I used to live in Philadelphia, which isn't that far from good ole' Capitol Wasteland, yet when I traveled there I surely don't recall so many ruined buildings blocking my path, forcing me to take the subway tunnels on foot. But seriously, this is kind of irritating. I have spent literally 3 days exploring all the metro tunnels, trying to discover every location. Now I'm down to The Mall, Chevy Chase and Takoma Park. They're all that's left unexplored. I seriously hope that's all that's left!

D.C. has alot of metro tunnels IRL though. It makes sense they'd be in game.

Many people like to "eat fresh"

This had me confused, but then I realised it's been done for gameplay / performance reasons. In that south eastern portion of the map the is a LOT of stuff packed in tightly together. If it was all in the outside wasteland worldspace the performance hit would cripple your system, console or PC, duu to all the building, creatures and NPC running around and interacting (killing) with each other. So its all been put into their own little worldspaces - think lots of little Megaton's linked via Metro tunnels.

In real life DC, you'll find a metro station or substation, every block and a half or so in every direction. Downtown that is. So yeah. Suburbs are spaced out. In Virginia you'll go a couple miles in-between stops.