When the Washington Commanders‘ record-shattering stadium deal that could end up costing D.C. $6.6 billion or more in cash, land, and tax breaks was approved last summer, one of the many unanswered questions was how to get 65,000 people in and out of the former RFK Stadium site on game days. The district’s Metro transit agency now has a preliminary plan, and it looks like Commanders fans should get ready to take the bus:
Metro is recommending a new bus rapid transit line, called the Gold Line, with dedicated lanes along H Street NW and Benning Road NE to connect the stadium to Union Station. That would include setting aside and even painting red bus lanes to keep buses moving and out of traffic. A new transit center near the stadium would serve as a hub to handle large crowds and connect riders.
Bus rapid transit isn’t a terrible idea: Many cities are turning to it as a cheap way to get all the benefits of light rail — a dedicated right-of-way, fast travel times, quick boarding and unboarding — without having to spend big on installing train tracks. The Metro study estimates that even just adding an extra subway station by the Commanders stadium would cost $1 billion, and wouldn’t do much to add capacity since it would just dump football fans onto the same trains that they can currently board at the nearby Stadium-Armory station. (Though it would at least allow more throughput of train travelers; the Stadium-Armory station can only handle 14,000 people an hour, so if half the fans at Commanders games took the Metro, some could end up waiting two hours just to board a train.)
Metro’s BRT plan promises service “as frequent as” every three minutes (which at 100 passengers per bus could clear out 2,000 fans an hour, not enough to put much of a dent in the crowds streaming out of games) and “fast 12-15 mph speeds,” which isn’t actually very fast. (Metro trains average 33 mph and max out at 75 mph.) The report doesn’t provide a price tag for all this, but does cite “a $600 million Transportation Improvement Fund that is currently unfunded but could be funded over 30 years to support transit-related improvements to the campus.” Looks like the total public cost of the Commanders stadium is likely back over $7 billion — at least, unless the team figures out a way to build even more translucent parking garages.
Is football really this important?
I wonder how this compares to the ROI on building more parking garages and charging a fortune to park. It’s crap for the environment, but it puts the cost on the stadium user instead of the transit district.
I guess it depends on how this BRT line operates the other 355 days of the year. If it serves many residences and businesses M-F, it could lead to fewer drivers (less traffic and pollution) and higher property values (more tax revenue).
Could be a 500% ROI.
https://govfacts.org/housing-infrastructure/transportation/public-transportation-transit/the-case-for-investing-in-public-transit/
I’m generally a fan of public transit, but that “500% ROI” claim appears to be a return in terms of economic *activity*, which isn’t at all the same as actual tax receipts. Though it’s hard to say for sure since the linked document has no source for the figure:
https://www.publictransportation.org/transit-benefits/grows-communities/
Also, the stadium site already has a Metro subway station that serves fine to get people there on non-game days; the rest of the year, running a BRT line there would be mostly redundant.
There’s yet to be a public transportation system that isn’t state funded and seemingly always in debt. There is no ROI to investing in public transit even if it is important and has benefits.
It could be argued that public transportation recently has led to more development and higher property values or economic activity but there’s no guarantee it will -and it costs a lot to run.
Sure, public transit is a public benefit, and doesn’t necessarily have to have a monetary return on investment. But that doesn’t mean you can’t look at some transit projects and say “There are better ways to get more for less.”
Well, what those numbers don’t acknowledge is if the Commanders continue to have 5-12 records like they did last year, those ‘fans’ won’t be waiting until the end of the game, so you can start moving people earlier.
Problem solved!
Just put Snyder back in charge of the team and you really don’t have to move anyone to the stadium.
Glad I could help with this. Think of the environmental benefits of not having any fans go to games.
Couple notes:
1. The BRT corridor has been an idea for a very long time and has tons of benefits outside the stadium. The bus routes currently using the street are some of the busiest in the system. This was the path of the H St Streetcar project which never got built correctly, and the BRT should continue on to the K street transitway on the other side of Union Station which also was largely ready to build ~10 years ago and got canceled, and would bring people across the city every day and cover trips that aren’t especially convenient to use the subway for.
It is a good project regardless of gameday use and should have been built correctly 10-20 years ago. H St is a commercial and residential corridor that doesn’t have any nearby rail stations except stadium-armory on one end (which isn’t that close to the commercial corridor). DC is not like NYC where there are subway stations most everywhere :)
2. The gameday use case is to bring people from the stadium to Union Station and the Red Line. Otherwise, those fans would have to clog up the blue/orange/silver lines and transfer twice just to get from the stadium to the Red Line or commuter rail. So this project improves capacity on the rail system too by giving people a direct connection to the busy Red Line and commuter rail.
3. The document says they are moving forward upgrades to the existing station to handle more capacity, so your 14K people per hour stat is probably low. Also, in theory, BRT can run more often than every three minutes, this is achieved in other countries – the limitation is how quickly people can load and unload and how much you spend on service.
From a public subsidy POV the question is not just the cost of this project (which is a good idea imho even if no stadium were built) but also how ongoing operations will be paid for / if there would be any subsidy from the Commanders. Managing the crowds and directing traffic in various directions will take a lot of staff from Metro above and beyond normal operations.
It would definitely be interesting to see what a budget would look like for BRT service with and without the new stadium accommodations. There’s a long history of transit infrastructure being approved for big development projects on the grounds of “but other people can use it too!” — sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most effective way of spending transit dollars.
Also, to be clear, the three-minute headways were from Metro’s plan, not me. More frequent buses would be great, though as you note also more expensive. And even then it’s still not going to be able to move more than a few thousand fans per game.