Tag Archives: WMATA

WMATA Infill Stations: Oklahoma Ave and River Terrace

Because of the challenges in adding underground infill stations, most candidates are going to be at grade or above ground. Almost by definition, that means fewer opportunities for infill stations around the core of the system, and therefore within Washington’s city limits.

The existing system features a huge gap as the Orange/Blue/Silver lines cross the Anacostia River. The east of the river stations (Minnesota Ave and Benning Road) are both two miles from Stadium-Armory.

Filling this gap is not a new idea – early WMATA plans called for stations at both locations. Oklahoma Ave was on the books long enough for renderings to be drawn up.

WMATA originally considered the area next to the Benning Road Power Plant for a rail yard (the “S&I” oval on the map above, for service and inspection). The adjacent Kenilworth Ave station eventually moved east and became Minnesota Ave.

These two sites are unique in that they do not parallel any existing railroad services, where future regional rail might offer faster, longer-distance service, allowing Metro to focus on shorter distance travel markets. Part of the argument for more infill stations, particularly in the suburbs, is the promise of regional rail. However, these two locations do not need that promise to fulfill their roles – they offer compelling visions on their own.

Oklahoma Ave

Metro planners envisioned Oklahoma Ave as a park and ride station, taking advantage of the extensive surface parking for nearby RFK Stadium on non-event days. The nearby Kingman Park community vociferously opposed a parking-focused station, and WMATA eventually dropped the station in 1977.

Adding an infill station at Oklahoma Ave would likely follow the same concept from the 70s: two side platforms along the existing elevated guideway.

Connections: Potential transit connections from Oklahoma Ave are relatively weak. Almost all transit is located just north along Benning Road, including the DC Streetcar as well as extensive bus service. It wouldn’t be difficult to extend those lines to connect with the station, but the expense (and ongoing time penalty for bus riders) for doing so would depend on the broader plan – if Oklahoma Ave were built together with a River Terrace station, the latter could offer superior transit connections.

Land use: This is another challenge for the area. The immediate surroundings are the northern parking lots for now-vacant RFK Stadium. A large portion of those parking lots are now athletic fields. The parking lots were originally created by filling in the Anacostia’s tidal marshes. As a result, the entire area is within the floodplain, and unlikely to ever be developed as housing or office.

Redevelopment of the remainder of the RFK site outside of the floodplain is a contentious topic with complicated jurisdictional issues yet to be resolved. If the site were to return to a stadium/venue use, the ability to disperse crowds to multiple Metro stations would be a potential advantage.

Without an intense use at RFK, the rationale for Oklahoma Ave is less clear, particularly if River Terrace were built. However, if RFK Stadium were to be redeveloped as some sort of venue with large crowds, then the case for Oklahoma Ave is much stronger.

Ease of Construction: The biggest benefit at Oklahoma Ave is that construction ought to be easy – existing elevated track in the middle of a parking lot. The potential complications would involve any operational changes to the existing line, and determining any role for this location in future Metro expansion plans.

River Terrace

An infill station at River Terrace presents a tantalizing opportunity. The existing tracks are located at a key chokepoint and river crossing, served by one of the busiest bus lines in the city. The existing neighborhood to the south of Benning Road is isolated, separated from the rest of the city by the river to the west, DC-295 and the railroad tracks to the east, and the former Pepco site to the north.

Connections: Benning Road serves as a critical choke point for transit service, making it a great candidate for improved infrastructure. Lots of bus services cross the river here; the nearest crossing to the north (US-50) is along a freeway, and to the south (East Capitol Street) lacks good service. The DC streetcar terminates just to the west, with longstanding plans to extend it along this stretch of Benning Road.

In the future, the H/Benning corridor has long been targeted for Metrorail service. One of the longstanding concepts would be the “separated Blue line,” a new trunk line through the District to separate out existing Blue Line services from Orange and Silver services. Such a vision ought to include River Terrace as a four-track station enabling cross-platform transfers.

WMATA is currently in the midst of their ‘Blue/Orange/Silver’ study. The concepts released in 2021 did not include a new connection at River Terrace. These larger network designs will impact the kind of infill station design for River Terrace.

DC’s once-ambitious streetcar plans have been substantially curtailed. However, the one extension still officially on the books (though controversially) is the Benning Road extension, passing through the River Terrace site. One rationale for the extension is to connect the eastern end of the streetcar line to something, preferably a Metro station. However, because of the D&G junction, splitting Metro service along the Orange Line and Blue/Silver lines, connecting at Benning Road means losing the value of connections for Orange Line passengers.

Benning Road Streetcar Extension Plan – adding a Metro connection at River Terrace (34th St NE) improves connectivity for all users.

Land Use: Immediately adjacent to the station site is Pepco’s now-demolished Benning Road Power Plant site. The plant was demolished in 2012, and in later years was only used during peak periods of demand for a few days per year.

