It’s been a year since Metro opened its long-awaited Silver Line Phase II project — six stations expanding Metrorail out to Dulles Airport and beyond, into eastern Loudoun County. Ridership at those stations is still fairly limited compared to other parts of the rail system, though some locals say they’re excited about new access to Dulles Airport. More sustained ridership gains, experts say, will come as mixed-use development around the stations heats up.

“Overall, I think we’re pretty much right where we thought we would be from a calculation perspective of ridership, and of the commercial inventory, and of the demographics,” says Michael Hartnett, senior director of research at real estate firm JLL and the author of a new report on ridership and development a year after the completion of the Silver Line Phase II project.

The opening of the six new stations last year came with much fanfare, but also some uncertainty about how ridership on the new 11.5 miles of track would fare amidst the post-pandemic shift away from five-day-per-week commuting into D.C. or Tysons.

“We had what we hope is just a once-in-100 years pandemic that significantly impacted the progress in terms of transit-oriented development and transit ridership in the region, especially along the Silver Line,” says Stewart Schwartz with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which advocates for transit and walkable communities in the D.C. region.

Both Schwartz and Hartnett agree the clearest ridership win is the rail connection to Dulles Airport.

More than a million riders have now passed through the airport station, about a third of the total ridership across all of the new stations. (A Metro spokesperson said the number was now just over 3.5 million, and noted that airlines have said they plan to add flights to their Dulles schedules as a result of the immediate access to the rail line.)

A DCist/WAMU callout about riders’ experiences showed positive — sometimes glowing — praise for the airport extension.

“I’m on a flight from Seattle to Dulles as I type this and will be taking Silver to Red to get home in Silver Spring,” one reader responded on X. “Six dollars for that trip is such an incredible steal for how much hassle it saves.”

Many respondents emphasized the ease of taking the Silver Line to the airport instead of an expensive rideshare or car trip, even though many said the trip took longer.

“Long but 1000% better than taxi/Uber/bumming a ride off your incredibly kind friend,” one rider wrote on Instagram.

Some riders also reported riding the Silver Line extension from closer-in parts of the Metro area to see friends, family, significant others, and even service dog training located further out. A handful said they were using the Silver Line to reverse commute from the urban core to employers in the suburbs.

“I commute once a week from DC to Chantilly for a new job,” said one rider on X. “It takes a while, but without the Silver Line I either a) wouldn’t have been able to accept the job, which was a big career improvement; b) would have had to buy a car; c) would have had to move to Virginia.”

A ‘generational investment’

Those anecdotes are generally in line with what Hartnett sees as the role of the Silver Line in the immediate term.

“I think where you’ll see more of the ridership over the next few years is that reverse commuter, especially as we know that traffic is not getting much better and that there is an opportunity now for those inside the Beltway commuters to have another option,” he said.

Future riders will likely be from newly-built residential developments around the new stations, but those will take longer to materialize, Hartnett says.

Apart from Dulles, ridership at the other five stations is modest, with some averaging just a few dozen entries during peak morning commute times.

“As with any new rail line, we expect ridership will increase as economic growth and new travel patterns develop in the area,” Metro spokesperson Jordan Pascale wrote in an emailed statement. “The Silver Line is a generational investment, and we look forward to serving millions of customers in the years to come.”

Ridership is up at the six new stations by nearly 80% on weekdays and more than 70% on weekends since December 2022, the first full month after Phase II opened, according to the JLL report — a notable increase, but one from a low baseline. On the system as a whole, Metro has reported an increase in average ridership levels from year to year since its low in 2021, but is still well below its yearly average before COVID-19.

One potential stumbling block: The transit agency is facing a looming fiscal cliff next year, which could force the agency to dramatically cut service if it does not receive the financial help it needs from D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Accelerating development around stations

Incorporating Metro into commutes and other activities is also a major paradigm shift for people used to getting around by car, and it’s not going to happen overnight, Schwartz notes. But he says getting more people to take Metro in western Fairfax and eastern Loudoun will be critical to achieving the D.C. region’s ambitious goals to cut emissions in half by 2030.

“It’s also essential that we continue to accelerate development near Metro stations so that we can contribute to reducing greenhouse gasses from transportation,” Schwartz says.

Getting to that transit-oriented future will require more than just building the Silver Line extension — it’ll also mean a concerted effort to add mixed-use commercial and residential development near the new stations. That work is in “early innings,” Hartnett says, noting that the only station that currently has significant mixed-use development already built is Reston Town Center.

“As you make your way out, especially past Dulles to Ashburn, that’s where there’s less and less of an active, built environment,” walkable near the stations, he said.

But that reality is likely to change. While traditional suburban office parks are increasingly a thing of the past, there’s high demand for mixed-use residential and retail developments, Hartnett says.

Hartnett’s research found that the population within a half mile of the new Silver Line stations is projected to grow by 11% in the next five years, a critical interval that will determine the shape and scope of development. (Northern Virginia as a whole is expected to have less than 1% growth overall in the same period.)

“The arrival of transit may not see the ridership numbers expected over the next few years, but it will carry a disproportionate share of the population growth just due to all the development happening or that will happen along that line,” Hartnett explains.

Several such large-scale projects are already in the works, according to the JLL report.

Schwartz notes that another key to helping people see the Silver Line extension as a viable transit option is making areas around the stations — most of which are currently surrounded by major roads — safer and more walkable. His organization, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, and other bike and pedestrian advocates have run into significant roadblocks in pushing for those changes in the original Silver Line stations, which opened nearly a decade ago.

“Tysons [station] would be much more successful had they turned those arterial roads into true urban boulevards that were not as wide, that were safer to cross and felt more humane,” he said.

Those challenges may be replicating themselves in the new stations.

“You step out of the north side of the Reston station and you’re confronted with a high-speed road,” Schwartz notes. “In summertime it will be hot. You will feel exposed as a pedestrian. It creates a barrier between the station and the millions of square feet of development that are planned there.”

Schwartz is concerned that Loudoun’s sprawling data center industry could be in conflict with the goal of transit-oriented development around the new stations. The Loudoun Gateway station, for instance, is already within the noise zone for data centers, and the JLL report notes that there is no existing commercial real estate inventory nearby.