Some observations that may help in providing context but is not by any means excusable for making traveling rougher on you.
I'm short on time so forgive the word dump...
The DC metro area has some of the highest salaries, cost of living, and transient population in the States. Thus, busy lives and busy on the dollar focus yield extreme hours throughout the week. This means that those that can afford the hobby are often on that edge of exhausted a good chunk of the time.
I've witnessed first hand how unorganized senior managers to senior executives are with their own schedules. Those pulling in numbers well over 150K a year seem to always have their hair on fire with the next crisis. Schedules always seem to shift and some sort of "shiny" opportunity distracts these people. Even with executive assistants and schedulers these people continue to fail at showing up consistently. (I've worked at Deloitte, Booz Allen, IBM, Lockheed, etc...)
I'll also say that getting from A to B to C in this town is a hot mess. Coming from DC to Tysons doesn't look far on a map, but depending on the time of day it can be a headache. Dupont sucks for parking and just getting to in general. The metro is unreliable. Again, the point is, those that can afford some of these higher rate may just feel too fried at the thought of taking time out to get to you and back. In their heads they're doing the cost / benefit analysis and decide to opt out.
Again, that's just some observations. Not excusable by any means. In my opinion time is our most valuable resource and we each should do our utmost not to frack with someone else's time.
Sorry to hear you're rethinking DC.
All the best to you!