The plant was once the source of a huge amount of pollution, particularly in the Anacostia riverbed. Large-scale remediation and clean-up will be needed before redevelopment is feasible. Additionally, the site retains electrical distribution infrastructure and support for Pepco operations.

Despite all the challenges, it’s a 70+ acre site in the middle of the city with (potentially) excellent transit connections.

Ease of Construction: Compared to Oklahoma Ave, just adding platforms to the existing elevated section would be extremely complicated.

First, this section of track includes the notoriously unreliable D-route pocket track. The pocket track was originally slated to turn terminating Silver Line trains, but WMATA determined it was not suitable to serve that purpose reliably, and investigated alternative designs.

Second, the location of the pocket track (the straightest section) extends over the Anacostia River. Furthermore, the track itself is immediately adjacent to the Benning Road right of way, requiring some combination of road and bridge relocation or a station cantilevered over Benning Road.

Any design with side platforms ought to consider the possibility of a new Blue Line connecting through this location. The ideal design would allow for a future cross-platform transfer between the existing tracks and future Blue line services.

Third, Benning Road itself provides an opportunity for a creative and efficient passenger transfer from Metro to buses and streetcars. Doing so will involve extensive reconstruction in the area, meaning this won’t be a simple infill station – but the opportunity is too large to pass up.

There are lots of examples of efficient transfers between streetcars and rapid transit. Toronto is full of them, such as this one at Dundas West.

St. Clair West is another, featuring a fully-integrated streetcar and bus transfer loop built around (not just next to) the entrances to and from the subway. Passengers can transfer easily while protected from the elements and with minimal walking distance.

(side notes: Dundas West includes a small McDonalds, hitting on another minor obsession of mind, in-station retail. Also, do check out the excellent Station Fixation blog for a full visual tour of the entire Toronto system)

At River Terrace, this might involve diverting the streetcar tracks off of Benning Road itself to encircle a ground-level mezzanine for the Metro station, offering quick and direct transfers for passengers moving between modes.

WMATA Infill Stations: Blue/Yellow Line Ideas

Diving into some details about infill station locations, starting with the Blue and Yellow Line.

Franconia Road

The Virginia portion of the Blue Line features several long stretches without stations. Today’s Franconia-Springfield Station hyphenated after the system’s original plan to serve each location with a separate branch fell through.

The Blue Line follows the existing RF&P railroad corridor, first built in the 1870s. Today’s transit services are much newer – the Blue Line was extended to Van Dorn Street in 1991 and to Franconia-Springfield in 1997. VRE launched service in 1992 and added a station at Franconia-Springfield in 1995.

Aside from the Capital Beltway, the only street to cross the tracks between Van Dorn and Franconia-Springfield is Franconia Road, reflecting the age of the corridor.

Connections: Franconia Road sits more than a mile from Franconia-Springfield station and more than two miles from Van Dorn Street. Existing east-west travel in the area along Franconia Road provides potential for connecting transit and last-mile trips.

There is limited existing bus service across this stretch of Franconia Road, but adding a station here (and the potential connections it can offer) would open the door to a rider range of services.

Land use: The area is surrounded by mostly single-family residential uses (a combination of detached houses and townhouses), with a mix of auto-oriented retail and institutional buildings. Assuming that the residential uses are unlikely to change, the remaining areas offer only modest redevelopment potential.

The existing streetscape along Franconia Road itself isn’t friendly to walking. However, with modest suburban retrofits, this area could be transformed.

Ease of Construction: One potential benefit is that a station here ought to be easy (and cheap) to build. The WMATA tracks are straight as an arrow, with plenty of space between the CSX/VRE right of way and adjacent development. Adding side platforms to the existing rails ought to be a simple design.

Test fit of side platforms at Franconia Road.

Additionally, having platforms straddle Franconia Road’s overpass allows for headhouses along both the Eastbound and Westbound travel lanes, creating a chance for easy and direct bus connections.

Alternatively, the platforms could be entirely on one side of the overpass or another; there’s plenty of space. Likewise, if there’s a need to minimize vertical circulation to save cost, you could arrange to change the track geometry here to fit an island platform in. Point being – there are lots of options.

Eisenhower Valley

Eisenhower Valley is one of the areas where WMATA planned for a potential infill station from the start, preserving an area with sufficient space for a station, located near the eastern edge of the Alexandria rail yard.

The existing site has the right geometry for an island platform station – even the third rail is already positioned to the outside edge.

An alternative site is available closer to Telegraph Road, which offers better connections to existing development south of the tracks, as well as existing access to development in the Eisenhower East area of Alexandria via Mill Road.

Alternative location for Eisenhower Valley infill station.

This site is located along a four-track WMATA section – the two outer tracks serving the Blue Line, and two inner tracks feeding the Yellow Line from the Alexandria Yard.

Screenshot from OpenRailwayMap, indicating the alternative location.

