WMATA Metrorail 50th anniversary in 2026

I started this piece in late fall, spurred probably by "Streetcars: transit, economic development levers, source for discontent in local politics | Milwaukee HOP streetcar." Because of the issues raised about transit as a lever of economic development, urban revitalization and the repositioning of cities.

A Red Line train heading toward Glenmont arrives at Metro Center. A track-switching problem apparently delayed the train -- and worsened the backup. Photo Credit: By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post Photo

It reminded me that 2026 is the 50th Anniversary of WMATA's opening of the first leg of the Metrorail system; On March 27th, 2026, the red line from Rhode Island Station to Downtown's Farragut North Station.  

At that time there was a regional consensus about the value of building the subway that had been built up over many years of planning and promotion.

Post-2009: the transit consensus denigrates further.  In 2009, I argued that this consensus needed to be rebuilt as the region and population grew, with many new residents unfamiliar with the history of the system ("St. Louis regional transit planning process as a model for what needs to be done in the DC Metropolitan region").  (I also made the same argument for 2016, the system's 40th anniversary, "WMATA 40th anniversary in 2016 as an opportunity for assessment").

During this period, DC and Arlington had been planning streetcars.  Arlington shut down their effort in  2014, while DC, as a great example of planning failure managed to open the streetcar in 2014--after starting planning in 2003--but now plans to shut it down.

And then there's the Purple Line light rail program.  Proposed in the late 1980s as a circular line connecting all the Metrorail lines, the Maryland program aimed to develop a leg of it, from Bethesda to New Carrollton.  

Planning was stopped by Republican Governor Ehrlich, resuscitated by his Democratic successor Martin O'Malley, and then threatened with cancellation by his Republican successor Larry Hogan.  

There's been lots of opposition by people in the monied areas of Montgomery County, but the system will finally open by January 2028--40+ years after it was first proposed.

I used to comment that the opposition to the streetcar and light rail implied a total lack of knowledge and history of Metrorail, back when the system was serving more than 750,000 riders per day (plus another 500,000 trips by bus).

And that the consensus in favor of a transit-centric land use and transportation planning paradigm, especially after the Metrorail crash killed eight people and the system degraded significantly afterwards, needed to be recreated.

Covid as another catastrophic event.  Alongside the years of reinvestment and poor service, another key event is the decline of ridership during covid because of the shift of work from the office to remote work at home.

Downtown as a business center and transit destination further diminished by Trump Administration firings of federal workers.  Fewer federal employees and moving agencies out of DC reduces ridership.

Advertising supplement to the Washington Star, 3/21/1976.

The system has half the ridership from 2019, although WMATA is rebounding better than a lot of its peers ("Can Washington DC keep its transit comeback rolling?" Governing). Funding, with the fall of farebox revenue, has also been a problem.

Definitely needed are sessions on "lessons learned."  Even to compare DC to SF's BART ("BART has carried riders for 50 years. It also changed how the Bay Area lives," San Francisco Chronicle), Atlanta's MARTA, and Miami's Metro.

For example, DC's streetcar is the textbook example of poor planning, yet it has sparked more than $1 billion in new or planned development ("DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," "Update/revision of H Street transit oriented real estate development table").  

Transit infrastructure can have speedy returns on public investment.  For example, a key lesson for me was the revitalization impact of the New York Avenue Metrorail station on the H Street neighborhood.  

The station made people with choices choosing the neighborhood as a place to live, and play.  The commercial district and subsequent building of housing was speeded up by the presence of the station (which also provided positive development impact on the Union Market district and in the NoMa area as well).

It made me a believer that done right, transit infrastructure was the fastest return on investment for urban revitalization.

Plus, besides lessons for good, We need lessons for bad.  And for recommendations and an action plan for improving and integrating transit modes into a true system.

Urban and Transportation Planning Lessons from DC Metrorail

-- Transit Oriented Development Institute

-- Trans-Formation: Recreating Transit-Oriented Neighborhood Centers in Washington, DC, DC Office of Planning (2002)

Economic revitalization.  For the first 30 years of the system, academic research didn't find a lot of economic impact.  

I think that's the result of metropolitan area studies which spreads results out, when transit economic effects are more localized.  But it's also because seeing results takes a long time.  It takes a long time to build one building, let alone hundreds.

