WASHINGTON – D.C. council members and transportation leaders met for hours on Wednesday to figure out the best way to get people in and out of the new Commanders stadium.

Planning starts:

We’re just about 14 months away from the start of construction, but the conversation about transportation is well underway. 

Leaders repeatedly made it clear that this transportation plan isn’t just for Commanders’ fans on eight or nine Sundays — it’s for the people who live in these neighborhoods surrounding the stadium 365 days a year.

“Even folks who were opposed to the stadium early on, they know its coming so they want it to be successful,” D.C. Councilmember and Chair of the Transportation Committee Charles Allen said. 

He says success means a smooth ride for fans and everyday residents. 

“It’s not having tens of thousands of people driving cars here. It’s thinking about transportation. Get people on Metro,” Allen said. 

“I can imagine there’s going be a lot of cars and people trying to park so being able to alleviate that is going to be a benefit to the community,” resident Olo Olakanmi told FOX 5. 

Big picture view:

The D.C. Council hearing saw representatives from the D.C. Department of Transportation, WMATA and the Commanders, as well as ANC commissioners in neighboring communities.

Allen emphasized that this is more than just a stadium — they’re also planning 6,000 to 8,000 new homes, 20,000 people living in a brand-new neighborhood.

As of now, there are two parking garages planned for the Commanders Stadium, expected to hold about 6,000 vehicles. But when it comes to transit, there are several possibilities at play.

Dig deeper:

Metro would need major upgrades to use the Stadium Armory stop — likely including adding an entrance, elevator and expanding the mezzanine.

A new Metro stop could end up costing hundreds of millions of dollars and take years to build.

WMATA is getting $2 million from the District for planning. General Manager Randy Clarke said that the goal is to have 40% of game day traffic come from public transit.

But that could also include bus rapid transit lines moving people from Union Station to the stadium along the H Street corridor.

“I have confidence we’re all going to work together and everyone has the same goal here — to make this the best possible urban sports facility and mixed-used development in the country,” Clarke said. 

The plan right now is to have shovels in the ground by March 2027 and construction complete by May 2030.

“We want to make this the most transit friendly stadium but also make sure all modes of transportation are optimized for folks to get there,” DDOT Director Sharon Kershbaum said. 

So, a lot of these transit decisions need to be made fairly quickly.

National Guard troops can remain in Washington, D.C. while a panel of judges examines whether the deployment ordered by President Trump is legal, according to a Federal Appeals Court for Washington, D.C. ruling.

More than 2,000 troops have been deployed in the city since August, both from the District and at least 11 Republican-led states. Hundreds more were added after a targeted attack on National Guard troops killed one and wounded another last month, both of whom were from West Virginia.

The decision Wednesday upends a lower court order that troops be removed from the city.

President Trump’s deployment in Washington is the most robust long-running operation so far, in what has become a pattern of military deployments to help with policing in Democratic-led cities around the country.

Several other smaller deployments are tied up in legal battles — including Trump’s deployment to Chicago which is at the Supreme Court awaiting an emergency decision.

In today’s ruling the judges wrote that Washington, D.C.’s unique federal status allows President Trump to largely control the deployment of troops in the city. They also said the Trump administration is likely to win the overall case, which would see the deployment remain until at least the end of February 2026.

But the judges also raised serious doubts about the lawfulness of deployments of other cities. In particular, the deployment of out-of-state Guard to another state without the consent of that state’s governor — as the administration has tried to do in both Oregon and Illinois.

The opinion called such a move “constitutionally troubling to our federal system of government.”

Troops have left Los Angeles

Today’s decision comes days after a different federal appeals court ruled that troops had to leave Los Angeles on Monday.

The Ninth Circuit ruled late Friday night to uphold a ruling by a federal judge in California to end Trump’s deployment. Trump seized control of the California National Guard in June amid protests in the city and sent more than 4,000 troops there, against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes.

That number had since dropped to around 100, but the administration had sought to extend the federalization of the state’s Guard several times, most recently until February, saying it was still necessary.

The decision from the Ninth Circuit effectively blocked the administration from using those remaining National Guard troops in Los Angeles — but it did not force control of the troops to return to the state, leaving them under federal control for now.

All troops have left their stations in the city, according to two sources familiar with the matter who are not authorized to talk publicly. A military official who was not authorized to discuss details of a deployment publicly told NPR that the troops have been moved to a military facility in the area and are conducting training exercises.

NPR’s Tom Bowman contributed to this report from Washington.

The Commanders are set to build a new stadium in D.C., and the debate over how fans will get to and from games is happening right now. On Wednesday, city leaders will join Metro and the Washington Commanders to talk stadium transit.