Two new Prince George's County Metro stations opened yesterday, extending the transit system's Blue Line three miles east, with the final stop now within walking distance of FedEx Field.
The Largo Town Center stop is the first outside the Capital Beltway in Prince George's, and the Morgan Boulevard stop is just inside the Beltway. Officials expect the $456 million extension to ease traffic on roads and draw shoppers, families and businesses to the heart of the county.
County Executive Jack B. Johnson, left, his predecessor, Wayne K. Curry, left rear, and other passengers ride the Blue Line to its new terminus, Largo Town Center.
(Photos Ricky Carioti -- The Washington Post)
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"This marks the renaissance of economic development" in the county, Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R) said at the opening of the Largo Town Center stop yesterday. "It was built with the people in mind."
The station was built to be unobtrusive and attractive, said Metro chief executive Richard A. White. Prince George's residents said they didn't want to "see it, hear it or feel it," White said, so the tracks are elevated or underground to minimize disruptions.
The 3.1-mile extension marks the first expansion of the Metrorail system beyond the originally planned 103 miles of track, which was completed in January 2001. Largo Town Center and Morgan Boulevard are the 85th and 86th stations, and they boast such amenities as multiple escalators and elevators in case of outages. Metro predicts that in a year, a total of nearly 10,000 passengers will board or exit at the stations.
Despite the extension's deliberate subtlety, many said the new stations, with their commissioned artwork, tall glass windows and soaring steel balustrades, serve both practical and symbolic purposes for the communities they reach. Before the ribbon-cutting at Largo Town Center, speakers pointed to the Metro extension as evidence of past and future growth.
"When you live in an outlying area, the Metro can bring opportunities for expansion and growth, particularly to a place like Prince George's," former County Council member Marvin Wilson said at the Morgan Boulevard dedication. "It brings people to our county and shows that all kinds of things can grow beyond metropolitan Washington."
For some of the first passengers to catch the train, the practical benefits triumphed: easy access to the movie theater at Largo; a day care center at Morgan Boulevard that will accommodate 90 children; no more waiting at cold bus stops for a ride to Addison Road, which used to be the last stop.
Annie Strivers, 75, boarded the train at Morgan Boulevard just before noon yesterday for a ceremonial ride to the line's new terminus. She wanted to be one of the first to watch the Largo shops come into view from a Metro car window.
"I've lived in Washington my whole life," she said from her seat on the train, "and I've seen the subway grow. I've been waiting forever for it to go out this far."
Much of Prince George's County has been waiting for a smaller eternity -- about 3 1/2 years since the groundbreaking for the new stations May 8, 2001. Still, it has been an agonizing wait for those like County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D), who moved into the county two decades ago.
At the opening of the Morgan Boulevard stop yesterday morning, he told of one icy February night when he took the Metro from Federal Triangle, where he worked, to the last stop on the Blue Line. He arrived at 9:05 p.m., missing by five minutes the bus that would take him home to his wife and newborn daughter. The next bus was scheduled to come at 11.
After borrowing a quarter from a fellow passenger to phone home, Johnson resolved to work for the expansion of the Blue Line, which he said he hopes "will allow people in Prince George's County to have more time with their families and will be the beginning of efforts to extend Metro all across the region."