Although later studies found significant impact (When we invest in transit, our community thrives: 2024 Benefits of Transit Report, WMATA), which makes sense because it covered a longer period of time.

E.g., the region versus Downtown DC, DC neighborhoods ("To Create Abundant Housing, Ignore the YIMBY Playbook," Washington Monthly), or the Wilson Boulevard corridor in Arlington County ("The Effect of Transit-Oriented Development in Arlington, Virginia on Transportation Choices").

DC, Arlington, Alexandria, and Montgomery Counties have benefited more from Metrorail than Prince George's County.  Unlike the others, PGC has fewer conurbations served by the Metro and it hasn't been focused on shifting development to those places served by Metrorail.  

For example, for years I've thought the County should move its place of government to New Carrollton, which is served by Metrorail, from Upper Marlboro, which is not ("Go big or go home: Prince George's County needs to think big and consider better revitalization examples for New Carrollton").  Recently, more agencies have moved to Largo, which is served by Metrorail, but the development in the area is disjoint, very much not like stations in DC.

Arlington has been particularly successful in repositioning Wilson Boulevard as an office district, competitive with DC because of lower rents, although this is changing as the Silver Line presents new development further out with even cheaper rents ("The state of Arlington County Virginia's commercial real estate market: 2012 and the future").

It's also important to look at the differential impact on the suburbs ("Inner ring suburban community improvement," "Metrorail as a revival mechanism for the inner suburbs: Takoma Park," and "Tysons, White Flint and the continued "maturation" of the suburbs").

2.  Still, perhaps the biggest lesson is that transit focused revitalization takes a long time.  Although it can be incredibly fast if done right, additive, within an existing system  ("NoMA: the neighborhood transit built." Urban Land, "Three New Metro Stations To Open Before Year's End," Washington Post).  This aligns with the finding of the UMN Center for Transportation Studies that the greatest value from additions to transit infrastructure come within the first 10 miles of the core system.

3.  Especially when you aren't guided by good planning, financing and high quality implementation organizations.  Which should be done at the system, line, and station area scale ("Revisiting creating Public Improvement Districts in transit station catchment areas," 2020).

When I first got involved, I thought DC didn't do station area planning.  

It did, but it didn't have an implementation organization or financing ("Updating the best practice elements of revitalization to include elements 7 and 8 | Transformational Projects Action Planning at a large scale," 2024), and actually that was a benefit because the plans took on the urban renewal architectural brutalism of the time.  Later transit oriented developments tend to be much better than the original planning.

Images of a protest flyer and the cover of a station area plan for the Takoma subway station from the article "Call to Arms: Activists defend a community under siege" by Diana Kohn, in the May 2009 issue of the Takoma Voice.

More should have been invested in stations as neighborhood gateways ("Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods").  Because the DC area is much less dense compared to NYC, it's been difficult to have stations serve as neighborhood hubs in the way that they do in NYC or Chicago.

4.  Relatedly, Sometimes development can be too soon.  A lot of early development such as at Silver Spring, was low density residential, because that was a building type financial institutions were familiar with.  Waiting until market understanding caught up with ground reality was important.  In short, building what you can build today can impose opportunity costs.

A good example is Fort Totten in DC.  Early development on site is three and four story garden apartments.  Second phase development off site is 6 story mixed use buildings.  But post-covid, much of the later proposed greater density projects are on hold.

Diagram of the WMATA system from Cities in Full.

5.  Polycentric versus monocentric development.   Metrorail was set up to move suburbanites to and from jobs in the city.  Thinking about revitalizing DC, the way that Arlington thought about shifting the Orange Line to an in-county rather than in-freeway alignment wasn't a huge part of the discussion.

While the system is spread out--polycentric--the reality is that in certain sections, like the core of DC or the Wilson Boulevard corridor, it functions monocentrically.  

DC has about 42 stations.  At the core of the city there are 30, many serve neighborhoods.  For the most part, all of those neighborhoods have revitalized.

6. Relatedly, Centers are key.  Stations outside of already even somewhat developed centers take much longer to bring about substantive development, let alone TOD ("Transit oriented development station typology revisited," 2024)  This problem was accentuated because a lot of transit systems are built along existing rail corridors, which are usually more industrially focused, and not well placed in terms of population and employment centers.