Adding side platforms along the outer tracks should be relatively simple. Additionally, the warehouses immediately south of this location are owned by WMATA and potentially redundant facilities, as WMATA finishes work on their new Alexandria office building nearby.

Either location fills a lengthy gap on the Blue Line. Eisenhower Valley is nearly two route miles from Van Dorn Street and 4/5ths of a mile from King Street/Old Town. The alternative location is approximately 2,000 feet as the crow flies from the existing Eisenhower Yellow Line station.

Connections: Here’s the rub – without a much larger project, there aren’t many good connections here. Almost all travel in the area is east-west along either Eisenhower Ave or Duke Street. Adding a north/south street would be a big (and contentious) investment. Absent a major change to the street network, passengers on foot would either face a long walk to Duke Street, or force buses along Duke into a lengthy detour.

The alternative location has a better existing street network to build upon, including the potential Mill Road connection – but has the same issues connecting north across the tracks towards Duke Street.

Land Use: Most of the surrounding areas are commercial or light industrial uses, with some newer residential buildings included. However, the biggest parcels (like WMATA’s Alexandria Yard) aren’t redeveloping anytime soon – and I’m not holding out for Hong Kong-style platforms over rail yards, either.

To the north, the industrial uses could be redeveloped, but this area also includes several facilities critical to Alexandria’s operations, including their police HQ, DASH bus garage, and others.

The alternative location would be adjacent to existing and planned high rise development.

Ease of Construction: At the originally planned location, the station itself should be a breeze. Just add a platform – no track relocation required. It’s the additional projects that increase the complexity – do you add a roadway connecting north/south across all the rail tracks? What kind of redevelopment do you plan for?

Slaters Lane

The only underground infill station location on my initial list is Slaters Lane. The site is located along a short (~2,500′ long) duckunder tunnel, where the WMATA tracks dive beneath a rail spur that formerly provided rail access to Alexandria’s waterfront and a now-defunct coal-fired power plant, set to be redeveloped soon.

With the Potomac River Generating Station closed, the rail spur no longer has any customers. Sufficient space exists without existing structures to allow for a station platform.

Potential infill station location at Slaters Lane

Connections: There’s an opportunity to offer good transit connections at Slaters Lane. The site is close to the existing Metroway BRT, and potentially additional services that could make use of the Route 1 transitway.

Spacing to existing stations is appropriate – Slaters Lane is approximately 2,000 feet north of Braddock Road and ~4,000 feet south of the Potomac Yard infill station. Infill stations have the potential to make Metro a suitable option for travel within Alexandria itself, while the current network focuses mostly on regional travel.

A critical element will be providing for walking access on both sides of the RF&P tracks, either via an overpass or underpass.

Land Use: The big benefit of a station in this location is land use. The area west of the railroad tracks was part of the earlier phases of the long-term redevelopment of Potomac Yard, including a mix of mid-rise residential buildings and townhomes. Both Slaters Lane (to the east) and Monroe Ave (to the west) include commercial uses. And within a short walk of a future station, there are several potential redevelopment sites, including the now-closed power plant.

Potomac Yard in the 1980s. Note the Braddock Road Metro station (opened Dec. 1983) in the lower right, and tracks ducking under to the north.

Ease of Construction: As I mentioned in the opening piece, my list of infill stations is almost exclusively above-ground locations. I’m not aware of any examples of building infill stations on an existing subway line without some kind of pre-existing design accommodation. Adding a connection to an existing, in-service rail tunnel is incredibly complex, expensive, and disruptive.

And yet, there are several reasons to include this location:

Shallow Tunnel: the existing tunnel was only put in place as a duck-under for the rail spur connecting the RF&P’s Potomac Yard to the Waterfront. The shallow design means only a small amount of excavation would be necessary.

Surface Conditions: the land atop the existing tunnel is either used as a roadway or open space, making an open-cut station design (similar to White Flint, Branch Avenue, Grosvenor-Strathmore, or Prince George’s Plaza) possible. Roadway reconfiguration would be required, adding to the project’s complexity.

Construction Methods: at the crayon level, the combination of surface conditions and shallow tunnel depth would make cut and cover construction feasible, potentially minimizing cost and complexity. Even if the final station design were underground, using cut and cover techniques on an open site is potentially beneficial.

Even so, this site is far more ambitious than any of the aboveground locations, and also risky.

Crayon Plans – WMATA Infill Stations

Adding stations to the existing Metro system is a plausible way to expand the transit system without some of the costs involved for new routes. The region has a modest track record for infill stations – the NoMa station opened in 2004, and the Potomac Yard station is set to open in 2022.

Both NoMa and Potomac Yard share several characteristics: above-ground tracks passing through formerly industrial areas ripe for redevelopment.

Potomac Yard Metro Station under construction, August 2021 – photo from Wikipedia

Some criteria for infill station sites:

Ease of construction: Above-ground locations are the only feasible sites. Lots of planners and crayonistas call out the possibility of below-ground infill subway stations, something that (to my knowledge) has never been done without accommodations for a station from the start.
Potential surface transportation connections: connecting to arterial streets that can carry connecting bus transit, as well as walkable street networks is vitally important.
Redevelopment opportunities: these places were bypassed for stations for a reason. Plausible transit-oriented (re)development sites and planning are critical elements.

