There’s a lot we know about the forthcoming Commanders stadium at RFK. Plans say it will have 65,000 seats, be accompanied by 6,600 new homes and generate $4 billion in tax revenue.
One thing we don’t yet know: how fans will get there.
Local leaders expect a significant number of the estimated 65,000 fans coming to games to use public transit, but Metro (and outgoing Mayor Muriel Bowser) has already ruled out building a new rail station. The transit agency says a new station would likely cost over $1 billion, wouldn’t meaningfully expand rail capacity and wouldn’t even be completed in time for the stadium’s 2030 opening.
“It’s just not feasible, and it’s not just about numbers,” Randy Clarke, the general manager of WMATA, told NOTUS. “It’d be this big station in the sky, on a curb no one could get to, and it doesn’t actually help with capacity. …There’s just no there there.”
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Instead, the agency wants to expand the existing Stadium-Armory station and roll out a new rapid transit bus line, dubbed “the Gold Line,” that would run along H Street and Benning Road Northeast, stretching from Union Station to the RFK campus and eventually beyond.
Not everyone’s sold on the idea. Some Ward 7 residents and Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen — who chairs the D.C. Council’s transportation committee — say Metro didn’t sufficiently study whether a new station is feasible. Some residents don’t trust the agency’s reliance on an east-west road connection after the failure of D.C.’s streetcar along the exact same corridor.
“The RFK campus needs a durable transit solution if the city is going to see a return on its billion-dollar investment,” David Wyman, a Hill East resident, told NOTUS. “The streetcar hasn’t worked. Metro stations are forever.”
At an open house held by Metro last week and intended as a way for Ward 7 residents to talk to city officials about transit options, John Capozzi grew increasingly frustrated. As he milled around the St. Coletta school gymnasium, he saw more and more material that treated the new station question as settled.
“I thought we were gonna talk about options,” said Capozzi, a Commanders fan who is active in local politics and has lived in Southeast D.C. for decades.
Both Metro and Bowser dismissed the idea of a second station “before it really even was an idea,” Council member Allen said. He believes they only studied one of the area’s most challenging build sites.
“I don’t really trust the numbers and the evaluation they did,” Allen told NOTUS. “The option to build that new station has got to remain on the table, because it really is about if we want to see this as a growth opportunity in this part of the city or not.”
Metro maintains that an improved Stadium-Armony station — with an expanded entrance, more elevators and escalators — can handle the traffic, when combined with the Gold line.
Clarke said he understands that the city may have lost some trust with the streetcar’s failure, but Metro won’t repeat those mistakes with a rapid bus transit service.
“The real issue was [the streetcar] was put on the curb, and once it’s on the curb, you’re fighting with everyone else on the curb, and you can’t really have priority,” Clarke told NOTUS. “[We want] exclusive lanes. We want it in the middle. We want single priority. We want 60-foot buses, offboard payment platforms. So, basically, it’ll look and feel a lot like a light rail line.”
Allen doesn’t think the city should take an either-or approach, and that a second station is worth building even if it doesn’t happen in time for 2030. He pointed to the success of the NoMa neighborhood and its transit-oriented development.
“Transit helped make that happen. If we are saying we want to be in a growth mode for our city, we’ve got to invest in transit,” Allen said. “A station there is actually about a lot more than just the stadium — it’s about building out the neighborhood.”
It’s possible that the D.C. Council could revisit the conversation of a second station down the line, particularly with the political winds changing in January when three new Council members and a new mayor take office. A spokesperson for Janeese Lewis George, the Democratic nominee for mayor, declined to comment on her position.
“I have a hunch she’ll at least be much more open-minded,” Allen told NOTUS.
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