Wiehle-Reston Metro Station Is Doing Pretty Well, Despite Metro Chaos: Report

RESTON, VA — To most observers, Metro has been an unmitigated disaster for at least the last year or so. But the Wiehle-Reston East Metro station appears to be doing pretty well in terms of ridership, even as the rest of the Silver Line is struggling, according to a new report.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that Metro's Silver Line has had "mixed success" since the first five stations opened in July 2014, with the stations around Tysons Corner struggling to attract ridership.

But the Wiehle-Reston station at the end of the line appears to actually be close to its projected ridership, the Post reported. And Shyam Kannan, managing director of planning at Metro, attributed that to booming development in the area.

"If you head out to Wiehle, you’ll see nothing but construction cranes," he was quoted as saying in the report. "All of that portends many thousands of trips on Metro."

Just a year after the Wiehle-Reston station opened, ridership was actually outperforming projections, with 9,197 passengers using the station on an average weekday in June 2015, according to a WTOP report. That's 1,000 more than what was projected. Metro spokeswoman Morgan Dye called the station the "Silver Line's commuting powerhouse."

But as we reported in March, the station is not immune to Metro's struggles. Ridership has declined by 12 percent between July and December last year throughout the Metro system, and similarly, ridership at Wiehle-Reston dipped 13.4 percent year over year in the last quarter of 2016.

In fact, it was the biggest decline among the five Silver Line stations by a mile, although the fact that the Reston station had a lot farther to drop than the other stations could factor into that.

And Wiehle-Reston didn't drop as much as stations on the Orange line. Vienna saw ridership decline by a staggering 41.2 percent over that period.

Until Metro gets a handle on SafeTrack and constant delays, Wiehle-Reston is likely to see further declines along with the rest of Metro. But it remains the "commuting powerhouse" of the Silver Line for now, and that's a hopeful sign as officials prepare to open stations at Reston Town Center and Herndon.

Image via Wikimedia user Antony-22