As it happens, the kinds of places that meet these criteria are often the parts of the network already parallel to existing commuter rail lines. Overlapping services opens the door for additional infill stations on the Metro network.

Let’s imagine a future world where the DC region’s commuter rail systems have been integrated into a coherent regional rail network offering rapid transit service. Even compared to WMATA’s already lengthy suburban routes, those networks extend well beyond the end of the current system. Commuter rail evolves into regional rail; and WMATA (conceived as a hybrid between regional rail and urban rapid transit) evolves further along the rapid transit spectrum.

Based on those criteria, I have twelve possible infill station sites on the existing WMATA network. Many are aspirational, particularly in terms of land use.

Here’s the list:

Location:	State:	Services:
Franconia Road	VA	🔵
Eisenhower Valley	VA	🔵
New Hampshire Ave	DC	🔴
Berwyn	MD	🟢 🟡
Edmonston/Wootton	MD	🔴
Montgomery College	MD	🔴
Gude Drive	MD	🔴
Centerville Road	VA	⚪️
Oklahoma Ave	DC	🔵 🟠 ⚪️
River Terrace	DC	🔵 🟠 ⚪️
Wolf Trap	VA	⚪️
Slaters Lane	VA	🔵 🟡

Potential WMATA Infill Station Sites

Some of these sites are opportunistic. That is, the site could support an infill station built at a reasonable cost, even if the land use (both current and future) aren’t likely to change much. Franconia Road is one where adding some platforms to existing track ought to be an easy task (with the caveat that nothing in American transit construction is easy at the moment).

Others are targeted at potential large-scale redevelopment of low-density land uses. And some (e.g. Wolf Trap) are longstanding ideas that might not make much sense, but I’ve included them here anyway.

Take the three criteria above, and score each on a 1-3 scale (with 3 being the best) and this is the back-of-the-envelope ranking:

These twelve additional stations (in addition to the 98 currently open or under construction) have the potential to increase the system’s ridership. Each additional node in the network can increase the value for the network as a whole, particularly given the redevelopment prospects for the region.

Some caveats: Obviously, I’m just spitballing here. The ‘ease of construction’ is all relative, and leaving aside the larger issues of transit construction costs for the time being. Controlling costs will be critical to making any additional infill stations feasible, yet alone stations with marginal scores.

Still, all but one of these locations are above ground, and the one that’s in a tunnel is a short cut and cover segment. There’s precedent for building stations in this way.

I hope to go through the details of each station area in future posts…

Four Years of Tracking my Metro Trips

Not much has changed, and yet everything has changed.

The last two years have been… unusual to say the least. With the pandemic, lockdown, and working from home, I overhauled my commute, just like many others. And my Metro data tells the tale:

You can see the exact moment when the world shut down. From mid-March 2020 through Mid-January, 2021, I took a grand total of seven unlinked Metro trips. By mid-march 2021, I had resumed a new commute pattern, mostly for the purposes of daycare drop-off.

Metro during the pandemic has been different. 92.4% of my trips in 2021 have been on a 7000 series train, and the remainder have been on 3000 series. I haven’t ridden either a 6000 or 2000 series train since the pandemic began.

Some trivialities:

The entire 7000 series fleet is in service, and I snagged a ride on the newest car (Number 7747) on August 17, 2021.
Of the current fleet, I’ve ridden 1137 of the 1284 cars in service (what counts as “in service” is a bit of a moving target), or 88.6%
My most frequently ridden car is 7673, which I’ve caught ten times over four years.
The longest gap between cars I’ve managed is 1,382 days, on car 7111. That’s 3.78 years of the current 4 year timespan.

With life changes, so to will my commute patterns. The ‘new normal’ remains uncertain for balancing working in the office vs. working at home. My kid is now attending a school within walking distance. I’ve felt comfortable on transit during the pandemic with a mask and with relatively sparse crowds, but the pandemic’s continued impact on travel demand is painfully uncertain.

Who knows what the next year will bring?

Two years of tracking my Metro trips

Two years ago, I started tracking my WMATA rides for extremely trivial reasons. After a while, my curiosity is now ingrained as a habit, a small bit of gamification of my commute (even if that game is basically Calvinball).

(Since I originally started doing this to see how quickly I would ride in the same car, I should note that on three occasions, I’ve ridden the same car twice in one day. The longest gap between rides on the same car is 707 days between rides on car 3230.)

With two years of data in the books, I thought I’d share some highlights: 2,013 unlinked trips, using 986 unique railcars, covering about 73% of the current fleet. Seventy five of those cars will never be ridden again, retired as part of the 5000 series. From the current fleet, there are 333 cars I’ve yet to ride, and an additional 113 that have been retired before I had a chance to ride. The fleet makeup is constantly evolving as Metro continues to accept new 7000 series cars, so the precise numbers change often.

