I moved to DC on June 14th, 2008. I sold my car on July 4th, 2008. For roughly two weeks, I had a car, but as a resident of DC, I did not have DC tags, or a permit to allow me to park longer than two hours in Northwest, or a place to park said car (aside from street parking).

I parked my car at Grosvenor-Strathmore for two weeks. I’d run the Metro up, then drive to work. After work, I’d drive back to the garage, park, and board the train for my part-time job, or for home. If you’re familiar with Metro parking, you’re probably thinking that got pretty expensive. However, you’d be wrong. I parked for free.

How?

Well, first, when I needed access to my car on weekends, parking wasn’t an issue: Metro doesn’t charge customers to park on Federal holidays or weekends. The gate are always open.

During the week it was also just as easy. Metro controls parking through the Smartrip card — or, rather, it controls egress through the Smartrip card, which is required to activate the gate to get out of the parking area. Here’s the catch: Metro doesn’t require a person to scan their Smartrip card to get into a parking facility, therefore, Metro has no way of tracking how long a person has been parked there, without using precious man hours, which, frankly, I don’t see it (or, rather, the contractor who administers the garage) doing.

Where did I park my car? At the Grosvenor-Strathmore Metro station. For two weeks. For free.

How?

You might think Metro keeps the gates closed at the garages all week long, but you’d be wrong. In my experience, Metro — at least at Grosvenor-Strathmore — doesn’t close the gates before 9:30am. So, if you were to, say, depart the garage before Metro closed the gates, you could essentially park overnight (or multiple nights) for free.

Clearly, it has its limitations. If I needed access to my car after the gates were closed, I’d be forced to pay to get it out (I don’t think I ever had to do that, though). Frankly, I’d be surprised if lots of people don’t use the trick to store their car safely overnight. I know Metro has a spotty record on car safety in its garages, but perhaps because of the neighborhood, or the proximity to Strathmore and the extra staffing with events there, I never had an issue with anyone damaging my car. Of course, I would hardly call two weeks “long term.”