7.  Trickle down development versus purposive planning.  It took 20-25 years to see Downtown DC reasonably well built out in response to Metrorail.  It took another 25-30 years to see the effect on DC neighborhoods.  Arlington and Montgomery County also benefited, and Alexandria, all with their own timeframes.   

It's fair to say that DC had a trickle down approach to development, in that it was expected that transit was enough to move the city forward.  But augurs would have speeded up progress.

Arlington County did it a little differently.  They provided a special upzone of the transit shed along Wilson Boulevard, served by four Orange Line stations.  It wasn't an upzone per se, but a planned unit development process that allowed for significant height bonuses, in part in return for community benefits.  That process was faster and more purposeful than DC's.  Note that Rosslyn, the main office business district of Arlington at the time, has lagged Wilson Boulevard.

(Note: later, very successfully, DC provided incentives for housing development at the Columbia Heights and Petworth stations, among others, when the areas still lagged the core of the city.)

8.  Equity.  It was believed that transit would increase economic activity and property values.  At the time, people didn't think too much about the impact on low income populations, and the potential for displacement as neighborhoods changed as higher income residents were attracted to transit connections and other previously unappreciated amenities.

The light rail systems in Minneapolis ("Affordable housing along transit corridors," Hennepin County, "15 development projects will create and preserve nearly 2,000 affordable homes," Met Council) and Phoenix ("Light rail housing fund spurs 15 projects in metro Phoenix" and "Why you don't see more vacant lots along light-rail route," Arizona Republic) have been better at creating community development initiatives to build affordable housing in association with the new transit lines, reducing negative effects.  

This has driven a lot of organizing around the Purple Line especially in the Takoma-Langley area ("As Purple Line construction resumes, the fight against gentrification is on," Washington Post) but they haven't moved in a substantive way towards implementation ("Op-Ed in Washington Post about preserving affordable housing in the Purple Line corridor (Department of Duh)," "Follow up: Washington Post op-ed on affordable housing, the priming role of foundations and Washington's weak philanthropic community | Enterprise Community Partners could be a leader").

To its credit, Amazon, having entered the region with its HQ2 development in Arlington, has invested a lot of money in affordable housing projects, as part of its national initiative. 

New Carrollton in Prince George's County has Metrorail, Amtrak, and MARC service now, and a connection to the Purple Line is forthcoming.

9.  Are suburban conditions different from the center city?  Sometimes, not always.  Arlington took on a more urban orientation with the addition of Metrorail.  

While Fairfax County's initial stations were more outposts along I-66.  

I came up with a station typology of development opportunity based on some WMATA planning work--they came up with the original, and I expanded it.

--  "Transit oriented development station typology revisited," 2024

A key difference, and this is especially true of the Silver Line, is that pods of development in automobile-dominated communities aren't likely to be transformational in terms of promoting sustainable mobility or even transit use. 

-- "Setting the stage for the Purple Line light rail line to be an overwhelming success: Part 4 | Making over New Carrollton as a transit-centric urban center and Prince George's County's "New Downtown"," 2017/2014
-- "Suburban Virginia's Silver Line Metrorail after 10 years," 2025

Transit infrastructure planning lessons from DC Metrorail.

To me, conceptually the best example is Portland, in that they made quantum scale tough decisions, and continued to do so, as far as transit, urban design, compact development and quality of life planning was concerned.  ("A summary of my impressions of Portland, Oregon and planning," 2007). 

1.  While the early system was expensive and seemed extensive, it missed areas that would have been good to have included, and WMATA didn't continue to work for expansion beyond the original system program.  

Two stations were paid for by Maryland, extending the Blue Line to Largo.  And two infill stations have been built, in NoMA DC, and Potomac Yards in Virginia.  All were locally-driven projects, rather than pushed by WMATA.

WMATA kept saying, not until we finish the original system, that meant substantive expansions were decades out.  

As the Purple Line light rail program proves, it takes decades to build rail.  If you do it in fits and starts it takes a lifetime.

2. Vibes: a transit city has to invest in transit improvement and expansion.  As David Miller, former mayor of Toronto said, "you can't have a transit city if you don't continue to build transit."  

