‘Step Back, Doors Closing’: A Renewed Metro at 50
By • March 30, 2026 0 296
Metro’s General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke celebrates 50 years of Metro with riders on March 27. Courtesy WMATA.
Fifty years ago this week, some college kids from Georgetown University boarded the first Metrorail trains to run in Washington, D.C., on its inauguration day. It was downtown, not Georgetown, and that’s a story in itself.
The first 4.6 miles and five stations of the Washington Metro subway system officially opened to passengers on March 29, 1976 —with an opening day celebration on March 27. It consisted of only five Red Line stations.
While the route was short, the crowds around the few stations marveled at the new transportation system called in other cities, “a subway.” We were told, “Call it the Metro.”
Those college kids — myself included — were from New Jersey and New York. One of them wrote in the student newspaper, the Georgetown Voice, sarcastically: What kind of subway is this? So bright. So clean. So nice. It doesn’t even smell.
The Washington subway system has come a long way since those early days during the Bicentennial.
One lifelong Metro rider, photographer Patrick Ryan, tells The Georgtowner: “I remember first time riding the Metro on July 4th, 1976. They let riders pay a quarter after fireworks on the Mall.”
Whether train or bus, every rider has a Metro story. Ryan added: “Today, 45 years ago, the attempted assassination on President Regan occurred. I took the subway from Gonzaga/Union Station to Dupont Circle where the Red Line terminated at the time. Got on L bus to go up Connecticut Avenue and a uniformed Secret Service guy jumped on the bus and said ‘Go to the Hilton and don’t stop to pick anybody up!’ ”
Today, with six lines, 98 stations and 130 miles throughout Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, Metrorail is the second busiest rail system by average daily ridership in the United States.
So far, Metro’s busiest day has been President Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009 with 1.12 million trips — the all-time record. As you might image, cherry blossom season makes for crowded trains, too.
Metro’s iconic ceiling design is a unique feature, along with its very long escalators. Its distinct chime, “Step Back, Doors Closing,” is also the name of a romantic movie centered around the system. The system is proving its resilience and may yet fulfill its original advocates’ vision.
Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon championed Metro, hoping to create a monumental showcase for the nation’s capital, Washingtonian writes.
“In fact, LBJ took a particularly keen interest, personally poring over drawings and maps of the in-progress system. The Metro that resulted, says George Mason history professor Zachary Schrag, grew out of the Johnson administration’s commitment to egalitarian public investments that reflected the nation’s huge wealth and equally grand ambitions.”
“A product of its era,” Schrag writes in his book, “The Great Society Subway,” “Metro emerged as public transportation intended not merely to transport commuters, but to build, in Johnson’s terms, ‘a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.’ ”
The system once derided by a social media account, named “Unsuck DC Metro,” is happy to celebrate its 50 years this month.
Metro’s General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke is leading the party — and was even encouraged to run for mayor of Washington, D.C. He said when hired in 2022: “I’ll be the customers’ advocate as I’m a customer too. Onward!”
Last month, the Washington Post wrote of Clarke: “Three years later, Clarke is so popular in D.C. that it can be hard for him to go out to dinner without getting stopped for photographs. He responds personally to complaints about broken escalators and helps direct crowds on holidays. Under his leadership, Metro has gained more riders every month than any other transit system in the country. Crime is down; frequencies are up. Clarke has overseen a redesign of the entire bus network, the introduction of credit card payments, and the return to an automated system that was mothballed for 15 years after an unrelated fatal crash. Metro, once the butt of social media jokes about how often trains caught fire, now has a cheeky Instagram account and desirable merch.”
There is, in fact, a Metro Spring Pop-Up Shop, open through April 12, near L’Enfant Plaza station.
Now, for that other story: Georgetown’s illusory Metro stop. It’s proved to be one of the most frequent questions that people ask about D.C.’s oldest neighborhood. Why no Metro?
The Georgetowner wrote years ago: “The idea of a Metro stop in Georgetown has long grabbed the attention of the public. In fact, it is the lack of such a stop that has created an urban myth: At the very inception of Metro Rail, Georgetowners actively campaigned in the 1960s against a Metro station because it would bring in more of the city’s black population into the historic village. This is untrue. While there were a few residents who did voice opposition at that time to any additional visitors, especially blacks, most Georgetown businesses simply did not actively lobby the Metro board — which determined where subway stations would be built. Not filled with office workers like downtown D.C., Georgetown did not have the daytime business traffic to warrant a stop.”
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