My obsession has provided means to monitor the introduction of the newest members of the 7000 series, with 706 cars of the 748 ordered now in service.

Beyond changes in the Metro fleet, I’ve been able to document changes in my own life – different daycares, different jobs, and different commutes. I’ve also noticed how Metro changes their operations and railcar assignments as they take on major track work and as their fleet evolves.

Some charts:

Most of my trips are commute trips; red bars correspond to WMATA’s peak fare periods.

I’ve ridden all but 2 of the 2000 series cars that are in service; I rode 75 of the 5000 series before they were retired.

More than half of my rides have been on 7000 series trains.

My regular trips make frequent use of all services except for the Red Line. Most trips are still tied to the Orange/Silver/Blue lines, serving my home station.

I was also curious if I could put two years of tracked trips into one chart, so here’s an annotated version:

You can see the retirement of the 5000 series cars, the slowly increasing size of the 7000 series fleet, re-assigment of cars around the system, particularly in response to this summer’s lengthy Platform Improvement Project shutdown. The retirement of most of the 5000-series fleet also shifted the 6000 series – previously common on the Green line, but then shifted to the Orange/Blue/Silver lines.

You can also see how some cars tend to stick to certain portions of the system. This is easiest to see with the Red Line, since it’s both the most isolated from other lines and the line I ride the least. Before the PiP, you can see how most 3000 series cars with numbers above ~3175 were assigned to the Red Line. Likewise, most 7000 series trains between ~7150 and ~7300 are also isolated on the Red Line, except for a few weeks during this summer’s shutdown.

Missing a chance to create a great transit hub – New Carrollton

If you were to rank Metro station areas by some abstract measure of ‘potential,’ New Carrollton would have to be at the top of your list. It’s not in Washington’s ‘favored quarter,’ but as development moves east, it’s well positioned to take advantage of new and old transportation links.

The eastern terminus of WMATA’s Orange Line; easy MARC access to DC and Baltimore; Amtrak service to New York and the rest of the Northeast Corridor. For auto access, you’ve got freeway links in all directions via the Beltway and US 50 into the District and connecting to Annapolis. Now add in circumferential transit: construction is underway (if behind schedule) for the Purple Line light rail system.

Beyond just the transportation links, New Carrollton has land. Lots of parking lots and underdeveloped sites can support much more density – all within a short walk of these valuable transit connections.

There’s the opportunity to transform New Carrollton into a walkable, transit-oriented business district, but some of the Purple Line design choices might limit that potential.

The Vision: Mass Transit ‘Theater’

Start with MNCPPC’s 2010 plan for New Carrollton: It calls for, among other things, making the station entrance a civic place, surrounded by development and active uses. The stated goal is to create a ‘transit theater,’ not just connecting the infrastructure but creating a place to support adjacent walkable development.

Diagram of north side station area (including the Purple Line), 2010 TOD Plan. Note the existing IRS office building in the lower right.

The transit station is uniquely important at New Carrollton. Not just because of the transit links, but because of the development potential around it. While there’s substantial development potential on either side of the railroad tracks, there’s no way to get between the two sides except by going through the station. Even car circulation between the two sides requires getting on one of the adjacent freeways.

Fully realizing the development potential on both sides of the tracks means making the station itself the critical hub for all kinds of circulation. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t just need to function, it needs to be great. The success of the transit station and the surrounding development depend on it.

Executing the Vision with WMATA Joint Development

Complex development projects don’t move fast. Almost as soon as the MNCPPC plan finished, WMATA put out a solicitation to develop their parking lots – and the first phase of this development is just now taking shape.

Just to get a sense of the timeline: MNCPPC published their plan in May 2010. In September of that same year, WMATA and the State of Maryland jointly issued an RFQ for development partners to execute that plan. In 2011, the selected a development team (a joint venture of Urban Atlantic and Forest City).

Negotiations for the full development agreement concluded in 2015, when the developers released their vision for the south side of the station – fully embracing the 2010 plan’s vision. In April 2017, developers signed a tenant to anchor their office component, allowing them to break ground in October 2017 on the first phase.

Rendering of the WMATA Joint Development by Urban Atlantic/Forest City for the south side of New Carrollton

The developers and WMATA have taken care to create a sense of place, meet all of WMATA’s programatic needs (bus bays, parking, etc – documented in this lengthy report) and support a substantial development project. The lengthy partnership between the parties also helps align their incentives.

Purple Line Planning:

The 2010 plan located the Purple Line station next to Ellin Road, reserving space between the Purple Line and the Amtrak right-of-way for development.

