Silver Line Turns 1, Serves as Catalyst for Growth

This Sunday, July 26, Metrorail will celebrate the one-year anniversary of its Silver Line, and Northern Virginians — particularly in Tysons Corner, Reston and McLean — will celebrate a day that began a complete revitalization of the region.

“Whatever other benefits the Silver Line has already had, or will have in the future, it has clearly begun to prove its worth as a primary factor in economic development decisions,” said Gerald Gordon, President of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA).

The trains have delivered numerous businesses to the area, according to Gordon. For example, Intelsat and Cvent moved their headquarters to Tysons Corner specifically because of the Silver Line’s added accessibility.

FCEDA Vice President Alan Fogg also noted that various developers have submitted plans for approximately 45 million square feet of space for commercial and residential purposes, most of which would be located within a quarter-mile of one of the four Tysons Corner Silver Line stations.

The county’s early projection is that 100,000 people will be living in Tysons Corner and 200,000 people will be working there by the year 2050.

The Washington Post listed six different apartment developments along the Silver Line expected to continue growing thanks to their new adjacency to public transit.

As for the train line itself? It’s been a successful first year, especially at the Wiehle-Reston station, according to Metro data shared with WTOP.

An average of nearly 9,200 passengers entered the Metro system at the Reston station on an average weekday in June — 1,000 more than 2004 projections in an Environmental Impact Statement. Less than two months after its opening day, the Reston station averaged more than 8,000 daily entries, and had already hit 60 percent of its projected daily ridership for the first year, according to WTOP.

Between the five new stations on the Silver Line, Metro estimates there were 34,000 entering-and-exiting passengers on an average weekday last month. When the second phase of the Silver Line project is complete (including a stop at Washington Dulles International Airport), projected ridership on the Silver Line tops 68,000 daily passengers by 2025, according to the data shared with WTOP.

With that said, the four Tysons stations are all slightly underperforming, according to initial projections, but not at alarming rates. It is also expected that as the Tysons area continues to flourish with more high-end living spaces and retail options, the traffic at those stations will make an exponential rise.