LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. — Six new Metro stops in Loudoun and Fairfax counties, including the highly anticipated Dulles station, opened to the public over two weeks ago and since then more than 60,000 people have entered one of the new stations.
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) opened the stops more than a week before the Thanksgiving holiday, allowing travelers to have easier access to and from the airport.
Airport officials stated that they expected busier travels around the holiday and that demand was seen when looking at the ridership data from WMATA. Metro ridership is measured through entries and exits at each stop. A single passenger trip is evaluated by someone entering at one station and exiting at another.
According to WMATA, from Nov. 15-30, the six new stations saw a total of 61,405 riders entering at these stops and during the same time period 59,639 exited at these stops. The biggest day for entries was on Nov. 26, with 5,160 people using the six new stops, 2,069 of those passengers entered the Metro from the Dulles International Airport station, which is the stop that collected the most people entering that day. The biggest day for exits was on Nov. 23, the day before Thanksgiving, with a total of 5,263 passengers. Among the exiting passengers, 2,147 people were leaving the Dulles stop, racking up the most exits amongst the six stops for the day.
Out of the total number of riders entering one of the six stations, the Dulles stop remains popular among passenger trips - racking up over one-third of riders from that stop alone since it opened. The theme continues with ridership also seeing over one-third of the exits at the Dulles station.