capacities come from WMATA’s parking data. The October check found one that had changed: West Falls Church is down to 1,200 spaces, which brings the network total to 70,512. And Vienna, which a page called the largest lot on the system, is second to Shady Grove.
What is live and what is not
Two things on this site are live, and both come straight from WMATA’s developer API: the service status board for the six lines and the next-train arrivals on each station page. Our server asks WMATA once and every page reads from that answer, so no page load sends you to WMATA and no access key ever reaches your browser. If WMATA’s feed stops answering, the board shows the last reading with its time or steps aside — it does not make one up.
Everything else — first and last trains and how often trains come — is WMATA’s published schedule, and it is labeled as a schedule. If it says the last train leaves at 12:10 am, that is the plan, not a promise about tonight.
Where each fact comes from
Fares, reduced fares, passes and parking rates: WMATA Tariff #49, effective July 1, 2026.
Station-to-station fares and travel times: WMATA’s own station-to-station table, read from its developer API.
Stations, line order, first and last trains and frequencies: WMATA’s official GTFS schedule feed.
Street entrances and parking capacity: WMATA’s station entrance and parking data, checked on October 10, 2026.
Live status and arrivals: the WMATA developer API, through our server.
The network map: drawn by us from that station data. WMATA’s official map is a copyrighted design and we do not reproduce it.
Descriptions of each neighborhood and what is near each station: our own writing, and the pages say so. Walking times are estimates.
Photographs: from Wikimedia Commons, with attribution where the license requires it.
When we get it wrong
We fix it and we say what was fixed — this page is the example. Where this site and WMATA disagree, WMATA is right, and we would rather hear about it than not. If you spot a fare, a schedule or a station detail that does not add up, write to [email protected]: it is the quickest way to get it corrected.
Who is behind this site
This site is run by the team at GoRandom, a small group based in the Basque Country in Spain who do two things that go together better than they sound: travel, and build websites.
Washington, DC is not yet one of the cities we have set foot in — we are up to twenty and we move slowly. We would rather say so than pretend otherwise: what you read here does not come from our memories, it comes from what the operator publishes and from checking work we can show you.
The other half of what we know how to do is web development, and this site is the excuse to put the two together. We do not leave it sitting there: every fare and every timetable carries its source and the date we checked it, and they get revised when the operator changes something. The last thorough revision was on October 10, 2026, when every station page was checked against WMATA’s own API and against Tariff #49. The four interchanges that WMATA lists under two station codes were counting their entrances twice — Metro Center showed 16 street entrances instead of seven — venues that have been renamed now carry their current names (FedExField is Northwest Stadium), and every parking figure now comes from WMATA’s own data.
He decides what goes up, checks the data before it does, and answers the email. If you find a fare that has expired or a timetable that no longer holds, there is a specific person to write to.