I think it definitely depends on the time of day. We've gone through DC 20 times (10 round trips) and we almost always get through there in less time than it would take to avoid it. We've used the EZ Pass HOV lanes a few times, but usually don't need to. We're typically traveling through there at around 9:00 a.m. There was one time (pre-GPS) that we were stuck in bumper to bumper traffic through DC that slowed us down by about an hour (which is how long it would have taken us to route around the city) and we never figured out why -- though we left later than normal on that trip and hit DC around 3:00 so we just assumed it was rush hour traffic. And there was one other time (when we had a GPS) that we go slowed down by hours. We knew before we left on that trip that there had been an accident on I-95 in the DC area and the GPS was desperately trying to route us around the area for 3-4 hours before we even arrived there. DH felt the accident would be cleared up by the time we got there so it would still be less time consuming to just go through the DC area. Well, the accident was *very* bad -- van of 12 people not wearing seatbelts rolled numerous times and closed both directions of the highway for 8 hours (several fatalities). That was a nightmare. EVERYONE was forced off of the highway on to much smaller roads. It took us an extra 3 hours to follow the detour. Thankfully we had plenty of "buffer" time in our drive and still arrived at DW in plenty of time. All that being said, if *I* was driving we'd avoid DC every time because I just don't like all the traffic. DH doesn't mind it, though, and would much rather deal with that than drive an hour out of our way.
