Smithsonian Metro Station

I’m not going to rate every metro station, just the overall Metro itself. DC has one of the best transit systems in the country. Once you figure out how to get your card and add money to it, you can get to pretty much anywhere in the city and surrounding areas. I never once felt like any of the stations were sketchy. I do have to say though that depending on where you want to go, Über and Lyft are pretty comparable to the Metro.

Bottom Line: Busy, clean, full of tourists and super convenient to many Smithsonian museums.
Most Metro stations are the same — red hexagon tiles on the ground, dim lighting, waffle roof, long escalators and the smell of an electrical train. This station has all of those «features,» plus it is clean and energetic. Being right in the middle of the National Mall, this station gets a lot of use by tourists so its in WMATA best interest to keep it purty.
This Metro station has two exits, as many of them do. 12^th St. and Jefferson is marked as being for the «Mall» but both exits will get you there. A few more notes:
12^th St. & Jefferson
— This puts you more in the middle of the Mall
— Use this exit for the Smithsonian Castle, Natural History museum and American History museum
12^th St. & Independence
— This exit puts you more on the edge of the Mall
— Use this exit for the Freer and Sackler Asian Art Gallery, Haupt Gardens and African Art Gallery. I also think this is the closest Metro stop and exit to the Holocaust Memorial
As another Unilocaler noted, one of the nice things about emerging from the ground here is that its easy to get your bearings based on the monuments.
Walk away from the Washington Monument for:
— Air and Space Museum
— National Gallery of Art
— Hirshorn Museum (Modern Art & Sculpture)
— American Indian Museum
— The Capital
— US Botanic Gardens
— Taft Memorial
— Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism
Walk towards and past the Washington Monument for:
— Lincoln Memorial
— Korean War Veteran’s Memorial
— Vietnam War Veteran’s Memorial
— Vietnam Women’s Memorial
— DC’s WWI Memorial
— National WWII Memorial
— Constitution Gardens
— Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence
— Albert Einstein Memorial
Keep on hoofing it for MLK Memorial, FDR Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial.
At the top of the escalators, Old Town Trolley is usually here selling tickets for their Hop On/​Hop Off Bus and maybe even their super awesome Monuments by Moonlight tour.

Man… Never try to hustle a hustler!
If you’ve never been to the area, you’ll get all twisted around. Coming out of the Smithsonian Metro Station subway is tricky if you’re looking at map. There is ALWAYS a guy out front, sometimes with a map, sometimes with a helpful tip on what direction is your destination.
After their helpfulness, they wanna get paid! Hey brother, let me hold onto a dollar for that advice. Canadians might give them a buck, I have a phone with GPS thankyouverymuch. No need for your directions and all you need to do is look up at the monument for bearings.
Good DAY to you sir!

Great site and drop off area. Train is nice and gets you to where you need to go. Center of most of the attractions you want to see. The train guy can be a bit better about announcing his daily routine. I imagine it’s boring though

This station gets you to the sites you want to visit when you go to Washington, DC. On my recent visit, we wanted to check out the new MLK, Jr Memorial. It was a nice long walk, especially since we also had our luggage, but had we not been pressed for time, we would’ve been able to plan better. Once you get off the train and leave the station, you are in the national mall and can view the park map that lets you know where all the other sites are. If needed, there also is a park ranger nearby to assist.

This metro station has multiple entrances and exits, so be sure you know which direction you really want to go. The fare machines seem to always work which is nice. The Indenpendence Ave entrance is sometimes crowded with vendors, but you don’t have to deal much with folks asking for change. This is your typical DC metro station and it’s a great location right across from the National Mall.

This one is sure convenient to the museums. However, this is also kind of the problem. It just gets so oppressively crowded during major events in the area that it’s just better to walk to one of the other downtown stops. The gates and the escalators and the platforms are just totally inadequate for the volume of people trying to use them; this should be one of the biggest stops in the city but it isn’t. It actually gets shut down sometimes because of excess volume.
I also note that this is one of the stops that doesn’t have the distinctive Metro-​style roof over the entrance, which is annoying when weather happens and makes it harder to locate.
This is the closest stop to the monuments and the Memorial Bridge; the Metro conspicuously skips the region immediately west of the Mall, which is where many of the big attractions are.

A convenient Metro stop for anyone who’s trying to visit the Smithsonian Museums without the hassle of fighting traffic.

Omg the subway service in dc is so much better than new york, faster, cleaner, organized. Lucky you guys!

So, this review is just for all of the DC metro, really. The metro is pretty easy to understand, and fares are decently priced, but note that if you are visiting and using a paper fare card all fares are +$ 1 each way. A little steep if you ask me, but the metro saved me from the rain this weekend, so I can’t really complain.

From October to April you mostly see federal workers with very few incidents or weirdos. People stand where they’re supposed to on the escalators, know what they’re doing at the farecard machines, and don’t need much assistance from the metro employees.
During the Summer you see tourists, tourists, and more tourists! It’s tourist city since the station is the best way to get to the National Mall and surrounding museums, monuments, etc. You will see large tour groups that are mostly comprised of kids and several families. You have to deal with people not standing on the right side of the escalators, crowding around the farecard machines, and unsuccessfully trying to go through the gates.
But try to take it all in stride DC employees. Don’t bark at people to move to the right side of the escalator and take a moment to direct people in the right direction if you can. They’ll learn, probably not till day 5 of their 6 day trip to DC, but eventually they’ll figure it out. We all did :-)

Make sure to double check signs!

If you’re looking to visit the Smithsonian without having to deal with traffic and parking hassles, go through this Metro station.

When I travelled to DC a few years ago, I ended up taking in this station quite a few times. I knew that it was close to the Smithsonian museums I needed, so I got out whenever I could/​needed to here. It was always clean and in full-​working order. However, what I didn’t know is that one of their exits leads to other government buildings parallel to the «Mall”(a big downfall is signage).
A big downfall, if you travel around on the Metro on Independence Day. You won’t be able to get out here that day. Metro always tries to route people around this location, due to hoardes gathering and trying to enter onto the system that day. Two routes tend to stop a few stops before, and what does go through that day, does tend to go express THAT DAY ONLY.
Thanks for making for several pleasant and appealing appearances.

I probably would have enjoyed this station if it weren’t for two things: tourists tourists tourists (aka too damn crowded) and the fact that one of the escalators is ALWAYS under construction.
Meh. I’d rather just walk.

The thing I love best about the actual version of this station is that there aren’t any mutants or rabid dogs out to get me. Just a metro station with regular humans trying to get from Point A to Point B.
I’m a fan.
Oh, and the fact that it stops right at the National Mall is pretty cool too.

D.C. and the surrounding areas have a great Metro system. The stations are clean and the trains are on time. Atlanta should take a lesson. I was very surprised to see that it was possible to find a seat during rush hour on a Metro train.

Good location for a metro stop — right in the center of the Mall.
Wish the platforms were a bit wider — at least double their current size since it gets over-​crowded during peak tourist times.
Also during Cherry Blossom season and other busy periods, they often close one the entrances to control the sea of humanity from entering and flooding the station. Not smart strategy in my opinion.

clean, modern, affordable, and efficient. Now thats a train! NY subways are a joke in comparison.

I wanted to give this metro station major kudos for having the air conditioning on at full blast, all the time. It’s so much better than sitting in a muggy station, with your only respite of factory-​installed air coming from the doors swinging open from in/​out-​bound trains.