He wasn't re-elected and the program was dropped ("The transit city that could’ve been," Ethnic Aisle, "Transit city's not dead yet: David Miller," Toronto Globe &Mail

From EA:

Well, Toronto has to build rapid transit. It needs to build rapid transit that helps the city direct the growth that’s come into the city appropriately. It needs to build rapid transit that serves people from all walks of life. It needs that from a transportation perspective, from an environmental perspective. Which is why it should be rail and electric based, no emissions or close to zero emissions. That rapid transit network will not only address transportation issues, it will address economic issues, so it’s good socially, economically, environmentally, and for transportation. We need that, the city’s not going to thrive without it.

The DC area built Metrorail and it is an incredible achievement.  Of the fully funded "new transit systems"--BART, Atlanta, and Miami--Metrorail has been the most successful.

OTOH, I don't think the region ever tried to build a transit city or transit metro where a transit first agenda is the foundation of the regional land use and transportation planning paradigm.  Paris is the best example over all ("Paris’ Vision for a ‘15-Minute City’ Sparks a Global Movement," World Resources Institute, "Ambitions behind Greater Paris Project," "Paris is getting a whole new Metro network.  And it's huge," CNN).  New York City some of it on placemaking, without the massive expansion of transit.

London and Paris are the preeminent transit cities in the Western Hemisphere, continuing to make investments in transit expansion, although London like New York City, lags comparatively due to budget constraints.

3.  Relatedly, Transit is cheapest to build "RIGHT NOW."  Similarly, a former BART (SF) chairman used to say "the cheapest time to build transit is right now" because costs only go up.  (I can't find the cite.)  E.g., I think the Purple Line has doubled in cost over its timeframe for planning and construction.

4.  A transit city/transit region should integrate railroad commuter service with subway and other modes like light rail or streetcar/tram, alongside deep bus networks.  And be focused on improving service and expanding where it makes sense ("Branding's (NOT) all you need for transit").  Paris just added a gondola to serve a section of the city difficult to serve by traditional transit.

5.  WMATA saw itself not as the metropolitan area's primary transit operator, but the manager of a subway.  By default it was the primary transit planner, but not so committed to transit other than Metrorail as the golden child and a less favored regional bus network.

Two examples include how it refused to run the Takoma Langley bus station, forcing the Maryland MTA to run it.  Same with the Purple Line.  MTA expected WMATA would want to run it.  They didn't.  The same goes with planning a gondola service in Georgetown.

By contrast LA MTA figured it was to its advantage to lend its planning expertise to proposed transit projects outside its current purview (mostly that's a potential gondola service for Dodgers Stadium).

6.  The region should have (and still can) adopted a German style "transport association" where most elements of the transit system are part of one association, with a clear distinction between planning and system and route operation

-- "The answer is: Create a single multi-state/regional multi-modal transit planning, management, and operations authority association," 2017
-- "Verkehrsverbund: The evolution and spread of fully integrated regional public transport in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland," International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 2018
-- "One big idea: Getting MARC and Metrorail to integrate fares, stations, and marketing systems, using London Overground as an example," 2015 [I did ignore the VRE and Virginia which was an oversight]
-- "A new backbone for the regional transit system: merging the MARC Penn and VRE Fredericksburg Lines," 2015
-- "DC State rail planning initiative," 2015
-- "Route 7 BRT proposal communicates the reality that the DC area doesn't adequately conduct transportation planning at the metropolitan-scale," 2016

7.  Additions to transit infrastructure should be used to drive complementary improvements across the transit system.  Both to increase the success of the new infrastructure, and to build ridership overall.  Like DC's streetcar or the Purple Line or the Silver Line (some station upgrades compared to the legacy system, have occurred with the Silver Line, in particular public restrooms and enhanced bike parking), 

Past blog entries illustrating this concept include:

-- "Codifying the complementary transit network improvements and planning initiatives recommended in the Purple Line writings," 2022/2017
-- "Using the Silver Line as the priming event, what would a transit network improvement program look like for NoVA?," 2017
-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for the Metrorail Blue Line," 2020

Bus.  The counties have done this around bus transit.  For example, Montgomery County leveraged the Metrorail system to develop a national best practice suburban bus system.  

It didn't have one before Metrorail, and its bus system aims to servie neighborhoods conveying residents to and from transit stations.

The County continues to invest in transit, and has made the riding the system free as of this year (Ride On Reimagined: Montgomery County’s Comprehensive Bus Network Study: Service and Implementation).  

