Reston Metro Ridership is Plummeting

RESTON, VA — Metro's ongoing problems and the current SafeTrack project to fix chronic safety issues throughout the system appear to be having a big impact on riders in Reston: ridership at the Wiehle-Reston East station saw an 18 percent decline 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 picture they paint isn't pretty.

In total, ridership was 1,104,476 at the Wiehle-Reston East station in April-June 2016, a drop of more than 240,000 riders and 18 percent compared to April-June of 2015, which saw a ridership total of 1,347,981.

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 and Silver lines particularly hard -- and a huge 42-day Surge is about to impact the Orange Line starting Sept. 15.

The decrease at Reston 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