Map: What if Metro had local stops like NYC?

With the Silver Line finally open to Ashburn — its terminus as far from DC as the end of VRE’s Manassas Line — a lament has risen again: Where are Metro’s express tracks?

For the downtown-bound commuter, the seemingly endless number of stops on the way is a drag, particularly if traffic is flowing swiftly on the highway outside the window. A second pair of tracks would allow Metro to skip past the Ballston-Rosslyn corridor towards Farragut, or Eastern Market and Smithsonian if you’re coming from the opposite direction. Plus, it could get us closer to Metro running 24/7, just like New York City’s system.

In 2016, DW Rowlands wrote with clarity on why express tracks wouldn’t actually be that useful. Among other things, Metro already runs trains that are effectively express, with generally long distances between stations (see a Washington rail geography map I created with current Metro, MARC, and VRE stations). So I decided to ask the opposite question: What would the Metro system look like if it had been built with more local stops, like New York City’s system?

Metro Local

To see what this parallel universe might look like, I drew up a different map (see the full-sized version), keeping the stations that exist today and adding infill stations about every half mile. To determine express versus local service, I looked at jobs within a quarter mile and people within a half mile of all stations, and kept all-train service in the areas with high concentrations of both.

While I added Metro’s infill stations with almost no regard for usefulness, I did place infill stations on the commuter trains that might be worthwhile, mostly along MARC’s Camden and Penn lines. In all, Metro got 126 new stations, MARC got 10, and VRE got one (which is also already a WMATA transfer stop, Luckett).

When visualized, the local stop idea looks pretty attractive. Hop off Kingman Island for a picnic; get groceries at Snider’s from the Montgomery Hills stop; get off right in front of the National Zoo. Some stations are pretty good, too: 53 St-Lincoln Heights on the Blue and Silver has a ton of homes nearby, and Longfellow Street just north of Fort Totten is right outside Providence Hospital.

A Belmont Street stop between Columbia Heights and U Street would have almost as many homes nearby as Columbia Heights itself – which keeps its top slot as first in the city. In all, with a local-stop system, 231,000 more people would be within a half mile of a Metro station and 85,000 jobs would be within a quarter mile. There are just a few “core” zones where no infill stops could be added: the four stations at Tysons; the set of stations between Ballston and Court House; Rosslyn to Stadium-Armory; U Street to National Airport on the Yellow Line and to Anacostia on the Green Line; and NoMa to Dupont Circle on the Red Line. Regional employment centers are in the middle of these corridors and most of the constituent stations have significant concentrations of jobs and/or people.

Would local stops really be useful?

These 126 new Metro stations would not increase accessibility very significantly considering how much new track would be laid: a full 129 miles. If the choice were between that much track to serve existing corridors and adding new corridors, my preference is for the latter. Imagine stops at M Street NW, H Street NE, and Columbia Pike; just the four new stations for M Street would serve 63% of the jobs the 126 infill stops would serve.

Another better alternative is upgrading MARC and VRE to something approaching mass transit quality — with all-day, every-day service — which would knit the region together in a way that has never been possible before. It would also make infill stations viable in the inner MARC system.

As for 24/7 service, it’s a popular idea but rare even internationally. Railroading heavyweights such as Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, and Paris all have train systems that close for the night. Shutting down service at night can help support more aggressive maintenance schedules in four-track systems. Plus, night service has low ridership and operates more like “coverage” or lifeline service. Given the tradeoff with maintenance, it is typically more cost effective to use buses instead, as many, many cities do.

The original problem of Metro is arguably not that it lacks express tracks but that it runs along substandard alignments in many places. The Orange Line would have done better continuing along surface streets instead of entering the I-66 median. The southern Yellow/Blue line avoids both central Alexandria and the higher density of Del Ray. While the Prince George’s segments suffer from poor land use, that is not helped by their alignments either.

Metro is already a largely express train service, because it was built for commuters to compete with highways, with only a few exceptions. It would be nice to have a Yuma Street or Wolf Trap station, and there might be options for some infill stations, a whole four-track system and its dozens of new stations frankly aren’t necessary. Metro’s original issues are its alignments, not its structure, and the cost of doing more tracks would be better spent to expand in the core and improve and integrate the commuter rail services that run alongside the system already.

Even if it’s fun to dream.