Alexandria is also a suburban leader in bus transit ("Alexandria, VA, Transit Riders Enjoying ‘The DASH Difference’," Busline), and of course Arlington, which also is the area leader in promoting biking and walking--one of their promotions now focuses on encouraging winter cycling.  PG County is a laggard but is improving their bus system and investing in trails.

8.  Fare media integration.  One good thing is that WMATA's MetroCard fare card is usable across the metropolitan area on WMATA and local bus systems.  It took awhile for this to happen.  Also because the Maryland Transit Administration funds Metrorail, it uses the same fare card system for local transit in Baltimore.  So the same cards work in either metropolitan area (but not on railroad passenger services).

Funding lessons from DC Metrorail: ask for money when you're doing well and everyone loves you.

Since I became involved in these issues c. 2000, there were reports and lecture about how WMATA needed a regional taxing mechanism to provide more predictability for funding.  

The funding system now is (1) each year the jurisdictions provide base funding, (2) more recently the federal government does too, (3) along with other federal funds for capital improvements, (4) farebox revenues, and (5) miscellaneous revenues (leases, advertising, etc.).

In the past, when the system turns a "profit," the jurisdictions demandrd a refund of some of their appropriation.

But nothing ever happened on the sales tax front ("Funding WMATA with a regional sales tax," 2017)..

Note that the past blog entry, "Metrolinx Toronto: 25 potential tools to fund transit-transportation infrastructure," (2013) lists many different funding sources for transit, based on a study for Greater Toronto's Metrolinx regional transportation authority.  I've since added a few in the comments, although the overall entry hasn't been updated.  

It came to a head after the crash, and ever since ("WMATA Chief says it’s time to talk about a regional tax to help fund Metro (DC area)").  Note a sales tax isn't perfect.  Revenues drop during recessions.  But it could be a part of a broader revenue stream.

By contrast, BART and MARTA created sales tax districts when they were founded.  My lesson from DC is the best time to ask for a regional sales tax is when you're wildly successful, not when you're in crisis.

It would have been hard.  

Getting the cities and counties and the state governments to work together is like herding cats.  But in the 1980s when the system was growing and thriving would have been the best time ("Creativity Helps Rochester's Transit System Turn a Profit" New York Times).

Note that the SF Bay region is looking to add another sales tax to support area transit including BART, CalTrain, and MUNI (SF) in response to the post-covid fiscal cliff many transit systems are experiencing ("Bay Area transit sales tax measure clears state hurdle," San Jose Spotlight).

2.  Metrorail is expensive.  Because it's a hybrid of inner city heavy rail and suburban commuter rail, fares are high, more like commuter rail.  (2) WMATA charges a fare for each mode (with a slight discount), so that you pay two fares if you ride bus to and from Metrorail. Although bus to bus transfers are three.  (3) For a long time, Metrorail could get away with high fares because federal agencies provide transit benefits to workers for travel to and from work--this year it's a maximum of $340.  

For these reasons, Metrorail could boast for many years of its high farebox revenue rate, in the 80th percentile.  Now, they've hit a bit of a ceiling and in response have added a myriad of pass products to make it cheaper to ride.

Note that in Baltimore, if you ride the MARC train with a pass, you can ride local transit for free (the same goes for Southern California riders of Metrolink.)

Governance.

Is complicated because it is split between DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and now the federal government.  Each of which provides annual funding to the system.  One problem is that the core communities--DC and Arlington--have different goals from the outer suburbs.

DC and Arlington focus on the system's qualities of serving city residents, reducing dependence on the automobile, while the outer suburbs are more focused on their residents getting to and from work. This affects discussions about fares, and what kind of service to provide.

When the system crashed as a result of the Fort Totten crash, unbelievably some of the suburban jurisdictions actively considered shutting down the system.

Virginia too doesn't want to help WMATA too much, even though it is one of the backbones of the  economic success for Northern Virginia, because it competes with DC for residents and businesses.  Maryland under Republican governors is anti-transit; pro with Democrats.

2.  Board members are appointed.  Could they be elected?  I've thought that like BART, maybe it would be better if the representatives from jurisdictions were elected, and treated as part of the political infrastructure of the local jurisdiction in terms of developing budgets and other programs.  The federal government could continue to appoint its representatives.