Originally Posted by
LETTERBOY
I live in Kensington, and IAD is around a 45 minute drive if traffic cooperates. BWI is around the same (at least it was the last time I flew out of there, which was years ago). DCA is around 20-30 minutes, depending on the route we take.
I was a bit surprised by this and did a google maps directions from the Safeway in Kensington to IAD and DCA. DCA was 29 minutes, IAD was 30 minutes (in no traffic). In current traffic IAD was 41 minutes, and DCA was 54 minutes.
I am not suggesting that your experience was wrong, but rather, limited. Traffic needs to cooperate for DCA as well. My guess is from Kensington is that you could flip a coin as to which is going to be faster, although there might be a specific time of day (afternoon rush hour for example), where DCA would always be faster.