Transit oriented development station typology revisited

The Washington Post ("Welcome to the loneliest Metro stop ") discusses how the Loudoun Gateway Metrorail station is pretty desolate.  There's a decent discussion on Reddit about it.  The main issue is the station is exurban compared to the core of the region and that much of the Silver Line is more like a commuter railroad than a subway line--ridership on the Silver Line is pretty pathetic, when all is said and done.  It reminds me of the UMN Center for Transportation Studies study of the Hiawatha Light Rail Line there, which found that the best ROI is within the first 10 miles of the system.  From the article:

But at Loudoun Gateway, the second-to-last stop on the Silver Line extension, there is never any bustle. This year, an average of 317 people have entered the Loudoun station each day, according to Metro’s rail ridership survey. That’s about 0.08 percent of the system’s daily riders.

What's frustrating to me is the failure to recognize there is a station typology that makes it easier to understand why stations can be successful with TOD and others are much less likely to be so.  You'd think after almost 50 years of experience with Metrorail, this would be better understood.

And it's not like Metrorail hasn't already created a station typology, although it was focused more on bicycle and pedestrian access, it's applicable to TOD questions.

I wrote a summary piece about this a few years ago, "The ability to develop around transit stations is conditional on land use and mobility context" (2021).  From the entry:

Categorizing transit stations in terms of access (and indirectly, the opportunity for development.  Perhaps the best way to think about the opportunity for "transit oriented development" is to consider  how WMATA categorizes its Metrorail stations, as laid out in the Bicycle and Pedestrian Access Improvements Study (2010), in Appendix D.  There are nine categories, based on land use context, from dense/connected/compact to undense/disconnected.

• High Density Urban Mixed-Use in a Grid Network (21 stations)
• Urban/Suburban Residential Center -- (12 stations) [opportunity for multiunit buildings close to the station, even if the area is otherwise single family residential)
• Urban Residential Area with a Bus/Automobile Orientation (5 stations)
• Campus and Institutional (3 stations)
• Mixed use in a "pod" layout (13 stations) [isolated, disconnected locations]
• Long-Term Potential for High Density Transit Oriented Development (TOD) or Planned Unit Development (PUD) (4 stations)
  
• Suburban Residential Area (9 stations)
• Auto Collector/Suburban Freeway -- (5 stations) 
• Employment Center/Downtown/Urban Core -- (12 stations)

Note that to make this typology work more universally, two more categories need to be added:

• Smaller Town Center (Suburban/Exurban)
• Exurban Station (Residential primarily)

Update:  Although with Loudoun Gateway the typology needs to be tweaked to include light industrial.

• High Density Urban/Suburban* Mixed-Use in a Grid Network (21 stations)
• Urban/Suburban Residential Center -- (12 stations) [opportunity for multiunit buildings close to the station, even if the area is otherwise single family residential)
• Urban Residential Area with a Bus/Automobile Orientation (5 stations)
• Campus and Institutional (3 stations)
• Mixed use in a "pod" layout (13 stations) [isolated, disconnected locations]
• Long-Term Potential for High Density Transit Oriented Development (TOD) or Planned Unit Development (PUD) (4 stations)
  
• Suburban Residential Area (9 stations)
• Auto Collector/Suburban Freeway -- (5 stations) 
• Employment Center/Downtown/Urban Core -- (12 stations)
• Smaller Town Center (Suburban/Exurban)
• Exurban Station (Residential primarily)
• Exurban Station (light industrial)

The area around Loudoun Gateway is mostly home to data centers, which take up a lot of space, but have very few employees.

* I added Suburban to the first category "High Density Urban/Suburban* Mixed-Use in a Grid Network" because it better captures large scale Suburban business districts like Silver Spring or Bethesda.

-- Ten Principles for Reinventing America's Suburban Business Districts, Urban Land Institute