Site Plan for New Carrollton – note the provision for future extension of the Purple Line to the south

By the time the Purple Line was in preliminary engineering, the plan called to shift the tracks and LRT platform to abut the Amtrak ROW and position the platform immediately adjacent to the existing Metro station entrance. Bus bays, kiss-and-ride, and short-term parking would occupy the rest of the space between the railroad and Ellin Road, suitable for future redevelopment and with logical circulation for both cars and pedestrians.

2013 Purple Line design, with the LRT platform as close as possible to the existing station entrance; bus bays and short-term parking configured around ‘normal’ signalized intersections.

Original Purple Line design for New Carrollton.

The original concept also included an extension of the existing WMATA station tunnel, new vertical circulation to connect passengers between the bus bays/LRT station to an extension of the existing tunnel to WMATA/Amtrak/MARC/South Side development.

As the Purple Line finally started construction, the contractor and State of Maryland agreed to several design changes to save money, particularly notable at Silver Spring. The contractor also put forward an Alternative Technical Concept for New Carrollton, which the State accepted.

As WMATA is involved in station planning to integrate the Purple Line at transfer stations, some of their Board of Directors presentations have hinted at the alternative designs.

Alt. Concept for New Carrollton, via WMATA. I believe the red box indicates the future north side joint development area.

The new layout limits costs by retaining the existing entrance (6 in the image above) and avoiding alterations to the pedestrian bridge. Bus bays and parking are re-arranged to allow the LRT station and tail tracks to shift north alongside Ellin Road.

Two concerns with the new design: first, the Purple Line platform is now further away from the Metro station entrance, asking more walking of passengers making the transfer. Second, the design doesn’t improve on the current north-side passenger experience – theres no sense of destination. Third, the barriers around the LRT station and tracks (including retaining walls) means that pedestrian circulation to the potential development sites to the north are limited and indirect.

All pedestrians from points north must use either the existing pedestrian bridge or the LRT entrance via the far side of Ellin Road/Harkins Road

Ellin Road’s current condition as a suburban stroad isn’t welcoming to pedestrians, so this hardly seems like a loss under the circumstances. But the potential of New Carrollton as a walkable place depends on the quality of the walk to and from the station.

Most of the parking shown here is part of future phases of the WMATA Joint Development, so this isn’t a permanent condition. Additionally, the developer’s efforts to improve the south side bus bays is encouraging. Still, there’s a big contrast between the importance of place to the development team (as shown on the south side) and the incentives to shave costs by the Purple Line team on the north.

More charts from my obsessive Metro trip tracking

After fiddling with my spreadsheet full of tracking the individual metro railcars I’ve ridden, I’ve got a few more charts to show my year-plus worth of Metro trips.

Part of the reason I didn’t have these charts before is that dealing with time as a field in Excel/Google sheets is kinda a pain. It’s not always a clear number, but I was nevertheless able to sort it out.

So, some charts:

Trip Distribution: What does my overall trip distribution look like? Surprise, surprise! It’s peak-heavy.

The red lines indicate the break points for WMATA’s fare changes. A few obvious trends emerge:

Most of my rides are during the peak, right around peak commuting times.
Most of my off-peak riders are mid-day, using Metro to attend out of office work meetings, etc.
My PM commute is bi-modal, often due to two separate trips as I usually do day-care pickup.
Very few evening trips (again, likely thanks to that day-care pickup)

Railcar Distribution: One of the other observations was the unequal distribution of railcars across the system, particularly for the 3000 series.

I made these distribution charts for each rail car series. For example, here is the 6000 series:

You can see I’ve ridden cars across the entire 6000 series fleet. I’ve ridden in two of those cars five times each. As of the creation of this chart, I’ve ridden in 97 of the 192 cars in the 6000 series.

The distribution of my rides in the 7000 series is different:

The pattern is different, due to the continual expansion of the 7000 series fleet. The lower number cars are older and have this been around longer, and with more chances for me to ride them. And the distribution reflects that (note that this chart goes up to the eventual size of the 7000 fleet, which is not yet in full service).

But if you look at the 3000 series, the pattern is different:

As you can see, I haven’t ridden many cars above number ~3150. The reason is that I seldom ride the Red Line, and most of those cars appear to be isolated on the Red Line:

(Apologies for the automatically adjusting vertical scale) Obviously, this is not a huge sample, but the only Red Line 3000-series trips I’ve taken are on the older half of the fleet.

The Red Line is the most isolated line on the system. Also, I ride it the least (and therefore am unlikely to pick up small changes to the fleet management practices).

The next big fleet milestone will be the arrival of the full set of 7000 series railcars, along with the retirement of the 5000 series. That will probably trigger the last round of shifting yard assignments for a given fleet until the arrival of the proposed 8000 series.

One year of tracking my Metro trips

Three months wasn’t enough for me, I needed to spend an entire year compulsively tracking my Metro rides. I know I’m an outlier on this, but it’s been a fun way to ‘gamify’ my commute.

