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They plotted a hub-and-spoke pattern of five lines with 83 stations stretching from the suburbs to the center of the District to ferry federal workers from homes to offices. But development patterns have since strayed, creating suburban communities and office centers far from the subway lines in upper Montgomery, Howard, Southern Maryland, western Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William.

Those patterns are going to intensify. In another 25 years, two-thirds of all daily trips in the region will be from suburb to suburb, according to the region's Transportation Planning Board. Transit advocates have been lobbying for several years for a Purple Line to connect Bethesda in Montgomery County with New Carrollton in Prince George's County. Advocates say the Purple Line is the best bet for a fast connection between the counties, since the proposed intercounty connector linking I-270 and I-95 has been sidelined.

Metro planners are also looking at ways to connect Prince George's County with Alexandria by running rail over the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

Metro has started several new suburb-to-suburb bus routes, though it acknowledges buses are a far cry from rapid rail service.

Changing Communities

The original 103-mile Metro system was finished in January, when the final five stations opened on the Green Line in the District and Prince George's. While Metro is primarily a people mover, it also can change the look and feel of a community, for better or worse. Even in neighborhoods that waited many years for Metro service, people have mixed feelings about living on the subway line.

"The more accessible transportation is, the more likely developers are going to come into your neighborhood and price you out," said Brenda Richardson, a consultant who runs her firm, Women Like Us, from her rented home five blocks from the new Congress Heights Station.

"People here are worried about being displaced. We feel like we stayed here when things were awful, and now that the community is a prime place for development, we're going to be booted out. . .‚. Gentrification to a lot of black folks means the white folks are coming."

Communities like Arlington and Bethesda either require affordable housing near Metro stations or offer incentives to developers who set aside a portion of a project to affordable housing.

Richardson wants a similar protection in the District. "I don't like the idea that Metro can destabilize communities," she said. "There needs to be some sort of policy that is set so that when Metro comes into neighborhoods, developers are not at liberty to push out longtime residents, seniors and renters."

Exactly how Metro changes a community has plenty to do with the decisions made by the community's own planners and leaders.

Metro is the reason some places, like Bethesda or the stretch between Rosslyn and Ballston in Arlington, have seen thriving "urban villages" sprout up around their stations while other spots, such as Rhode Island Avenue in the District or Addison Road in Prince George's, have stations that are relatively isolated and undeveloped.

Arlington's Model

Arlington County is widely seen as the gold standard for molding growth around Metro. Along the five-station corridor from Rosslyn to Ballston, which opened in 1979, Arlington leveraged the subway stations to attract jobs, housing and commercial development.

"There is no better success story," said Stewart Schwartz, of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

The story starts with Arlington leaders, who recognized early on that Metro could be powerful enough to revitalize the sagging commercial corridor between Rosslyn and Ballston.

They fought to change the route of the subway, which had been planned along the median of I-66, and convinced Arlington taxpayers it would be worthwhile to pay extra to burrow the subway underground and pull it south to run between Wilson and Clarendon boulevards.

They worked with residents to establish a vision for the development they wanted and wrote zoning laws to make it happen. The plan was high-density, high-rise office, retail and residential space next to the stations, with a gradual tapering in height so that single-family homes remained untouched just two or three blocks away.

The streets around the stations welcome pedestrians, not cars. There is no Metro parking.

"We were willing to go through a major community transformation in order to maximize the value of this transit system," Whipple said. "The feeling was that people could live and work near transit, and it should have a beneficial effect. And it has. We simply don't have the kinds of traffic problems that

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