Backlick Road is the first stop after Alexandria on the Manassas Line. The station is near a location that was proposed to be the end of a Metro branch at various times during the initial planning of the Washington Metro in the 1960s. The station site was already owned by Metro when the station was built in 1992 (I am unsure of its ownership more than 30 years later). The station is just within the DC Beltway that passes behind the shopping plaza just across the street from the station's parking lot and south of the VRE Station.
The station consists of a 368 space Parking Lot accessible via a single entrance/exit and one exit only driveway off Hechinger Drive. A sidewalk leads along the westernmost side of the parking lot to the western exit, with a Burger King separating the parking lot from Backlick Road just west of the station, this sidewalk directly connects to the sidewalk network through the nearby suburban area.
To reach the trains there is a single short pathway that leads to a small, covered entrance area. Here are TVMs, typical of all VRE stations, with this entrance area then leading out to the middle of the station's only platform along the southern side of the two track VRE line. A canopy structure covers the little entrance area and about one car length. The canopy is colored red. The platform is otherwise bear with just metal fencing except for a much smaller canopy at the northern end of the platform. This leads down to a single pedestrian level crossing so a single door of a train could stop on the northern-most track.
Photos 1-48: September 6, 2024;
