If a new Washington area football stadium were to go to the National Harbor, now's the time to being planning to extend the Green Line
A couple years ago, Paul Meissner developed some integrated transit maps based on (1) my wanting to show DC area railroad and subway/light rail services on one map like how it's done in part in London, and on transit maps in Paris and Hamburg (among others), and (2) ideas he and I both had for transit extension.
It's hard these days to think much about transit extension, given the massive decrease in ridership on the Metrorail system ("Metro Just Had Its Lowest Ridership Numbers In 20 Years. What’s Going On?, WAMU-FM/NPR), in response to service degradation and the service outages caused by reconstruction programs.
The Washington Business Journal has an article, "Prince George's executive hopes to see NFL team stay in the county, but isn't a fan of Oxon Cove site," about Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and her musings about the status of the Washington Redskins football stadium.
FedEx Stadium is currently located in the area of the Largo Town Center Metrorail Station and is a very typical suburban land use configuration--a stadium separate from most anything else.
Last December, DC was angling for the stadium through a stratagem concerning the federal budget getting the land where RFK stadium is fully under control of the city (it's owned by the National Park Service). That didn't go through--instead we got a government shutdown ("Yes, modify and extend the RFK Campus lease; No, don't do it for the Washington Redskins football team").
Separately, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan was looking to provide space at Oxon Cove Park, also controlled by the National Park Service, roughly adjacent to the National Harbor development in return for a land trade involving another part of the state. While the Governor has backed off that concept, it does make some sense.
If you're going to have such a complex, why not put it in an area where it can generate additional benefits, which are hard to develop with football stadiums ("Been to Largo lately? Sports teams often aren't very good partners").
I think football stadiums are lousy development augurs, but it could be beneficial for PG County by providing justification for furthering along a Metrorail connection to National Harbor, which is severely under-served by transit.
Paul's map shows a "western" branching of the Green Line Metrorail at the southern end, from a new wye between the current Congress Heights and Anacostia stations. The western branch would include some new stations for DC. The eastern branch would include a new station for the St. Elizabeths campus as well as an extension further south with four more stations, terminating in Brandywine.
Conceptual Future integrated rail transit service network for the Washington DC National Capitol Region. Design by Paul J. Meissner. Concept by Richard Layman and Paul Meissner.
I suppose DC would not be super in favor of this, because making National Harbor more accessible creates more competition for DC's waterfront districts--Georgetown, Wharf, Southeast Capitol Riverfront--but we'd get more Metrorail stations within the city and it would help to reduce traffic and would make it easier for people staying in hotels at National Harbor to come into DC.
But it would be well worth it in terms of DC not coming up with land for a stadium, and instead the RFK site could be redeveloped in a manner with significantly more financial upside for DC.
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A whole other issue is planning to extend the Purple Line light rail southwest from New Carrollton.
If Governor Hogan, a proponent of HOT lanes for the Beltway and I-270 ("Maryland is focusing on adding toll lanes in plan to widen the Beltway," Washington Post) were smart, he'd tie extensions of the Purple Line and the Green Line to National Harbor in with that program which would make it hard for transit advocates to oppose the roadway expansions.
Labels: fixed rail transit service, stadiums/arenas, tolls and toll roads, Transformational Projects Action Planning, transportation planning
posted by Richard Layman @ 2:00 PM&Permanent Link
4 Comments:
I don't follow the reasoning here:
DC could also do nothing, and still wouldn't 'need' to come up with land for a new stadium. The Redskins already have land - they own the Landover site outright! They could build a new stadium there tomorrow if they wanted to.
The larger problem with a branch on the Green Line (or any line) that your future concept doesn't solve (and actually makes worse) is that branching divides frequency; a new southern Green Line branch means the existing Green/Yellow trunk line must divide its service among three different branches to the south: Yellow, Green to National Harbor, and Green to Branch Ave. It would exacerbate the core capacity issues, not solve them.
I'm all for trying to improve transit to National Harbor, but any conversation has to start with the fact that it's a terrible location to serve, and was designed explicitly as a giant cul-de-sac off the Beltway. For those reasons, it's not going to be (nor should it be) a regional priority for any Metrorail expansion. Likewise, adding a stadium there (leaving aside the optics of destroying an existing park set aside for conservation purposes with a football stadium) doesn't change the geometry.
To be perfectly honest, the most compelling transit route (assuming you could address core capacity) has little to do with 'DC' at all, and would involve following the lower route along I-295 to better serve JBAB, lower St Es, and then connect to National Harbor. That would require a huge federal role, because you're serving key federal job centers at the expense of local-serving transit in DC. And currently, those job centers aren't particularly oriented to transit commuters, due to security barriers and commute patterns.
Well, in the transit future map, it also proposes splitting the yellow and green lines. So it wouldn't have the same kind of effect.
But that's a fantasy map, and the likelihood of a decision being made to simultaneously split and extend the yellow line along with the green line is low.
2. But I guess I didn't make myself clear given your comments. I was referring first to the RFK proposal. And second, wrt making National Harbor as a more competitive destination if it were to have Metrorail service as not being a benefit to DC proper. Nothing about DC and land.
3. Not my original idea, but it was suggested by an unnamed colleague that FBI could go to where Barry Farm is, adjacent to St. Es.
http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/more-on-barry-farm-vs-poplar-point-as.html
I did suggest another station serving the east St. E campus which you were negative about at the time.
4. But your general point about where adding green line stations in DC to serve federal sites is what would make this a worthwhile thing to do, it would better balance use.
win-win and all that.
Except for the counterpoint you also mention about security limitations, the fact that many people drive, etc. We'd need to have at the very least a zip code analysis of the employees to determine if a goodly number of trips could be captured by transit.
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