Some fun facts from a year on the rails:

The newest car: 7547 (August 30, 2018)
The oldest car: 2000 (November 9, 2017)
Most frequent car: five trips on 5088, interestingly all of them Orange Line rides.
882 total unlinked trips
592 unique railcars; of which:
- 373 I’ve ridden in once
- 160 I’ve ridden in twice
- 48 I’ve ridden in three times, etc…

Or, to put it in visual terms:

Given the ever-shifting total size of the fleet (thanks to both new car deliveries and old car retirements), my best guess is that I’ve ridden at least once in 50.8% of the WMATA fleet over the past year.

Some fun observations:

Lots of 5000 series cars are now out of service. Some reporting suggests only 62 out of the original 192 5000 series cars remain in service. I’ve recorded trips on 75 unique 5k cars, some of which are surely retired by now.

Railcar types are not evenly distributed across the network: Of my total rides (opposed to unique rail cars), 41% are on 7000 series train, an increase from my trip share after 3 months. Some of that is surely due to 5k car retirements and ongoing 7k deliveries, but some might also be due to my changing commute and because the railcars are not evenly distributed across the entire network.

For example, a large portion of the 3000-series fleet appears to mostly stay on the Red Line. I’ve recorded lots of trips on cars in the 3000-3150 range (none of them on the Red Line), and far fewer on 3150+.

I ride the Red Line the least often, and thus don’t often encounter those cars, and given that the Red Line is the most isolated in the network, I’m not sure how frequently those cars ‘migrate’ to other rail yards.

Midway through this year, my toddler started at a new daycare located on the Green/Yellow lines. My old commute, both to/from work as well as daycare, was located entirely along the Orange/Blue/Silver trunk. And while the 7k cars are used all over the system, riding the Green Line more often sure seems to mean more rides on 6k trains (only 9.2% of my rides in December; compared to 16% now).

Unlinked trips by Line

Adding in more Green/Yellow trips subtly changes the fleet mix. My rides on the Green Line are almost exclusively on 6k or 7k trains. The only exception (for two trips) occurred during the concurrent Major Improvement Projects on both the Red Line and the BL/OR/SV between August 11-26 2018, which surely scrambled all sorts of fleet practices.

Railcar share by Line; total trips by line at the top

I ride least frequently on the Red Line, but even that small sample shows a pattern of only riding 7k and 3k cars. Likewise, some of the 3000 series cars on the Red Line tend to stay there.

The vast majority of my trips are weekday trips. My weekend use has dramatically declined. Part of that is certainly my lifestyle, pushing a stroller around. But poor weekend service with extensive track work doesn’t help.

Still, fare policy impacts my rides. Since obtaining the SelectPass, I find myself far more likely to take incremental short trips. For example, a two stop rail trip just to beat the heat instead of walking? No problem.

Methodology:

I use a simple Google form to collect the data. I only collect two bits of information via the form: the car number and line color (I do also have an open-ended text field for any notes). Submitting data via the form adds a timestamp. This helps minimize the data input.

I considered adding additional data fields, such as origin/destination station, but opted not to do so. As a result, I don’t have any information on fares, delays, most frequent stations, etc.

I collect data on unlinked trips, so any single journey with a transfer is recorded as two unlinked trips. I’ve also (occasionally) moved cars on a single trip due to a hot car, and those trips are recorded as unlinked trips.

Also, my riding habits are not random. Aside from my regular commuting routes, I’m often riding to or from daycare with my toddler. Traveling with a stroller puts open space at a premium, which means I’m more likely to pick the 7th and 8th cars on the train when riding with the stroller. This might not matter much with the older railcars, but might skew the data a bit with the 7000 series and the A/B cars.

More train doors and wider doors will help WMATA capacity

It’s always fun to stumble across official analysis that mirrors your own – even if some of the conclusions differ.

With a hat tip to Kurt Raschke, I came across this document outlining WMATA’s challenges in providing capacity in the core of the system. Most of the white paper focuses on potential increases in rail capacity from changing WMATA’s signalling system from the current fixed-block system to a CBTC-based moving block system (they do not find a large practical boost in capacity from such a change).

The document is part of making the long-term case for additional rail tunnels through downtown. In order to justify that expense, they are addressing some of the preliminary alternatives to squeeze more capacity out of the existing system (organization before electronics before concrete). From the executive summary:

As train and station congestion worsens, a question logically posed by stakeholders and the public is” “Why can’t Metrorail add more trains to relieve the crowding?” The fundamental purpose of this White Paper is to present the root causes of Metrorail capacity constraints that limit service expansion in the core.

One thing that jumped out at me was the suggestion of procuring new rail cars with more doors and wider doors – a suggestion I’ve made before. More doors can better handle boarding and alighting, reducing station dwell times, and thereby improving both capacity and reliability. The benefits are substantial (emphasis added):

[T]he benefits in terms of reduced dwell times for a 60 second dwell time would likely be in the range of 8-12 seconds (a 20-30% reduction in that portion of the dwell associated with passenger alighting/boarding with no effect on the base door cycle time dwell component of about 20 seconds). Assuming all cars of all trains have four doors per side, this is equivalent to a throughput gain of about 2 trains per hour.

