D.C. officials expressed an urgency Wednesday to begin preparing transit infrastructure for the opening in 2030 of the new Washington Commanders stadium on the old RFK Stadium campus.
The work will impact far more than the single, cramped Metro station nearby.
During a roundtable discussion with District leaders, Metro General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke laid out the need for improvements to the existing Stadium-Armory Metro stop, and touted a new rapid bus transit line with dedicated lanes.
In tandem, those will be key to getting tens of thousands of people to events at the coming stadium, Clarke said.
鈥淚 absolutely believe the first couple of experiences that people have going to a Commanders game, going to some of the first big events, is going to dictate how people feel about taking transit,鈥� D.C. Council member Charles Allen, who chairs the committee that oversees transportation projects, said. 鈥淪o, we don’t have an option to get it wrong. We have to get it right.鈥�
That’s why Clarke and other District leaders agreed that reaching a memorandum of understanding that lays out the roles, responsibilities and financials of these projects by July 23, the next Metro board meeting, is crucial.
鈥淚 think we’re all working towards that, and pretty optimistic,鈥� Clarke said. 鈥淭hen we鈥檝e got to work really hard on design, we鈥檝e got to work really hard on procurement, we鈥檝e got to work really hard on construction.”
Clarke said the stadium’s ability to attract blockbuster events will depend on the transit agency and its ability to move people in and out of the complex.
鈥淲e’re not going to try to get, hosting the Super Bowl, we’re not going to try to host women’s World Cup, we’re not trying to get Taylor Swift and Beyonc茅 back here. I mean, at the end of the day, Metro is going to be the key to the success. We understand the pressure on us,鈥� he said.
For the Stadium-Armory station, that means renovating the mezzanine and adding elevators to handle the increased demand. Clarke also talked about new street-level infrastructure to help manage the flow inside the station.
鈥淪o it’s very Disney-esque, where people feel like they’re constantly moving without actually going too far, if you know what I mean,鈥� Clarke said. 鈥淭hen we filter them where we need to go. That is a good example of what we need to do at the surface.鈥�
But Metro won鈥檛 rely entirely on its trains. The roundtable also discussed what鈥檚 been dubbed the Gold Line, which would run buses from Union Station to the stadium.
Construction estimates for bus line are in the $75 million range, District Department of Transportation Director Sharon Kershbaum said
The Gold Line is to run through the heart of the H Street corridor, and transportation leaders said the impact will be everything the streetcar was supposed to be.
鈥淭his is now going to be the east-west corridor that we never were able to accomplish on the streetcar,鈥� Kershbaum said.
鈥淭his is going to have frictionless service, because it will be center-running. So all of the issues 鈥� when a car double-parked and it stopped streetcar service 鈥� all of those things, we’ll be immune from. We are going to see the transportation service that was really never ever reached by streetcar achieved with this,鈥� she said.
The vision for the Gold Line goes beyond the handful of weekends when NFL football is played at the stadium, and beyond initial Union Station-stadium route. Transportation officials see the buses eventually traveling between the Benning Road Metro Station and Rosslyn, Virginia.
鈥淲e want the Gold Line to solve the cross-town problem we’ve had in this community for a long, long time,鈥� Clarke said.
That means providing access to the convention center and also solving the gridlock that fills up K Street NW every day. Clarke said coming up with dedicated lanes on K Street would actually be the most pivotal part of this new transit line.
鈥淭he downtown core of D.C. does not move, especially during p.m. rush hour,鈥� Clarke said. 鈥淚f you want people in Benning Road that may work, say on K Street, to have better transportation, solving K Street is equally as important, if not more important, because of time savings and reliability.鈥�
Officials did not specify a timeline for the full expansion, but it would not be completed by 2030.
Where it does run, Gold Line buses would travel in the middle lanes, to avoid what caused problems for the Streetcar, which could grind to a halt when cars would double park. Building out the Gold Line would mean more changes to the way cars move along H Street in Northeast.
鈥淵ou can’t do what you want to do and also keep all the parking,鈥� At-Large Council member Christina Henderson said.
鈥淭here’s intersections where we’re going to have to take turns away at certain intersections, maybe parking in certain places,鈥� Clarke said. 鈥淚n other places parking could be kept, because we’re looking at putting platforms.鈥�
Stadium-related transit construction will run far beyond H Street and the Stadium Armory stop.
鈥淲e do want to minimize outages, but there’s going to be significant outages to do this project,鈥� Clarke said.
鈥淚t’s all about where we can turn trains around and how to manage that,鈥� he added. 鈥淪o if we do an outage to Stadium Armory, what that really means is we’re impacting customers from New Carrollton and Largo all the way through the system, and some people that are west of the system that want to go east of Stadium Armory won’t be able to.鈥�
But with the project not even really in the design phase yet, it鈥檚 hard to plan out how and when those impacts will happen.
鈥淲e’ll be doing obviously overnight work,鈥� Clarke said. 鈥淲e’ll probably do some, what we call, early outs. Sometimes we’ll start at 10 o’clock at night. We might be able to do some single tracking on certain types of work. Other work is going to be complete shutdowns.”
鈥淎nd the question is, is that going to be X amount of weekends or is it going to be like a two-, three-, four-week block at a time,” he added. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got to work through all of that.鈥�
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