Arlington Metro Ridership is Plummeting

ARLINGTON, VA — Metro's ongoing problems and the current SafeTrack project to fix chronic safety issues throughout the system appears to be having a big impact on riders in Arlington: ridership at stations on the Orange/Silver and Blue/Yellow lines throughout the county have plunged this past April-June compared to the same April-June period last year, according to a report from the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission.

The NVTC is holding a meeting Thursday, Sept. 1, and one of the items on the agenda is "regional transit performance." Materials posted online prior to the meeting provide figures on Metro ridership in Virginia from fiscal 2015 through 2016, and the story they tell isn't pretty.

The drop was particularly pronounced on the Silver/Orange Line stations in Arlington County: Ballston, Clarendon, Court House, Rosslyn and Virginia Square (as well as East Falls Church, which was included because it is also on the Silver Line). In April-June 2016, those stations saw a total ridership of 6,179,312 compared to 7,274,984 over the same period last year -- meaning that in the last year, those stations have shed more than a million riders and 15 percent of its ridership.

The drop was the worst in Clarendon, where ridership dropped from 776,734 to 612,037 in April-June, a massive 21.2 percent decline.

The decline on the Blue/Yellow line in Arlington wasn't quite as pronounced, but it still wasn't good. Arlington Blue/Yellow line stations (Arlington Cemetery, Crystal City, National Airport, Pentagon and Pentagon City but excluding Rosslyn) had 8,231,955 riders during the April-June period in 2015 versus 7,400,896 in 2016, a 10 percent dip.

It appears that Metro riders are heeding WMATA's request that riders simply stop using their service as SafeTrack continues. The "Surges" have hit the Orange, Silver, Blue and Yellow lines particularly hard -- the Blue and Yellow lines are enduring one right now, and a huge 42-day surge is about to strike the Orange Line on Sept. 15.

The decrease in Arlington appears to follow a region-wide trend, as the NVTC report notes that "most systems experienced decreased ridership in FY2016, resulting in an overall 6.1 percent decline from FY2015 to FY2016."

Image via WMATA