Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro) is no longer proposing a station at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial (RFK) Stadium site in D.C., where a new stadium complex is slated to be built for the Washington Commanders NFL team, according to news reports.
“Building a new rail station would cost about $1 billion and wouldn’t be done by the time the stadium is set to open in 2030, according to Metro projections,” NBC4 in Washington reported May 14. “Instead, officials want to make massive upgrades to the existing Stadium-Armory station, which serves the Blue, Orange and Silver lines [and is about a 10-minute walk from the RFK site]. Metro officials say they’ll need to double the capacity of that station to handle upwards of 30,000 riders before and after games.”
Among the recommendations that the media outlet said were reported at a WMATA Board meeting:
- “new elevators and escalators
- “new faregates
- “wider entrances
- “mezzanine walkways that better distribute riders across the platform”
Also proposed, NBC 4 said, is bus rapid transit; called the Gold Line, it would “go from the stadium to connect directly with Union Station and the Metro station there that serves the Red Line.”
“Without these measures, Metro warned it could take more than two hours to clear crowds after events at the stadium,” according to NBC 4.
Metro said it is “hoping to have an agreement in place with the District — and hundreds of millions of dollars committed to these upgrades — by the summer,” NBC4 reported. “Metro leaders said Thursday [May 14] they are working very closely with D.C. officials and the Commanders and that talks are going well. If this is done correctly, [Metro General Manager/CEO Randy] Clarke said, the new RFK site would become the most transit-oriented sports complex in the country.”
According to WUSA9, a CBS affiliate in Washington, D.C., the “estimated cost for improvements for Stadium-Amory and the Gold Line falls around $300 to $400 million. And the District is responsible for funding it.”
BACKGROUND
The Commanders, whose stadium is currently in Landover, Md., played at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium for 35 seasons, from 1961 to 1996. Located on East Capitol Street along the Anacostia River, it has been closed to the public since 2019; a new stadium complex is planned for the site.
The Council of the District of Columbia last fall voted 11-2 on the “$3.7 billion project to redevelop the RFK Stadium site in Ward 7,” WUSA9 reported Sept. 17. “The vote authorizes the use of $1.1 billion in taxpayer money to bring the football back to D.C.”
The project, the media outlet said, has “an ambitious transit goal: becoming the most public transportation-accessible NFL stadium.”
According to WUSA9, Charles Allen, DC Council member and Chair of the Council’s Transportation Committee, “is pushing hard to make Metro central to the gameday experience at the new stadium” with a goal “for more than 30,000 fans to arrive by rail on gamedays, a dramatic increase from current ridership levels.” Some 4,000-5,000 fans use Metro to get to the Landover stadium, and Seattle, “considered one of the most transit-friendly stadium locations in the NFL, only [has] about 9,000 fans arrive by train,” the media outlet reported.
“The idea is they’re going to take Metro and then they actually walk down this plaza right up to where the new stadium will be built,” WUSA9 quoted Allen as saying. This would require “a complete transformation of transit infrastructure” at the RFK site, according to the media outlet, which reported that Allen is calling for “a major overhaul of the existing Stadium-Armory Metro station [on the Blue Line; see map below] and potentially a second brand-new station on the opposite side of the RFK campus. He points to precedent from when the Washington Nationals first played at RFK Stadium.”
“We did it before when the Nationals first came to D.C.,” said Allen, according to WUSA9. “They played right here at RFK, and when that happened, we actually had tens of thousands that came by Metro to come to a Nats game.”
The rail expansion isn’t only “about accommodating football fans eight to ten days a year,” however, the media outlet reported. “The RFK redevelopment plan includes 6,000 to 8,000 new homes, which could bring 12,000 new residents to the area.” That part of the plan is slated to be finished by 2040.
According to WUSA9, “Allen said D.C. and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are finalizing a memorandum of understanding to launch a $2 million study examining what improvements are needed and how much they will cost.” A rail station alone, according to early estimates, “could cost ‘in the ballpark of hundreds of millions of dollars,’ though Allen acknowledges the price tag remains uncertain.”
According to WUSA9, the DC Council, to fund the expansion, “has already dedicated $20 million per year for the next 30 years from stadium revenue specifically for transit improvements. Allen said those future dollars are ‘bondable,’ meaning the city can borrow against them to fund construction now.”
The media outlet reported that Allen “wants the planning study completed within six months so construction can begin with enough time to finish before the stadium’s 2030 opening.” He also “argues the investment is necessary regardless of cost, saying the alternative—building parking garages and relying on cars—would create unbearable traffic congestion for both gamedays and the thousands of future residents.”
“We cannot afford not to do it,” Allen said, according to WUSA9.