The white paper also includes this table (which bears a striking resemblance to one I put together several years ago):

WMATA Capacity Analysis, comparison of ingress/egress for rail cars in peer systems.

Despite the obvious benefits of this change, the white paper downplays the potential for increasing the system’s overall capacity. Addressing them one by one:

As shown in Table 9, relative to car length, the boarding and alighting capacity of Metrorail vehicles closely matches the capabilities of peer systems’’ vehicles. WMATA’s rolling stock matches the median of those sampled for both the number of doors per unit car length, and the total door width per unit car length, though both of these values are slightly below the mean. While procuring or modifying vehicles to increase the number and size of doors may conceivably increase the rate at which passengers could board and alight, it would be an unconventional method for increasing total passenger carrying capacity.

I wouldn’t agree with the statement that all of these railcars closely match. In the rightmost column (inches of door width per foot of car length), you’ll see that the busiest of WMATA’s peers have a door capacity 50% greater than WMATA, or more. The difference between WMATA’s 2 in/foot and Toronto’s 3.2 in/foot is huge.

Second, the major benefit to adding more doors isn’t an increase in absolute capacity, but to improve reliability and the passenger experience. More doors means a smoother flow of passengers on and off trains. Faster station dwells, particularly at crowded transfer points, reduces the likelihood of passengers holding doors or missing a train because of a lack of time to board.

Next: the time required to make this change.

Although this rolling stock change could be implemented incrementally as each Metrorail fleet type is retired, full implementation would require over 40 years due to the life cycles of the multiple Metrorail fleets.

All the more reason to get started with a four-door design for the next rail car series! And another reason to consider the design of the 7000 series a missed opportunity.

What about lost seating?

Second, implementing a new railcar design with four doors per side would result in a net seat reduction of approximately 28 percent, requiring more customers to stand.

I’m not sure where this calculation comes from; a cab car (A-car) from WMATA’s 7000 series seats 64 with the current arrangement and 58 with a longitudinal-only seating array. Toronto’s Rocket cab cars feature a similar rail car size (75 feet long) and feature four wide doors per side; they still manage to provide 53 seats, representing a 17% decrease over the 7000 series seated capacity.

WMATA’s own actions show that seated capacity isn’t a primary consideration. WMATA has been slowly reducing the number of seats per rail car series and increasing standing room with each new version; the original 1000 series had seating for 82; the 2000 series sat 76 per car; the 5000 series seats 68, and the 6000 series seats 64.

Given the stated goal of this white paper to determine potential for long-term solutions to WMATA’s core capacity challenges, I hope they don’t discard the idea of adding more doors to the future railcar fleet. Combined with some other suggestions, there’s a great opportunity to improve both the system’s capacity and reliability.

Short, clear station names vital to transit system wayfinding

WMATA map with long station names: “they’re not station names, they’re committee meeting minutes.”

The folks at London Reconnections have a new podcast – On Our Line. The second episode features a long conversation with two experts on transit map design and understanding, Max Roberts and Peter Lloyd.

The discussion hits on several topics about the challenges in transit map design, particularly for complicated networks. They also discuss objective measures of success in design (e.g. timing users in finding their way from point A to b on a map) and the conflicts with graphic design ideas. Another challenge is the future of the paper map and the seemingly inevitable move towards electronic map displays of some kind.

A few anecdotes stood out to me:

Touch Screen Maps: These might seem to be an obvious technological solution to mapping challenges with complex networks, frequent service changes, language barriers, etc. New York installed some touch screen maps as a part of a pilot program in 2014; despite rave reviews, no one seemed to use them. The podcast conversation (at 37:50) hits on the problems: the ad-supported model means the kiosks look like ads. Perhaps more interesting is the embarrassment of a rider using the kiosk, requiring a level of interaction that physically signals to everyone else on the platform that ‘I don’t know where I’m going.’ A static, printed map allows for consumption of information in a less obvious manner.

Station Names: Asked for examples of the worst transit maps they could think of, WMATA’s marathon-length station names are an obvious choice (at 1:07:20). Short station names are important to efficient, clear, and effective wayfinding. Roberts on WMATA’s map: “some of the stations – they’re not station names, they’re committee meeting minutes.”

File that one under “it’s funny because it’s true.”

Using the map to influence routing: Roberts obliquely mentions working with WMATA (48 minutes in) on changing the map to encourage different routing, presumably a reference to adjusting the map in order to encourage Blue Line riders from Virginia to transfer and use the Yellow Line (with excess capacity) to travel into DC.

It’s one thing for the map (or trip planner) to influence your route; it’s another for that decision to be made by an algorithm completely removed from human interaction. With driverless cars, it’s still unclear how humans will react to navigating networks in that way – adjusting human behavior is challenging enough.

City Block

a work in progress…