Guest post by David Kosub

After seeing the Riggs Park profile published by the Washington D.C.  Economic Partnership, the Fort Totten Metro Station data intrigued me. And, yes, before you ask, there is nothing wrong with being intrigued by looking at administrative data held within public agencies! All the cool kids do it.

While searching the Public Records available on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA’s) website, I did find a few nuggets of ridership data related to Fort Totten metro that I’d like to share (see the original source data here and my manipulations on this Excel sheet here). WMATA publishes historical ridership figures for each station going back to 1977, with Fort Totten coming online a year later (read these articles here and here to see how residents felt about it back then). Figure 1 displays the average number of weekday boardings per year at the Fort Totten station from 1978 to 2018 (data for 1983 were not available). Note, I assume “boardings” in Metro language refers to those who passed through a faregate, not simply transferred to another train (e.g., red line to green line). Boardings grew from 2,969 on an average weekday in 1978 to 7,842 four decades later. Note, these data represent actual average weekday boarding counts and not normalized to population change.

For kicks, let’s take a look at how Fort Totten compared to other stations across the system for average weekday boardings in 2018.  As the table below shows, we clock in at number 25—not too shabby, especially when considering some of those other stations our weekday boarding numbers beat!

	Station	2018***
1	Union Station	28,315
2	Metro Center	24,532
3	Gallery Pl-Chinatown	22,613
4	Farragut North	22,184
5	Farragut West	20,348
6	L’Enfant Plaza	20,240
7	Foggy Bottom-GWU	18,299
8	Dupont Circle	16,542
9	McPherson Square	13,889
10	Pentagon	13,667
11	Rosslyn	13,020
12	Pentagon City	12,311
13	Silver Spring	11,682
14	Shady Grove	11,139
15	Navy Yard-Ballpark	11,013
16	Crystal City	10,795
17	Columbia Heights	10,448
18	NoMa-Gallaudet U	9,346
19	Smithsonian	9,331
20	Ballston-MU	9,029
21	Bethesda	8,999
22	Vienna/Fairfax-GMU	8,970
23	Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter	8,226
24	Friendship Heights	7,900
25	Fort Totten (woot woot)	7,842
26	Wiehle-Reston East	7,785
27	Federal Triangle	7,576
28	Judiciary Square	7,475
29	King St-Old Town	7,131
30	Capitol South	7,003
31	Huntington	6,896
32	New Carrollton	6,584
33	Court House	6,420
34	Anacostia	6,305
35	Federal Center SW	6,014
36	Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport	5,964
37	Franconia-Springfield	5,940
38	Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan	5,913
39	Georgia Ave-Petworth	5,889
40	U St	5,637
41	Van Ness-UDC	5,476
42	Glenmont	5,475
43	Brookland-CUA	5,436
44	Rhode Island Ave-Brentwood	5,417
45	Greenbelt	5,350
46	Eastern Market	5,303
47	Tenleytown-AU	5,286
48	Branch Ave	5,263
49	Medical Center	5,181
50	Takoma	5,033
51	Grosvenor-Strathmore	4,995
52	Southern Avenue	4,744
53	Braddock Road	4,376
54	Clarendon	4,375
55	Shaw-Howard U	4,314
56	Suitland	4,290
57	Waterfront	4,271
58	Mt Vernon Sq 7th St-Convention Center	4,238
59	Largo Town Center	4,181
60	East Falls Church	4,023
61	Prince George’s Plaza	4,012
62	Twinbrook	3,807
63	Dunn Loring-Merrifield	3,789
64	Rockville	3,756
65	Virginia Square-GMU	3,728
66	Cleveland Park	3,657
67	College Park-U of Md	3,650
68	White Flint	3,506
69	Potomac Ave	3,494
70	Tysons Corner	3,480
71	Wheaton	3,468
72	West Hyattsville	3,184
73	Addison Road-Seat Pleasant	2,652
74	Benning Road	2,604
75	Van Dorn Street	2,576
76	West Falls Church-VT/UVA	2,544
77	Stadium-Armory	2,423
78	Naylor Road	2,283
79	Congress Heights	2,223
80	Minnesota Ave	2,149
81	Forest Glen	2,045
82	Eisenhower Avenue	1,919
83	Capitol Heights	1,864
84	McLean	1,830
85	Morgan Boulevard	1,826
86	Landover	1,543
87	Arlington Cemetery	1,485
88	Greensboro	1,265
89	Deanwood	1,240
90	Spring Hill	1,203
91	Cheverly	980

I next wondered how much of the total Metro daily boardings Fort Totten represented. To answer this, I looked at the proportion of Fort Totten boardings on an average weekday compared to (1) the system as a whole or (2) only those stations in the District. Please keep in mind that not every metro station open today (n=91) was around at the beginning (n=24), so ridership data can change substantively with each new station opening (amongst other factors).

Figure 2 displays these results. As a percentage of all of the stations in the system (lower line), Fort Totten started around 2.2 percent of all Metro boardings in 1978, fell to below 1 percent between 1992 and 2010, and began climbing thereafter rising to 1.3 percent in 2018.  When focusing on only stations in the District (higher line), the trends are the same, starting at 2.8 percent in 1978, dipping down in the 1990s and 2000s, and rebounding thereafter to 2.3 percent in 2018. 

So, what do these limited data tell us? Well, we can see the growth over time in the number of riders beginning their trips at Fort Totten on an average weekday. And, that is likely commensurate with multiple factors, such as changes and growth in D.C.’s population over time and more residents preferring public transportation to personal vehicles. Further, as compared to the system as a whole, it is exciting to see our numbers creep up in recent years, even when considering how many stations are open now compared to in 1978. To me, this shows a healthy use of the Fort Totten metro station on a daily basis—providing additional evidence that the nearby vicinity is ripe for robust transit-oriented development as called for in the 2009 Small Area Plan. My hope is that, when recruiting shops, restaurants, and other potential business owners to the neighborhood, we can use the additional evidence that our community is worth the investment.