Friendship Heights station explained

Friendship Heights
Style:WMATA
Symbol:red
Symbol Location:washington
Address:5337 Wisconsin Avenue NW
Borough:Washington, D.C.
Coordinates:38.9609°N -77.0861°W
Platform:1 island platform
Tracks:2
Structure:Underground
Bicycle:Capital Bikeshare, 50 racks and 22 lockers
Passengers:2,910 daily[1]
Pass Year:2023
Pass Rank:33 out of 98
Accessible:Yes
Code:A08
Owned:Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Mapframe:yes
Mapframe-Custom:
Shape:none
Marker:rail-metro
Marker-Color:
  1. e31837
Zoom:15

Friendship Heights station is a Washington Metro station on the Red Line straddling the border of Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. The station was opened on August 25, 1984, and is operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).

Location

The station is at the 5400 block of Wisconsin Avenue, Northwest and serves the neighborhoods of Chevy Chase and Friendship Heights. The area is a major retail shopping and broadcast media district. The station also serves as a bus depot linking Montgomery County Transit's Ride-On bus system with the Washington Metro. It is directly adjacent to the Western Division Metrobus garage on 44th Street and Harrison Street NW.

Notable places nearby

History

The station opened on August 25, 1984.[2] [3] Its opening coincided with the completion of 6.8miles of rail northwest of the Van Ness–UDC station and the opening of the Bethesda, Grosvenor, Medical Center and Tenleytown stations.[4]

Station layout

This station uses the four-coffer arch design found at most underground stations on the western side of the Red Line. Unlike its many counterparts such as Van Ness-UDC and Tenleytown-AU, the station's walls are more rounded. Friendship Heights is the only station in the system with this design that has mezzanines at both ends of the platform.

The station is one of 11 stations in the system constructed with rock tunneling and is accordingly deeper than most stations in the system.[5] Its platform is more than 100feet below its north entrance.[6] The escalator has a length of 130feet and rises 65feet feet above the mezzanine level.[7] The escalator ride from the common room at the north entrance to the mezzanine level takes roughly a minute and a half.

Two of its five exits sit on the Maryland side of Western Avenue, whereas the other three exit into the District. At the Western Avenue entrance, four separate street entrances come together in an upper mezzanine, allowing riders to access a set of three escalators that go to the platform. One entrance is located at a side entrance to the lobby of an entrance to the former C-level of Mazza Gallerie that has access to Western Avenue. Another entrance offers direct access to Chevy Chase Pavilion. The newest entrance, located off Wisconsin Avenue next to The Shops at Wisconsin Place, opened between 2011 and 2022, replacing an earlier entrance that led directly into a Hecht's. The new entrance is located across Wisconsin Avenue from the station's main entrance, which surfaces in a large bus depot underneath the Chevy Chase Metro Building. A second entrance, at the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and Jenifer Street NW, is elevator-only, with four high-speed elevators servicing the station's south mezzanine.

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Metrorail Ridership Summary . Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority . February 8, 2024.
  2. News: Red Line adds 6.8 miles . August 25, 1984 . The Washington Post . B1.
  3. News: All aboard; Metro festivities welcome latest Red Line extension . Brisbane . Arthur S. . August 26, 1984 . The Washington Post . A1.
  4. Web site: Sequence of Metrorail openings . 2017 . WMATA . 3 . April 1, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180612140221/https://www.wmata.com/about/upload/Metro-Facts-2017-FINAL.pdf . June 12, 2018 . dead .
  5. News: See some of the reasons why Metrorail is hard to maintain . 6 February 2021 . Washington Post . en.
  6. Book: Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments . Metrorail Station Area Planning: A Metrorail before-and-After Study Report . August 1983 . 88 . 6 February 2021.
  7. News: JohnsonJuly 8 . TransitBy Matt . What are the 10 longest Metro escalators? . 6 February 2021 . ggwash.org . en.