Off-Peak Ridership at Tysons Corner is Strong

September 24th, 2014

Even though Tysons Corner station on the Silver Line is only two months old, off-peak ridership is particularly strong. Saturdays are busier than weekdays, and the station stays busy past 10:00pm. 

Tysons Corner station is already serving a solid reverse commute market, but ridership is also strong during midday hours, and reaches its peak during the afternoon rush and evening hours.

Tysons Entries - first 2 weeks

Tysons Exits - first 2 weeks

Ridership is fairly well balanced throughout the day, relative to other Metrorail stations.  There’s a clear reverse commute market exiting the station during morning rush and re-entering in the evening. In the evening, however, nearly just as many people are exiting the station as are entering the stations, suggesting the commuters are mixing with other riders bound for the malls or other activities. Ridership remains strong in the midday hours as well, with ridership rarely falling below half the peak volume.  High ridership – particularly entries – is sustained until 10:30pm on weekdays (the two malls adjacent to the station close at 9:00-9:30pm).

As the black lines in the charts also show, Tysons Corner is now one of the few Metrorail stations where Saturday ridership is higher than a typical weekday.  With entries averaging around 3,000 on weekdays and closer to 4,000 on Saturdays, Tysons Corner now joins Arlington Cemetery, Woodley Park, and U Street as one of the only stations in the network where Saturday ridership is higher than weekday.  A Saturday on Metrorail generally is 50% of a typical weekday, but at Tysons Corner a Saturday is 130% of a weekday.

Sat as Percent of Weekday, August 2014

Tysons Corner is now one of the few Metrorail stations where Saturday ridership exceeds a typical weekday.

Of course, as the Silver Line grows and riders become accustomed to this new travel option, ridership will certainly change. But off-peak ridership and reverse commutes are a good thing for Metrorail – these riders let us grow transit usage without contributing to peak crowding and congestion in the rail network’s core.

While the Silver Line is still in its infancy, the early indicators at Tysons Corner station are encouraging.

All ridership data in this post are based on August 1-18, 2014. The raw data is available for download (.csv, 3kb).

 

 

We here at PlanItMetro are experimenting with ways to make visuals like the bar chart above more interactive and legible. Check out two versions of this chart below – one using an off-the-shelf product, and a second where we edited the D3 JavaScript by hand beginning with an open-source inspiration. What do you think?


Inspired by Caged’s block #6476579.

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  1. Steve
    September 24th, 2014 at 17:50 | #1

    Very useful info. Glad to see good off-peak and Saturday ridership. I’ve expected reverse commute riding on Phase I would be high given the number of jobs in the Tyson area.

    I suspect that baseball games push up the Saturday ridership numbers for Navy Yard based on August 2014 although I did not cross check with the National’s schedule.

  2. jnb
    September 24th, 2014 at 22:49 | #2

    Very cool.

  3. September 25th, 2014 at 10:57 | #3

    Now, imagine what ridership would be like if you didn’t have to wait 20 minutes for a train!

  4. Andrew
    September 25th, 2014 at 10:59 | #4

    What do I think? I think the best option is the graph where I’m able to figure out which bar belongs to which station.

    It also might be nifty to include one of those Metro maps with the different colored circles on it to get a sense of where the weekend ridership compares to weekday ridership.

  5. Stephen
    September 25th, 2014 at 11:53 | #5

    Do you have O/D information yet? I’m sure that people are interested in knowing from where all of that reverse commuting is coming.

  6. Michael
    September 29th, 2014 at 15:29 | #6

    The off peak ridership at night is probably mall workers (Tysons Corner Center & Tysons Galleria) getting off of work. I have left the movie theater at Tysons Corner Center late at night and seen nothing but employees walking from the mall to the metro they are probably a good percentage of the riders

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