While the Washington Commanders NFL team is slated to return to the site of its former Washington, D.C., home in 2030, questions remain how the District of Columbia will cover the cost of and complete on time an expansion of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s rapid transit system (Metro) to bring fans there, according to WUSA9, the CBS affiliate for Washington, D.C.
The Commanders, whose stadium is currently in Landover, Md., played at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium for 35 seasons, from 1961 to 1996. Located on East Capitol Street along the Anacostia River, it has been closed to the public since 2019; a new stadium complex is planned for the site.
The Council of the District of Columbia last month voted 11-2 on the “$3.7 billion project to redevelop the RFK Stadium site in Ward 7,” according to WUSA9. “The vote authorizes the use of $1.1 billion in taxpayer money to bring the football back to D.C.”
The project, the media outlet said, has “an ambitious transit goal: becoming the most public transportation-accessible NFL stadium.”
According to WUSA9, Charles Allen, DC Council member and Chair of the Council’s Transportation Committee, “is pushing hard to make Metro central to the gameday experience at the new stadium” with a goal “for more than 30,000 fans to arrive by rail on gamedays, a dramatic increase from current ridership levels.” Some 4,000-5,000 fans use Metro to get to the Landover stadium, and Seattle, “considered one of the most transit-friendly stadium locations in the NFL, only [has] about 9,000 fans arrive by train,” the media outlet reported.
“The idea is they’re going to take Metro and then they actually walk down this plaza right up to where the new stadium will be built,” WUSA9 quoted Allen as saying. This would require “a complete transformation of transit infrastructure” at the RFK site, according to the media outlet, which reported that Allen is calling for “a major overhaul of the existing Stadium-Armory Metro station [on the Blue Line; see map below] and potentially a second brand-new station on the opposite side of the RFK campus. He points to precedent from when the Washington Nationals first played at RFK Stadium.”
“We did it before when the Nationals first came to D.C.,” said Allen, according to WUSA9. “They played right here at RFK, and when that happened, we actually had tens of thousands that came by Metro to come to a Nats game.”
The rail expansion isn’t only “about accommodating football fans eight to ten days a year,” however, the media outlet reported. “The RFK redevelopment plan includes 6,000 to 8,000 new homes, which could bring 12,000 new residents to the area.” That part of the plan is slated to be finished by 2040.
According to WUSA9, “Allen said D.C. and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are finalizing a memorandum of understanding to launch a $2 million study examining what improvements are needed and how much they will cost.” A rail station alone, according to early estimates, “could cost ‘in the ballpark of hundreds of millions of dollars,’ though Allen acknowledges the price tag remains uncertain.”
According to WUSA9, the DC Council, to fund the expansion, “has already dedicated $20 million per year for the next 30 years from stadium revenue specifically for transit improvements. Allen said those future dollars are ‘bondable,’ meaning the city can borrow against them to fund construction now.”
The media outlet reported that Allen “wants the planning study completed within six months so construction can begin with enough time to finish before the stadium’s 2030 opening.” He also “argues the investment is necessary regardless of cost, saying the alternative—building parking garages and relying on cars—would create unbearable traffic congestion for both gamedays and the thousands of future residents.”
“We cannot afford not to do it,” Allen said, according to WUSA9.
