The DC Metro's Least Used Station

hello it's Friday April 21st of 2023 and today I'm on a silver line train on the way to Loudoun Gateway which I consider to be the DC Metro's loneliest station Loudoun Gateway station is the penultimate stop on the newly opened Silverline extension to Ashburn and sits just after Dulles Airport Station When approaching from the city the station was built as a park and ride and is located in the middle of a highway interchange which doesn't provide much room for potential future development there's nothing of note near the station other than the Dulles train yard but you can't even walk to it there is no town center nearby and no major stores either and the closest houses are about two miles away hmm doors opening so I'm gonna go to the mezzanine now and then I of course need to check out the parking garage as it is the biggest attraction in these parts these sound barriers at least really help block the sound of the highway from the station platform so that is appreciated I'm gonna take one of the elevators up foreign why there are two elevators here like I feel like the station is way over built for its purpose there's also four bathrooms which are always welcome but four is a lot for this station here's the inside of one of the bathrooms they are very nice and clean and it seems like they're cleaned twice a day or so what a pleasant walking experience along this bridge it's nice and quiet not a highway under us at all I feel like Loudoun Gateway has to be one of if not the least used station on the DC Metro as I've barely seen anybody here but sadly there aren't any recent statistics so I can't know for sure also these benches must be nice to sit on with all the planes and cars and stuff wait I'm just going to measure the decibel levels here one second so we've got about 70 to 80 decibels which isn't that bad but they're not pleasant sounds either I just feel like the more I explore this station the more questions I have like why is there a surface parking lot here that no one's ever gonna use because there's a bigger parking garage nearby and why are there so many bus Bays if there's only three Rush Hour routes that stop at this station this is quite just way too overbuilt there's also some bike lockers if you want to bike on like the two-lane road here with no shoulder here's what you've all been waiting for the Loudon Gateway station parking what everybody here sees when they first arrive also for the record there are like 300 spots available on each level which is like 1800 available spots at least there are EV charging parts and accessible spots well they have to be accessible spots but the EV is nice now I just gotta go to the top and see what it's like this one six why is it six stories that's too many stories for a parking lot at least you get a nice view of the Metro below wow it is very echo in here so here's the top floor as you can see the top floor is very well utilized with approximately zero cars parked here at this time I wonder what the cost benefit was to CO2 pollution of building this parking lot for everybody to drive here instead of driving to work like I feel like building this parking lot produced more CO2 than just everybody driving to work for 20 years straight but I'm not sure this is probably a good place for plane spotting like you can see the Dulles Tower from here foreign [Music] for the fuel-efficient vehicles as there aren't really any spots available oh wait this place should be like super busy now it's 2 p.m on a Friday everybody should have come here in the morning and parked and taken the metro to work but that hasn't really worked out at least so far I don't think it ever will maybe I'm just being a pessimist there's also some motorcycle racks for the many cyclists that are definitely gonna cycle here so I made it to the main road as you can see it serves many businesses here and uh different local stores it's nice to have a metro station near these sort of places so yeah I feel like that's it for this station really I'm just still wondering like is this station really necessary like couldn't anyone driving here just drive to Ashburn one stop down or Dulles the other way was it a waste of money I'm not sure I just feel like this happens in North America all too often where a station is built with just a big parking lot next to it and nothing else and that really limits development and doesn't help for much ridership either you could probably fit thousands of people in an apartment building the size of this parking garage that could all majorly benefit from the very nice Metro access but instead you're just supporting the suburbanites who drive everywhere and drive here some of them to take the metro to work but yeah that's all from me for today hope you guys all enjoyed watching and see you in the next video

Channel: Nathan's Transit Journeys

Views: 3,410

Keywords:

Id: ORePPtb-_xM

Length: 5min 35sec (335 seconds)

Published: Sat May 13 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/walkandtalkk]

I am respectfully asking someone to let me know which station this video refers to so I don't have to succumb to the clickbait. Thank you.

[u/aj2000gm]

I imagine one day there will be some good development around that station. There is room, and a bunch of apartments for folks working in Tysons/DC/Arlington could do well and boost ridership.

[u/MarkinDC24]

I like where this young man is going. Transit videos are fairly common on Youtube for other countries. In our Nation's Capital, we should have tons of videos of our transportation system. Moreover, I just finished a trip in London, where I rode the Elizabeth line - a new (train) line for London. It blew me away (none of our local transit blows me away).

Keep doing what you are doing Nathan!

[u/tealccart]

Ha, kinda love this video!

Would be curious to see station usage on a Wed (peak in office) or Sat (weekend ridership has recovered more than weekday post Covid).

[u/greetedworm]

I'm sure there are a lot of factors at play here. They definitely overbuilt it with the assumption that there will be future development, also all the parking probably made perfect sense in a pre-COVID world where everyone was in the office.

[u/J-photo]

This face is the phrase “well akkkksually…”

[u/moonbunnychan]

I hope they built all the bus bays in the hope that Loudoun's buses may someday stop sucking so much. Outside of commuting hours it's not particularly convenient to get to any of the metro stations by bus and most of Loudoun's busses in general stop running at 7pm.

[u/Foolgazi]

Wasn’t this station intended to be a park & ride? I don’t think it was envisioned as the anchor of multi-use development. That said I am a little surprised no one’s using it, although with the line work/need to transfer to a bus shuttle in McLean/Ballston this might be a bad month to gauge usage.

[u/resdivinae]

Dumb video. Key to good infrastructure is thinking ahead and anticipating future development. Take, for example, Inwood Station in NYC, built in the early 1900s. This station was planted out in the middle of a grazing field. Now look at Inwood today.